His eyes narrowed fractionally, but he retained the calm facade. “Have you finally gotten rid of that mutt?”
“He’s a fox, not a dog,” I pointed out, and took the no-longer-new-releases off the counter, heading for the closest section where one belonged. “And no. He and Gideon went to the coffee shop to buy some treats. Gideon thought he should start getting used to acting like a familiar.”
“It’s not a familiar.” Normally, his flat tone would have grated on me. It would have been yet another sign that he had no emotions related to me.
That wasn’t true, though. There was a tension in his voice that I wouldn’t have picked up, once. Maybe even recently. “He is, Dad.” I slid the book into its new place and turned to look at him. If he wasn’t going to give me any information, he might as well not do it now. Hell, he’d probably been not giving me information for years, so I might as well know that for sure. No reason to keep what I knew from him. “We cleaned out your apartment yesterday. Found the stuff in your closet.”
Like a man still living, his twitches gave him away—the way he swallowed, his fingers curling toward his palms, and how his eyes wouldn’t meet mine. “I don’t know what—”
“You can cut the bullshit. You know Gideon is here to teach me about the kind of magic Mom did. What she was murdered for. What Meredith Johnson was murdered for.”
I refrained from mentioning that I didn’t actually know any of that for sure. If I asked, he’d never tell me. If I acted like I knew and got things wrong, he might correct me just to feel smarter.
He didn’t correct me, and I shivered.
Oh gods.
Had I been right?
He turned away, toward the front of the shop. “You’re going to get yourself killed too, if you don’t get rid of that fox and stop this.” Then he spun back, jaw set and eyes flashing—it was the most real emotion I’d ever seen from him. “Do you have any idea how happy I was when you didn’t have magic? I started sleeping at night again. Didn’t have to worry about us being slaughtered anymore.”
The air felt punched out of me, and I leaned against the counter for support. After that single moment of shock, though, something hotter and angrier rose up in me. I pushed off the counter, hands fisting at my sides. “Then why did you punish me for it, Dad?”
That seemed to deflate him like a balloon with the air slowly hissing out of it. He slumped forward, head down and eyes on the floor.
I wanted to ask why he hadn’t talked to me, figured things out—hell, maybe even left town. But he wasn’t confessing that he’d secretly loved me and been an excellent father. Just that my existence had frightened him.
“What about the Adlers?” I asked. I still wasn’t sure which of the couple in the photo he’d been stalking like a damn creep, so I treated them like a unit.
He shrugged and turned away, waving airily. “You can try to warn her if you want. It’s more likely to get you attention, have them come for you.” Them. Was he still frightened of whoever “them” was, or did he not know much about the murderers who were stalking arcane mages? “That’s if she’s even alive. Would the creature have come for you if she was alive? Or that gun-toting lunatic of yours?”
Which was a good point, if sad. It was probably too late for Ms. Adler. As hard as it was, I held his eye. “Why would they come for me for trying to help her?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Why? I thought you had it all figured out. Isn’t it obvious?” He motioned to my hands. “You tried to get between them and their last target, and nearly got stabbed for your efforts. Do you think they would even try to avoid hurting you now that you’re not twelve?”
Their last target? My father had never been an emotional man, but even knowing him, that level of coldness surprised me.
“She was my mother, you asshole,” I snarled at him, just as a noise from the front of the shop nearly made me jump out of my skin. It was Fluke, bag of treats held in his mouth, nose pressed against the glass. Little dork.