I didn’t say anything. I didn’t tell him that I’d imagined that in my dreams—in my nightmares—a thousand times. That the thought—the sheer possibility—kept me awake for hours on end, worrying in the darkness. That I’d even started scouring through Fletcher’s files, going through every single one, every single photo and piece of paper, to see if there was any mention of Mab’s mysterious relative and any clue to what kind of magic, if any, he or she might have.

Maybe there was another reason, a perfectly innocent reason, that Mab had kept this relative a secret from everyone, even McAllister. Maybe they just didn’t get along, like Finn said.

Or maybe there was a whole new generation of trouble headed my way.

“We could speculate forever about Mab’s relative,” I said. “But if this person is anything like Mab, he or she will be plenty pissed to find out that McAllister was stealing from Mab—from them both—all these years. Maybe even pissed enough to come to Ashland and take care of him.”

That was my hope anyway. I couldn’t deal with a danger I didn’t know about, and I was hoping that by using McAllister as bait—as another stalking horse—I could lure Mab’s heir to the city. Maybe this person would just take Mab’s money and run—or maybe he or she would be just as dangerous as the Fire elemental had been. Maybe the heir would thank me for killing her—or maybe he or she would come after me, wanting to avenge her death. Either way, I was going to get out in front of this person, instead of sitting around and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I’m on it,” Finn said. “I’ve already spread money around to all the right people. We’ll know everyone McAllister talks to, everyone he calls, even everyone he bends over for in the shower.”

“I don’t think we need to be quite that detailed,” I drawled.

He smirked. “Anything worth doing is worth doing right. Don’t you remember Dad telling us that?”

I snorted. “Sure, I remember that particular pearl of wisdom. But I don’t think Fletcher intended that to mean getting the lowdown on McAllister’s prison lovers.”

Finn laughed.

We rode the rest of the way to the police station in silence, although I was still thinking about McAllister, Mab, and her long-lost heir. But there was nothing I could do about any of that tonight, so I pushed my worries aside and decided to make the best of the situation. After all, you usually only got to see your nemesis carted off to jail once.