“What?”
“About sixty-odd years ago when Heather was Rachel, she came to me, trying to figure out a way to heal the damage Fiona had created. Gods, it’s been so long. Give me a moment to remember the details.” She huffed, tapping her fingers rapidly as if it would shake free her memories. “The monster was made by ripping out the magical core of Fiona’s shifter lover. She said she had found the creature’s descendants. Just like Fiona had a hidden child, the shifter had a child before meeting her, and that line still exists, but I don’t keep track of shifter lineage. I know she told me the name.”
She ducked with a squawk as another book came flying. Anya snatched it off the floor and spread it open on top of the other book on her desk.
“Okay, okay. Ashford.”
A fresh round of ice formed in my veins. That was Seth and Caden’s family name.
Caden looked like he was about to start hyperventilating. I clutched him to my chest. “I know them too.”
Anya glanced to Caden in my arms. “Does that happen to be one of them?”
I nodded.
“Change form so I can hear you,” Anya ordered. “We have a fucking puzzle and you need to help.”
Caden hopped off my lap and slipped into his human form, every muscle tense, his jaw tight. He pulled up a seat next to meand sat down hard, letting me lace our fingers together. “You’re the one who helped her disappear? How did she hide the bond?”
“Oh, oh dear.” Anya tapped her fingers over the pages. “Give me your side of the situation and then I’ll tell you what she shared with me.”
Caden nearly choked on his words as he told Anya about meeting Rachel, believing her to be the love of his life. How he bonded her and how she’d run away with Seth.
Anya looked sicker by the moment. “She sought you out with a specific intention. She had it in her head that the rift between the bloodlines could be repaired if she earned the love of the shifter’s descendants. I wasn’t as well-versed back then as I am now, but her theory had seemed plausible, like the creature would sense things had been healed and fade into the aether.”
“Well, it didn’t,” I snapped, nauseated that Rachel had chosen Caden and Seth to be emotional collateral damage for her quest.
“I helped her hide,” Anya said, “but she never said anything about a bond or your brother. Hold on to your feelings for a moment. I need to think.”
She got up, pacing around her library, floating books trying to follow her until she sat back down after a few minutes, during which I stewed in my upset. Anya flicked her finger and the books chasing her around fell open to whatever page they wanted to show her. She skimmed them quickly, chewing her bottom lip.
“We have a couple of mysteries. I’ll look more into Maeve, but?—”
“Who’s Maeve? Rachel?”
“Yes, Maeve is her birth name. She uses it with me since she’s not trying to hide from me and we give her a new name every decade or so. Anyway, I think I sort of understand what might be happening with this creature.”
“We need to know how to kill it,” Caden grit out.
“I’m getting there,” Anya insisted. “The creature was bound in what is now New York State, hidden deep in the mountains. I’m going to assume the binding simply no longer had the strength to contain it, and when it escaped, it sensed its own bloodline in Seth. It’s very likely it sensed you as well, Logan, since you would still have the same, how do I explain this…flavorof magic Fiona did. If there was any bit of that lingering on Seth, I’m betting it wanted to find you for revenge, though it may not even be so complex as that.”
“What do you mean?”
“This creature is not unique to history. They are essentially cursed to consume magic, but because they have no core to retain it, it can’t bring back what they lost.”
I listened carefully, trying to parse through everything she was saying. “So it needs a new core?”
“Yes, but it can’ttakeone. In order for the creature to be healed and fade from this world, it has to be freely given, and it has to be from the one who took it, or at least as close as can be achieved. Maeve knew that, and I can only assume she was trying to find another way to fix things without giving up her magic.” Anya sighed, skimming over more frantically flipping pages. “The problem with a situation like this isn’t just that you would lose your magic. It’s that the very nature of the creature means you would probably die before you could offer.”
Caden’s hand tightened in mine. “That’s not an option.”
“If you had some sacrificial lambs?—”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Caden snapped.
“Logan needs a big enough store of magic she can access to get to the heart of the monster before it takes everything so she could give over the core of her magic to heal it. The only way she can do that is with other sources. She would never have enough on her own. You would need to connect to other magic users.”
Dread prickled over my skin. “Like a matebond?”
