“I’d like to see y’all to the next stop,” he says. Mariah looks at him in the rearview and rolls her eyes.

“You’re no conductor; you’re just nosy.” She starts the engine and pulls out, pausing for Sel and William to drive up behind us.

She glances at me. “You look like you got a question.”

I look at Valec, then back at her. “Are y’all related?”

“Not by blood. Not the way he and my auntie Lu are,” Mariah says. “Thank God.”

“Mariah,” Valec chides. “You were so sweet as a baby; now you’re just mean.”

“But I thought Rootcrafters would,” I say, shrugging, “avoid cambions.”

Mariah sniffs. “We aren’t a monolith. Some of us do. Some of us don’t.”

Valec sits back in the seat, draping his arm behind Alice. “Some of us cast our half-demon infants out to freeze to death at night.”

Alice looks appalled. “That happened to you?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

Valec tilts his head back and forth. “My mother was seduced by an incubus, tale as old as time. Demons love chaos, love making trouble. I don’t blame her. An enslaved crossroads child running amok on a plantation? Mighta been fine. Mighta made life a thousand times worse.” His eyes flash red in the rearview. “When her life was already a thousand times worse than you’ve ever imagined.”

I twist in my seat to stare at him.

“What?” he asks. For a moment, he looks like he could be a college-aged boy, out for a joyride with three girls. Mischievous and handsome and too aware of being both. But he’s not. He’s a two-hundred-and-five-year-old half-demon.

“It’s a wild, random thought,” I say.

He smiles. “I love those.”

“Was…” I narrow my eyes, turning inward to my own memory. “Was your mother’s name Pearl?”

Valec’s eyes widen. “Yes, it was. And how exactly do you know that, Briana Matthews?”

I squeeze the seat between my hands. “A memory walk.”

“With Doc Hartwood?” Mariah asks.

I nod. “Yeah. 1815. Her ancestor Louisa took me to see Pearl giving birth in a cabin. Cecilia, her other ancestor, was there too. A woman named Betty and another named Katherine. Pearl had a baby with glowing yellow eyes.”

Valec grows very, very still.

“I…” In the silence, I realize I may have already overstepped. There is no clear path to reverse course, either. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Valec rides in silence for a moment. Then he says, “Like I said, I don’t blame her. Bondage is no way to live.” He turns, gazing out the window. “Or die, for that matter.”

He doesn’t speak again.

37