“Ricky covered all the contingencies,” I said as I finished. “Eyewitness accounts. Medical proof.” I lifted my elbow. “And a teeny, tiny scar that I never knew I had, which rules out even the crazy ‘twin sister’ explanation. Someone—Cwn Annwn or Tylwyth Teg—told my parents that I would be cured if I did what they said. A ritual or a bargain. Magical intervention. Now here I am, walking around, good as new, while my parents have spent my life in prison.”

Another mile passed. He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel, took off his shades, and gave me a sidelong look, not making direct eye contact. “How are you doing? With that? The possibility?”

“Trying very hard not to think about the implications. Right now, my focus is on proving it. On finding out who did this. Who healed me . . . and destroyed my family.”

—

There was little question of whom I needed to speak to in Cainsville. The person I was most angry with . . . who also happened to be the one most likely to give me a straight answer.

Gabriel fetched Patrick from the diner so I wouldn’t have to face the elders.

I met Gabriel at the corner of Rowan and Main, and he told me Patrick would speak to us at his place.

“Do you know where he lives?” I asked.

“He provided the address.” Gabriel waved for us to cross the road.

“But you didn’t know before that?”

His brows rose above his shades. “Why would I?”

Why indeed.

As I expected, Patrick’s house was neither large nor ostentatious. While he had a flair for the dramatic, it wasn’t in his best interests to call attention to himself. The other elders affected the personae of senior citizens to take advantage of ageism—we pay less attention to the elderly and lose the ability to judge their true age. In choosing to stay young, Patrick lost that advantage. So he wasn’t going to own the biggest house on the block.

It was Gothic Revival. Larger than Rose’s Victorian dollhouse, but not by much. One and a half stories done in a classic design—a rectangular structure, steep roof with cross gables and gingerbread, a porch that stretched along the full front of the house, and an arched window under the front gable. No garden. No porch furniture. No car in the drive, either. I’d seen the Clarks in Chicago, so obviously the fae could leave town, but I got the feeling they preferred not to. Cainsville was both their sanctuary and their source of power.

Patrick had the door open before we reached the porch. He didn’t say a word, just stepped back to let us in. Once we got past the front hall, that quiet simplicity of the house’s exterior vanished. Obviously, Patrick had money, and this was where he spent it.