He beamed at me. “No, dear Miss Stackhouse, I did not. Though I’m sure he would be tasty. The ham sandwich was delicious.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” I responded automatically. “Listen, Mr. Cataliades, I found a letter from my grandmother. I’m not sure I understand our relationship correctly, or maybe I just don’t understand what it means that you are my sponsor.”

His beam intensified. “Though I’m in a slight hurry, I’ll do everything I can to dispel your confusion.”

“Okay.” I wondered why he was in a hurry, if he was still being pursued, but I wasn’t going to be sidetracked. “Let me sort of repeat this back to you and you can tell me if I got it straight.”

He nodded his round head.

“You were good friends with my birth grandfather, Fintan. Dermot’s brother.”

“Yes, Dermot’s twin.”

“But you don’t seem that fond of Dermot.”

He shrugged. “I’m not.”

I almost got off on a tangent there, but I stuck to my train of thought. “So, Fintan was still alive when Jason and I were born.”

Desmond Cataliades nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, he was.”

“My gran said in her letter that you visited my dad and his sister, Fintan’s actual children.”

“I was here.”

“So, did you give them—us—a gift?”

“I tried, but you couldn’t all accept it. Not all of you had the essential spark.”

That was a phrase Niall had used. “What is the essential spark?”

“What a clever question!” Mr. Cataliades said, regarding me as if I were a monkey who’d opened a hatch to retrieve a banana. “The gift I gave to my dear friend Fintan was that any of his human descendants who possessed the essential spark would be able to read the minds of their fellow humans, as I can.”

“So, when it turned out that my dad and aunt Linda didn’t have it, you returned when Jason and I were born.”

He nodded. “Seeing you wasn’t absolutely necessary. After all, the gift had been given. But by visiting Jason and then you, I could know for certain. I was very excited when I held you, though I think your poor grandmother was frightened.”

“So only I and—” I choked back Hunter’s name. Mr. Cataliades had written Hadley’s will, and she hadn’t mentioned Hunter. It was possible he didn’t know Hadley had had a child. “Only I have had it so far. And you still haven’t explained what the spark is.”