only know what Randall told me before he went there with Dallas Paranormal Defense. That was almost a year ago. He said that there was a report of a small town taken over by a powerful demon; he seemed to think it would be a routine operation for them, but his whole team went incommunicado that night. And then the Regnum put down a regional isolation barrier and I haven’t been able to get through—”
“Wait, who’s Randall?”
Shimmer blinked at me. “He’s your older brother.”
The word “brother” sent a shock straight down to the soles of my feet, and in the next moment I thought that surely I’d misunderstood him.
“What?” I asked.
“Randall is your older brother,” Shimmer repeated.
“I … I have a brother?” I replied stupidly, suddenly feeling thrilled. I’d wished for a big brother to play with when I was a little kid, yearned for someone to commiserate with when I was a teenager. Like most of my childhood longings, it wasn’t something I thought about much as an adult, although brotherly figures still popped up in my dreams every so often. The Warlock was too much of a hound to fill in as a surrogate, but he came pretty close sometimes.
“Yes, you have a brother.” Shimmer smiled, apparently amused by my reaction, and his expression infuriated me.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” I scowled at him.
My father raised an eyebrow at me. “You didn’t exactly give me a chance when we talked before.”
“But what about Vicky?” I demanded, feeling betrayed. Having a brother was a damn big deal, and I wanted to know why nobody in my whole family had seen fit to clue me in. “She knew, didn’t she? Why didn’t she tell me?”
“She thought the boy was dead,” my father replied quietly. “That’s what the authorities told her when she went asking about him after your mother died. And so she didn’t tell you about him for fear it would just upset you more during a difficult time of your life.”
“And you didn’t tell her anything different?”
Shimmer shook his head. “We only had a few moments to talk outside the Regnum’s surveillance, and frankly I was too worried about your situation to think to mention him to her.”
I paused, trying to get a grip on my roiling emotions. “Tell me about my brother.”
“Randall is five years older than you,” Shimmer replied. “The authorities removed him from your mother’s care and put him in a foster home during our trial. She wasn’t allowed to have him back afterward; they claimed we’d exposed him to necromancy and they wanted him to have some sort of fresh start. They told him we’d both died considerably sooner than we actually did.”
Shimmer shook his head, looking angry and disgusted.
“How did you find him? Or did he find you?” I asked.
“I wanted to see my son graduate from high school, so I attended in disguise. Randall saw right through my careful obfuscations.” Shimmer smiled, looking proud. “The lad has sharp eyes and a good memory. He tracked me back to my hotel, and we’ve stayed in touch in the years since. He’s strong, well-trained … all my divinations say he’s still alive, but whatever is happening there in Cuchillo is most serious and dangerous.”
“I’ll find him,” I blurted out. “I’ll get him out of there. What does he look like?”
“I think you’ll see a family resemblance right away. He’s a few inches taller than you, just a shade over six feet, has your and your mother’s hazel eyes, but my mother’s sandy blond hair. Girls find him quite handsome; boys, too, apparently, but I won’t begrudge him his dalliances if he doesn’t deprive me of grandchildren when the time comes.”
I didn’t really know what to say to that; surely it was entirely Randall’s business if he wanted to have kids or not. So I changed the subject: “About us being stuck in Cuchillo … what you’re saying is nobody can get into or out of the city?”
Shimmer nodded. “That does seem to be the case. Sometime after Randall and his team disappeared and the authorities locked down the city, the demon apparently set some trans-spatial aerial traps to capture aircraft, but my sources say the authorities found and closed most if not all of them. I take it you encountered a stray open trap?”
“It was a stray closed trap; I had a choice between opening it or throwing us at the mercy of the Virtii.”
“Well, those creatures haven’t any mercy, so you