“Actually, I was going to ask Rose. James had you charged with assault and his mother was the one who called the police.”

“His mother won’t see either of us. For anyone who does spot us, my presence would merely signal that Olivia should not attend without accompaniment.”

We debated it some more, but Gabriel had made up his mind. If I was going, so was he.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The next day, Gabriel got a message that Pamela wanted to see me. I’d refused to visit her until she told me what she knew about omens. Now she was ready and, despite the bad timing, I had to go before she changed her mind.

We sat in the visiting room, which was almost a jail cell itself, so small and empty even our lowered voices echoed. Then the door opened, and a guard escorted my birth mother in.

I’d been told I look like her. While I didn’t see it, I could logically break down the component parts. My hair color came from Todd. Hers is dark, laced with gray. She’s only forty-five, but I now realized she looked older than he did, as if prison had taken more of a toll on her. Old pictures showed we shared a body type—tall and slender. She’d put on weight since and her looks had faded. When she saw me, though, her face lit up, and sparked memories of me looking up at her and thinking she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and how I wanted to grow up to look just like her.

Then she saw Gabriel, and that glow evaporated.

“I told you I wanted to see my daughter alone.”

“He knows about the hounds,” I said. “About the Huntsmen, the omens, everything I was asking you about.”

From the look on her face, you’d have thought I’d promised Gabriel my eternal soul. Or slept with him. For Pamela, either would be equally horrifying.

I met her gaze with a hard look. “I told you I needed help. You refused. Gabriel didn’t.”

“Of course he didn’t. He’d do whatever it takes to get into your bank account. You can’t trust him, Olivia.” She stared at Gabriel for two long seconds before saying, “You aren’t even going to dispute that, are you?”

“Whether I’ve earned Olivia’s trust is for her to say. I know I’ve lost it more than once. I’ll freely admit that. As should you.”

“You can’t even feign respect, can you, Gabriel?”

“Respect, like trust, is earned. Also reciprocal.”

She turned to me. “Why do you tolerate him?”