Dead Reckoning

so much that he put the portal in the woods so he could visit her more easily, and I’m afraid he was mischievous enough to . . .”
    And it was Mr. Cataliades’s turn to stop and look at me uneasily, weighing his words.
    “He took my grandfather for a test drive every now and then,” I said. “Dermot recognized Fintan in some of the family pictures.”
    “I’m afraid that was very naughty of him.”
    “Yes,” I said heavily. “It was very naughty.”
    “He had great hopes when your father was born, and I was here the day after to inspect him, but he was quite normal, though of course attractive and magnetic, as those who are part fae are. Linda, the second child, was, too. And I’m sorry about the cancer; that shouldn’t have happened. I blame it on the environment. She should have been perfectly healthy all her life. Your father would have been, if the terrible infighting hadn’t broken out among the fairies. Perhaps if Fintan had survived, Linda’s health would have stayed with her.” Mr. Cataliades shrugged. “Adele tried to reach Fintan to ask if there was anything he could do for Linda, but by then he had passed away.”
    “I wonder why she didn’t use the cluviel dor to cure Aunt Linda’s cancer.”
    “I don’t know,” he said, with apparent regret. “Knowing Adele, I imagine she didn’t think it would be Christian. It’s possible that she didn’t even remember she had it by that time, or that she regarded it as a romantic love token but nothing more. After all, by the time her daughter’s illness became evident, it had been many years since I’d given it to her on Fintan’s behalf.”
    I thought hard, trying to pare down this conversation to learn what I had to know. “Why on earth did you think telepathy would be such a great gift?” I blurted.
    For the first time, he looked a bit miffed. “I thought it would give Fintan’s descendants an edge over their fellow humans for all of their lives, to know what other people were thinking and planning,” he said. “And since I’m nearly all demon, and I had it to give, it seemed a splendid gift to me. It would be wonderful even for a fairy! If your great-grandfather had known that Breandan’s henchmen were determined to murder him, he could have squelched the rebellion before it caught hold. Your father could have saved himself and your mother from drowning if he’d known a trap was set for him.”
    “But those things didn’t happen.”
    “Full-blooded fairies aren’t telepathic—though they can sometimes send messages, they can’t hear an answer—and your father didn’t have the essential spark.”
    This seemed like a circular kind of conversation.
    “So what this all boils down to is this: Since you two were such good buddies, Fintan asked you to give his and Adele’s descendants a gift, to stand as their—our—sponsor.”
    Mr. Cataliades smiled. “Correct.”
    “You were willing to do this, and you thought telepathy would be a dandy present.”
    “Correct again. Though it seems I was mistaken.”
    “You were. And you gave this gift in some mysterious demon way—”
    “Not so mysterious,” he said indignantly. “Adele and Fintan each drank a thimbleful of my blood.”
    Okay, I could not picture my grandmother doing that. But then, I couldn’t have imagined her consorting with a fairy, either. In point of fact, it had become obvious that I’d known my grandmother very well in some respects and not at all in others.
    “I put it in wine and told her it was a special vintage,” Mr. Cataliades confessed. “And in a way it was so.”
    “Okay, you lied. No big surprise there,” I said. Though Gran had been plenty smart, and I was sure she’d at least had suspicions. I waved my hands in the air. I could think about that later. “Okeydokey. So after they’d both ingested your blood, any descendants of theirs would be telepathic if they were also born with this essential spark.”
    “Correct.” He smiled so broadly that I felt I’d gotten an A on my test.
    “And my grandmother never used the cluviel dor.”
    “No, it’s a one-use thing. A very pretty gift from Fintan to Adele.”
    “Can I use it to take away the telepathy?”
    “No, my dear, it would be like wishing away your spleen or your kidneys. But an interesting thought.”
    So I couldn’t help Hunter with it. Or myself, either. Damn.
    “Can I kill someone with it?”
    “Yes, of course, if that someone is threatening someone you love.