Chosen - Kiersten White Page 0,95
different name.”
“I like ‘fair folk’ better than ‘demon.’ ” Doug shrugs. “Has a nicer ring to it.”
“It does, doesn’t it? But most of the folk were far from fair. I was lucky that first night. Nothing came out, and I ran as fast as I could. Then I picked my next move very carefully. I wanted to prove my theory was correct. That we were telling ourselves stories about demons, that the Irish had always known about these connections to other worlds and had been protecting themselves for generations. So I found a village with stories about one specific fairy. The Sleeping One, they called him, because he had no name. Once a year, every year, every single person in the village left. They abandoned their homes, their businesses, their lives. When I asked why, they couldn’t tell me, other than that it wasn’t safe. And sure enough, a cursory search of newspaper archives from that annual date showed missing persons going back decades. So that year, when they all fled, I set a trap.”
She sips her tea, frowning. “It was arrogant. But I was young and ambitious, and I wanted a demon. It turned out I was even more ambitious than I meant to be, though, because I didn’t catch a demon that day.” She sighs, looking out the window at a place and a day far from our own. “I caught a god.”
It’s Rhys’s turn to choke on his tea. “You caught a god?”
“A minor one. But yes.”
“Wait,” Cillian says. “There are gods—plural?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “It depends on your definition of a god, but there are countless hellgods, some midlevel benevolent ones. Powers-that-be that sometimes fiddle with our own earth. We’re not sure whether they still have access now that magic is dead.”
Cillian leans back into the couch, rubbing his forehead. “So all this time, when you said ‘oh my gods,’ you weren’t being cute. You were being accurate.”
“I like to cover my bases.” I gesture toward Esther. “But when you say you caught a god, what do you mean by that?”
Cillian’s mother has refocused on us. She’s watching Cillian with careful concern. “I was quite good at magic. I drew from a variety of sources. Irish, English, Nigerian. The traditions melded in surprising ways, and I drew a lot more power than I would have had I specialized in only one like my college coven wanted me to. There’s a lot to be said for knowing your heritage. When the god stepped into the village to look for a sacrifice, he stepped into my trap. My nets fell on him, binding him to this world and to me. But once he was there and I had him, I didn’t know what to do with him. I panicked.” She swirls her remaining tea around in her mug. “I defaulted to my British training, and I invited him to sit down for tea with me. We talked. He had been visiting earth for countless generations, siphoning power. Like we were an outlet and he was recharging himself. It takes a lot of energy to sustain godhood.”
“Naturally,” Jade mutters. “Can’t be all-powerful without a lot of power.”
“So you had a bound hellgod and you were drinking tea. Then what?” Cillian isn’t looking at her, or any of us. His eyes are fixed on the floor, and his hand is gripping the necklace so tightly it must be cutting into his palm.
“Well, we … we hit it off. He was really interesting, and quite charming and handsome.”
“Mum.” Cillian’s hand twitches. “You are not telling me my father is a hellgod.”
“A minor one. But yes. Technically. Though he resented it when I referred to his home dimension as ‘hell.’ He felt it was reductive.” She takes a prim sip. “He did quite like being called a god, though.”
Rhys lets out a long, controlled breath. “Then you brought him back here and played house with him.”
She shrugs. “I couldn’t let him go, knowing what he was. Eventually his power would drain. If he spent long enough here without sacrifices, he would become human. I debated the morality of it, of course. Of deciding this ageless creature should no longer be able to do what he was designed to do. But that had to be weighed against the countless generations of people who had been sacrificed to him. And, well, I liked him. It was lonely, being the only witch in Shancoom. Honestly, he was happy. He had been doing the same things for so