Page 72 of Mortdale

“We believe she’s been suspecting it for a while.” He sighed, rubbing a hand over his tired, sleepless eyes. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“Agnes was married to a vampire. She was given to the pact many years back, a year after Sybil, who you spoke to that day. They were close friends, Agnes and her.”

“What?”

He nodded. “She left Mortdale pregnant after her husband died.”

I shook my head. “She doesn’t have a child. Only a maiden can become a Holy Mother.”

He leaned forward, resting a hand on the mattress, just against my hip, and caging me there against him. “I don’t know about your coven rules, but she did have that child. A girl. She’d be twenty-seven this year. We tracked the midwife and got all the information, but we lost track when Agnes became Holy Mother after succeeding Milota.”

To say he’d left me shocked was an understatement. I shook my head, hoping to rearrange the dangling thoughts. “Why are you interested in this imaginary child?”

“Because by the Law of Epiron, a vampire must reside in Mortdale. Unless—”

My eyes widened. “Unless that baby was also a witch.”

“Precisely.”

Drat.

Was this why she had sent me here? Because she would be forced to hand that child back? Because she was terrified that her daughter might follow the same fate as the other red maidens? Was that why she’d been insistent on me killing whoever was harming them?

My attention returned to reality when he said, “You’ll turn twenty-seven this year.”

I nearly choked on my laughter. “Absolutely not. I’m half human, as the orphanage headmistress loved to remind me every single day of my half-bred status. I was born with a reverse half-moon mark. And I don’t even like blood like that.”

His hand resting against my hip grasped the fabric of my nightgown, tangling his fingers in it. “You don’t have a mark.”

“What?”

“That day when you fainted on me. I noticed you didn't have a witch’s mark.”

We were so close he could probably see the lies in my eyelashes. “My skin condition makes it a little hard to see. But it’s there,” I said, ignoring how his eyes dropped between us. “Your sister’s and Piper’s marks are upside down.” I thought about it for a while. “It would be easy to tell who the other vampire-witch is. I’ve seen most of the girls in the coven naked. No one has that kind of mark.”

“Maybe Agnes didn’t introduce her into the coven.”

“Or maybe she’s dead.”

“She’s not. I could smell her in your covenstead. Like I can smell you all over my things when you break in places you shouldn’t be.”

“Maybe it’s rhinitis.”

His tongue brushed the length of his upper lip as his gaze dropped to my mouth. “Maybe.”

“Is that why you were hanging inside the covenstead that day? To suss out her location?”

His eyes rose to mine again. “No.”

There was no space away to shrink from his attention. And I didn’t even want to. I wanted to bask in it. “Why would it be so bad to reveal to the world that there are witches born amongst your kind?”

“Because segregation was chosen to maintain peace in Epiron. A separation of species. If there’s something threatening with unity, then that fragile veil of peace would shatter.”

“It’s unfair. And not to mention dangerous.”

“I know,” he said, reaching to pick a single strand of hair that had stuck to my lip.