Chapter 3

After a brew, Connor took John to Kamluck. I felt my lover's absence like the loss of a limb.

I was alone with my mother now and her judgement was heavy in the air. The silence drew out, and the longer it went on the tenser it felt. We sat at my kitchen table politely sipping our tea. Try as I might, I couldn't think of a single thing to say to her.

When she finally spoke, I was relieved that one of us had broken the uncomfortable silence. ‘Love, I have something to discuss with you.' She stirred some sugar into her cup and my eyebrows rose: she believed that having sugar in tea was uncouth. She only did it when she was stressed, which was rare because she was a lady who lunched; she had chefs, cleaners and drivers so what did she have to be stressed about – except for how successful her charity luncheons were?

Something to discuss with me? My stomach clenched. Here it was: she was about to tell me how disappointed she was about my small house, chaotic job and apparently overly large dog.

I felt Fluffy's weight against my legs, comforting and protective. He'd sensed something was off and was putting himself between us. Shadow had retreated to my bedroom, away from Arabella who was sitting primly on Mum's lap.

I raised my eyebrows in invitation. Go on then, hit me – tell me how wrong my life is. I squared my shoulders; I wasn't going to bite my tongue in response, not this time.

‘It's like this, darling.' She looked down at her tea and took a sip almost as if she were gathering her courage. She took a deep breath. ‘I've wanted to talk to you about this since you became a vampire, but I didn't find the time before you left.' She frowned at me, ‘Of course you didn't clue us into your plans to leave, so that's hardly my fault.'

I clenched my teeth and didn't point out that I had asked for their help to leave and they'd said no. ‘Mum, get to the point. What are you talking about?' How did me becoming a vampire change anything besides my diet and my vulnerability to the sun?

‘Well, Elizabeth, it's like this. Supernats aren't supposed to reveal themselves to the pedestrian world.'

I blinked. Something in the way she'd phrased it made my stomach clench. Suddenly I was sure that she wasn't lecturing me because I'd once blurted out to her that I was a vampire. Pedestrian world: she'd phrased it like she wasn't pedestrian.

‘Mum…'

She raised a hand to stop me. ‘Listen. This is difficult enough as it is.'

I closed my mouth and clenched my jaw, my slow heart hammering as I waited.

She drew herself up stiffly into her normal imperious posture. ‘You see, Elizabeth … I'm a witch, darling.'

I stared at her. All this time she'd been a supernat? My mouth hung open and for once I had nothing to say.

Mum trilled an awkward laugh. ‘An elemental fire witch.' As if to prove it, she summoned a small flame to her fingertip. ‘I always have been. Unlike you, I manifested my powers at a proper age – I was three when I summoned my first flame by accident.'

Gods: even while she was telling me something so important, she couldn't help getting in a dig. My mum might be a witch but she was definitely a total bitch.

‘Nope.' The word flew from my lips and I shook my head like I had when I was a child, hair flying, eyes wide in disbelief.

I'd seen and accepted plenty of things since I'd arrived in Portlock: dead banshee spirits – fine; red-eyed werewolves – I got it; smoky murderous beasts – sure. But my mother a witch? Nope. No. All the no's, because if she was, that could mean my nana was one, too. The thought of her keeping that from me was crippling. Mum always let me down – that was her modus operandi – but Nana?

My mother nodded primly. ‘Deny it all you like, Elizabeth, but I assure you I am a fire witch. See?' She waved her flaming finger at me.

‘That's a tiny flame,' I said inanely. I could throw huge fireballs; maybe I was even more powerful than my mother. Fire came to me easily, and now I realised that I'd inherited that ability from her.

My mum was a fire witch. No matter how many times I repeated it, my brain couldn't accept it. I was in shock.

‘It is tiny, isn't it?' she said smugly. At my less-than-impressed look, she elaborated. ‘Any old idiot can throw a huge fireball but it takes years of study to perfect the control required to produce such a small flame.'

Right: I was any old idiot.

‘That's why there aren't that many fire witches,' she continued sagely. ‘Too many accidentally kill themselves before they learn control.'

Yikes. I added ‘learn control' to my to-do list.

She doused the flame and took another sip of her sweetened tea. I stared at her as my brain started whirring again. The shock faded and gave way to anger. My mum was a witch, and John had told me a witch had arranged for me to be turned; had an enemy of my mother's arranged for me to be killed? Was my vampirism nothing more than a ‘fuck you' to my mum?

I pushed the thought aside for later. I needed to focus on the issue at hand, namely that Mum was a freaking fire witch and she'd never, ever told me about it.

Fluffy must have sensed my distress because he stiffened and growled again, a quiet rumble that I felt against my legs than a sound Mum would hear.

She was taking calm, leisurely sips of tea whilst she shattered the foundations of my entire being. Anger and hurt warred inside me, both wrestling to be the dominant emotion in my broken heart. They writhed like poisonous snakes, slithering through my shocked body. How had she kept something like that from me for my entire life?

Instead of jumping up and slapping her, or running to Connor to cry, I asked, ‘Does Dad know?'

Mum gave a very unladylike snort before she hastily held a tissue to her nose as if that could suppress her uncouth noise. ‘Excuse me,' she murmured, dabbing her nose. She cleared her throat. ‘Of course he knows, Elizabeth. He's a fire witch as well. That's how we met.'

That was too much. Both of them had kept this from me, a joint effort to keep their poor ped daughter ignorant. No wonder I'd always been forbidden to enter my dad's office – no doubt it was full of grimoires and crystals and other witchy things.

I tried to hold it together but the shock forced tears to spill. ‘I bet you loved making a fool of me, didn't you?' I spat then burst into uncontrollable sobs that were not even slightly pretty.

Mum looked shocked for a second then grimaced. ‘Oh dear,' she murmured. ‘This hasn't gone well.' She looked flustered as she put down her tea and popped Arabella on the floor. She came over and rubbed my back awkwardly. ‘We weren't being malicious, darling – we didn't keep it from you to mock you. We couldn't tell you because you weren't supernatural and it's the law.'

‘To you I was your awful ped daughter, a constant source of disappointment,' I sobbed bitterly. ‘At least now I understand why I disappointed you so damned much.'

‘That's not true, Elizabeth! We've always been proud of your various – achievements.' Even as she said it, her tone was dubious as if she couldn't quite remember what they were.

My heart was aching and I felt so raw that every instinct told me to flee from the person who had caused me so much pain. I scrubbed the tears from my face.

‘Elizabeth—' my mother started.

‘Don't,' I snapped, holding up a hand. I wasn't sure what I was going to say next but before I could work it out, the phone rang.

Saved by the bell.