years I’d worked with them—I’d never even heard of anyone there getting hurt in the line of duty until the Company of Light had come for Ellen.
Then Klaus’s eyes widened. “That must be what happened to Philip. My God. It never occurred to me—maybe I’m naïve.”
My pulse stuttered. “You knew them?”
“I knew him.” He leaned his weight against the table as if he couldn’t hold himself all the way up while he thought back. “He was with the Fund for about five years, if I remember right. Near the end he stopped coming all that much—mentioned something about a woman he’d met, getting serious with her. I saw her once, at a distance, when she came to pick him up after a fundraising event. She had red hair like yours. You don’t see many with that color. She must have been your mother.”
“So, she wasn’t part of the Fund?”
He shook his head. “And from what you’ve said, it must have been around the time you were born that he stopped coming to meetings altogether. We kept in touch a little over the phone, but the last time I called him, his number was out of service. That was back when we still used landlines for most things… I assumed he’d just moved out of town. If I’d had any idea—murdered—”
There mustn’t have been any major coverage of the slaughter on the news, then. Maybe no one had realized what had happened. The hunters could have covered their tracks. The Company’s employees did so very effectively on a regular basis.
And for all I knew, it hadn’t been random hunters but the Company themselves who’d come for my parents. Luna had been afraid that whoever had killed them would target us next, and it’d appeared to be Company mercenaries who’d attacked her.
“Do you have any idea what they might have gotten into outside of the Fund that would have pissed off hunters or other people out to harm shadowkind?” I asked.
“Can’t think of it. Philip definitely wasn’t the type to go for violence… I remember how much he’d grouse when he had to deal with even a little blood from a papercut. He was more about the research, so papercuts were a fairly common thing. But I don’t know what your mother might have gotten up to. And maybe he developed a stronger stomach for direct confrontations after he left us.”
Well, that answered another question I might have asked—whether the guy had definitely been human. If Kris Kringle here had seen my dad bleed, he couldn’t have been any typical shadowkind, anyway.
“Papercuts are about the most painful injury known to mankind,” I said.
“He’d have said that, I’m sure.” Klaus squinted at me. “I can see him in you now. You might have your mother’s coloring, but that nose and jaw… I’ll have to see if I have any photos I can give you. We don’t record our activities in all that much detail, as I’m sure you understand.”
“Right, of course not.” A sensation squeezed my lungs, thrilled and yet uncertain. I’d found a lead already—I knew my father’s name now. But where did that actually get me? Klaus clearly didn’t know anything about the circumstances of my birth. He hadn’t even known I existed.
And if I took after my mother and this Philip guy… then I really was human. Or I’d started that way, at least. Well, I had already realized I couldn’t be a shadowkind, what with being able to handle silver and iron and generally bleeding human blood myself.
Had one of my parents or someone else done something to create the power in me?
Jolly old Saint Nick here wouldn’t have a clue. I sure as hell wasn’t going to go spilling the beans about my fiery voodoo to this bunch. Some first impression that would make.
Monica glanced at Klaus. “Is there anyone from that generation you’re still in touch with? Maybe someone else stayed in closer contact with Philip and could tell Sorsha more about what happened after he left the Fund.”
“I can’t think of anyone. He always kept his life outside of our business to himself. Like I said, I didn’t even know he was still working on behalf of the shadowkind after he left, but if hunters came after him, he must have been. We never carried out any operations that would have provoked them that much. No one still with the Fund was hassled.”
Maybe that was why Dad had left. He’d had a bold side under his