She laughed despite herself. “No. At least, I don’t think so. But they were witches.”
He placed the whiskey bottle on the counter, sliding it carefully out of her reach. “Your mother was a blood-born.”
She nodded. “How did you know?”
“You are very powerful.”
She snorted again. “I don’t know about that. Malfunctioning, is more like it.” She looked down at her glowing arm. “I’ve never heard of a witch who doubles as a nightlight.”
“Your parents were killed,” he guessed, and she nodded. “By demons?”
“No. In a regular old arson fire.”
If she was going to tell him this, she needed to sit down. She gripped the counter behind her and lifted herself to sit on its edge, putting them at equal height. Even in human form, he was still so much taller than her, and it was hard not to be distracted by the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. The ‘tattoos’ on his chest and neck had taken on a whole new meaning now.
“It happened when I was eighteen. They were going to a coven meeting. They were always going to coven meetings. I didn’t want to go, but Iris went. She told me…”
She picked at a loose thread on the hem of her nightie. “Mam sent her to the store for supplies. It was late, and she had to drive far to find one that was open. While she was gone, someone set the building on fire. The flames blocked all the exits, and the firefighters couldn’t get inside. My parents and everyone in the coven were killed. Iris arrived after it started and couldn’t get in. If my mother hadn’t sent her away, she would have been killed with them. They never caught the arsonist.”
She picked harder at the thread, though she knew it was making it worse. “Afterwards, Iris was obsessed with leaving Ireland. I guess she wanted to start over somewhere without any bad memories, and I didn’t blame her. We picked Montreal and moved only six months later. We’ve been here nine years now.”
She chanced a glance at Mist to find him watching her intently. She waited for him to say, ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ or something similar like everyone else did, but he didn’t.
She was glad. Sorry had never brought anyone back from the dead.
“So you’re afraid of glowing because it reminds you of the fire?”
Despite everything, she smiled. His directness made him easy to talk to. In fact, she had never told that story so easily.
“No, it’s more like… the glowing reminds me of what I am. I stopped practicing after their deaths because I guess I resented that part of myself. My parents spent so much time at the coven when I was growing up. I have all these memories of asking them to go to the park or whatever and them saying they couldn’t because they had to go to the coven. I swear half my childhood was spent playing on the floor of the hall while they had meetings.
“All that work, and for what? The person who killed them was just a human. They couldn’t save themselves. They couldn’t put out the fire.”
She swallowed and then admitted what she’d never told another, even Iris. “I guess I just feel like, if they were going to die anyway, their time would have been better spent as normal parents who spent time with their kids. I hate that I resent them for that. They were so passionate. They did what they loved, and now that they’re gone, it seems horrible to focus on the negative, but… I can’t help it.”
She looked at Mist. His eyes weren’t brimming with sympathy or pity. He wasn’t pushing her to embrace her true nature or telling her to confront her past. He was just listening.
And then he said, “I’m glad you’re alive.”
She managed a smile. “Me too.”
And she was. After everything she’d been through, she felt nothing but gratitude to be sitting in her kitchen in the middle of the night with a demon, telling him about the most painful part of her life.
“Thank you for listening.”
“I want to listen.”
“You’re good at it.”
“How can one be good at listening? It’s simple concentration.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, well, most people can’t concentrate worth a damn, and they’d rather talk about themselves than listen to others.”
“I like your human stories.”
“Even the tragic ones?”
“No.” He frowned. “I don’t like that you lost your kin. If I could take away your sorrow, I would.” He seemed confused about that.
