this?” she asked, eyeing Rita apprehensively, her lips tightening even further.
“Rita’s helping me with the spell the same as you. She’s a witch, too,” I explained.
Emilia scowled. “I have met every witch in this city, and she most certainly isn’t one of them.”
“Well, you must not have met them all, because I most certainly am a witch,” Rita shot back.
“If that’s the case then which family do you belong to?” Emilia questioned.
“Uh … the Girards, technically. I’m not an official member. My daddy liked to mess around with human ladies, if you catch my drift.”
Emilia pursed her lips. “I was never fond of the Girards. Now I know the reason why.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not so fond of them myself,” Rita said, and Emilia seemed surprised by her admission. She lost some of her frosty demeanour before primly sitting down in a seat across from Rita. I followed suit.
After a few moments of silence, Emilia spoke up, addressing Rita. “I suppose I’m hardly entitled to judge the Girards. I’m guilty of my own fair share of sins.”
I knew what she was referring to now; the fact that she had numerous affairs behind her husband’s back.
“Oh?” Rita asked, intrigued.
Emilia cast her gaze to me. “I cheated on my husband for many years,” she confessed plainly. “I spent my nights in the company of different men, and in the process, I neglected my only child. Before I knew it, she was gone. I thought that perhaps a higher power was trying to punish me for my ways by taking her from me.”
Rita, seeming a little uncomfortable with Emilia’s unexpected confession, said, “Yeah well, we’ve all done things we regret.”
Emilia held my gaze. “My regrets are more numerous than most.”
I felt like I should say something to console her, but I couldn’t seem to muster up any sympathy.
“Did my grandfather, Filipp, ever find out about your affairs?” I asked.
Emilia sighed. “I think he always knew. He never said anything though. Perhaps that was what spurred me to keep doing it. I was angry because it seemed like he just didn’t care.” She glanced at me. “But you should know that Filipp is not your grandfather. He wasn’t your mother’s biological father, and that was one thing that he didn’t know. I never had the heart to tell him.”
“What?!” I exclaimed. “If Filipp isn’t my grandfather, then who is?”
“Your grandfather, he was unlike any man I ever met before. He was more powerful than a warlock, a shapeshifter, or a vampire. He was a sorcerer.”
Unearthly silence filled the room as Rita and I shared a wide-eyed look. For a brief moment, we were both thinking the exact same thing. Was Theodore my grandfather? That would make Rita my aunt, which was just too bizarre to fathom.
“The sorcerer, what was his name?” The words rushed past my lips.
“His name was Roman,” she answered, and both Rita and I exhaled loudly in relief. Emilia didn’t pick up on our momentary tension. “He had almost the same colouring as Filipp, but he was so much more handsome and a little darker skinned. Luckily, when Darya was born she inherited my pale complexion, so Filipp never questioned her paternity. Her blue eyes and dark hair were Petrovsky through and through.”
For a moment I pondered the fact that there was more than one sorcerer out there. Not only that, but one of them was my grandfather.
“I knew there had to be something to explain how gifted you are,” Rita said, looking at me. “I was beginning to get a little paranoid.”
“Gifted?” Emilia asked curiously.
“I keep discovering more and more magical things I can do,” I explained.
“Things like what?”
“Uh, maybe I’ll tell you another time when I feel like I can trust you better.”
This seemed to ruffle her feathers a little, but she brushed it off. “I suppose that’s only fair. We should get down to the matter at hand anyway. Explain to me the details of the spell you want me to help you with.”
I nodded and dove straight in, giving her the basic facts, but leaving out who Rebecca’s father was. Pamphrock clearly wouldn’t want it getting out that his daughter had powerful blood. That would put a target on her head. Emilia thankfully understood my need to leave out some details, especially since she had a daughter with the very same blood herself.
“The poor child,” she exclaimed. “My Darya was closed off from the world, too. We could never allow her a normal life because this city contains