Dana sighed.  “That might leave us with no other option but to use Nicky, but I’m a tad concerned about that.”

“Concerned how?”  I looked at her, confused.  I’d used my somni powers on a lot of people by now and gotten very good at knowing exactly how much magic I needed to get done what we needed – but never more than absolutely necessary.  Was Dana doubting my control or my reach?

“Not about you,” she rushed to explain, apparently sensing my dismay, “about her.  Look, we think the unicorn came from Riven’s dad, but we don’t know yet.  I did find one thing interesting.  Gretchen’s great-great grandmother died fairly young in a car accident.  I know, I know,” she held up a hand before our confused expressions could turn into words, “not that strange unless you think about trying to look for a supernatural who’s trying to disappear before people notice they don’t age.  Maybe it is just a coincidence – people do die from car accidents all the time – but if we’re looking for a potential unicorn, that’s the only one in her family line I’ve found that could be a possibility.  No autopsy or anything, near as I can tell she was buried pretty much immediately, which is textbook for supernaturals faking their deaths.”

“And also not that unusual for the time,” Bonnie pointed out.  “But…okay, yeah, a potential.  Unlikely, but still there.  Why does that mean anything for Nicky, though?”

“Because if Gretchen does have unicorn blood in her, there’s a good chance Nicky’s powers may not work permanently.  As in, she’ll eventually remember whatever she says during the time he hypnotizes her.”  Dana looked at me pointedly.

“Right.”  I felt dismayed and concerned.  We were so used to having my powers to fall back on, that it was easy to forget there were times they wouldn’t work.  “Because creatures who can survive almost anything – dragons, demons, unicorns, phoenix – they tend to have some natural immunity to any sort of mind control.  Eventually their brains will try to fix any potential memory blocks and things like that.”

Rhys caught my worry and gave me a warm smile which told me he had all the faith in me that I couldn’t muster up myself at the moment.  “So say this great-great grandmother is a unicorn, would that even be enough blood to make Gretchen overwrite your magic?  Your magic’s pretty strong, Henry says it’s stronger than his, and that’s really weak blood.  Not enough for her to even have better healing than most humans.”

“You know what?”  Dana looked up, a fire in her eyes.  “You’re right.  There’s no way Riven would be a unicorn hybrid from something that far back, and Gretchen’s medical records are all normal – she broke her collarbone as a teenager and it healed normally, everything that I can see says there’s not even the smallest amount of unicorn there.  So I’m probably just reading too much into a random car accident of an actual human.”

Probably, but…I was still concerned and couldn’t help but hope that my magic would be the last resort possible.  If there was even a tiny chance that she could undo my magic and remember that we’d questioned her about Riven’s dad?  Not only might that come down on us, because she didn’t seem to be the type of person who would just let that go, she’d then realize that we were specifically looking for Riven’s dad and that might make her think that he was involved.  Which appeared to be the last thing Riven or Violet wanted.

“So let’s assume she’s full human,” Bonnie stated, “but just in case – even if it’s a small chance – let’s keep Nicky’s magic as our last option.  Besides, there’s another concern to me with using Nicky’s magic – given her career and how careful she appears to be, there’s a chance her house has security cameras.  Jackson’s not going to travel over here to hack into them, so we’ll just appear on them, and if Nicky has to hypnotize her, well, she might see us on the cameras and not remember and that would be a problem.  The safest thing is to try to not use his magic at all, but we have to if there’s no other option.”

I was thankful she agreed with me.  “But what can we do to convince her otherwise?  She’s not just going to tell us.”

Bonnie considered for a bit, a thoughtful expression on her face.  “I’m assuming we can’t narrow down which potential person was at one of these parties and could be Riven’s dad?”

Lola shook her head.  “No, I mean – you’re talking heirs and heiresses, real estate moguls, big politicians, all those people.  They don’t exactly print off guest lists and hand them out.  We can get an idea of some of the guests based on pictures or statements in the newspaper, but it’s only a partial picture at best.  I found her picture several times with the same young women, but only over a period of about two years, a little less.”

“We can probably focus on those around the time she stopped going to the parties,” Dana pointed out.

“Still, we’re not going to find a list of attendees.”  Lola shrugged.

“But we have some.”  Bonnie still looked thoughtful, but I could almost see an idea start to form in her head.  “So here’s what we do.  We tell Violet the truth – we can’t find anyone Gretchen was dating around that time, because the only people she talks to regularly are her female friends, and there’s no official records that suggest who Riven’s father is.  We don’t tell Violet about our suspicions on Gretchen’s criminal activities because we don’t have proof yet.  But we see if Violet will let us go ahead and talk to her.  Then we tell Gretchen we’re with the government, investigating an incident from back then that we think she was a witness to.  It’ll be important for her to realize we’re not investigating anything close to what she was involved in and that we’re not looking at her at all.  We tell her we’re talking to her because we know she attended a party where we think the person we’re looking for was,” she tapped one of the newspaper pictures, “based on this.  Then see if we can draw it out of her.”

Dana’s brows furrowed.  “Okay, two problems with that.  One, there’s not a lot of crimes we would be investigating that go back 25 years.  We need to have a really good cover story.  Two, we already decided she won’t want to reveal his name.”

It clicked in my head what Bonnie was trying to do.  “No, not directly, but…if he is a mark where something went wrong and she ended up having to raise a kid alone, without a payout, as a result?  She’d probably resent him.  She might implicate him if it’s bad enough as a sort of revenge.”

“Yes, thank you, exactly.”  Bonnie motioned to me.  “And as far as your first point, sure, that’s valid, but we’ll just come up with a really good cover story.”

“I have one,” Rhys rumbled.  “There was a terrorist attack about 25 years ago somewhat near one of these parties.  A restaurant, a chain owned by someone who may have even been at those parties – super rich people, as I recall.  Several people died.  I remember it because it was all over the news for a while and I was following along because Drew kept talking about it – he was trying to figure out who it could be.  But no one was ever caught.”

We all glanced at each other.

“Terrorism with deaths, that would do it,” Bonnie murmured.  “We just invent someone who claims they have information about back then, after a fallout with their friend maybe, and now suddenly we’re investigating a cold case and hoping Gretchen here might be able to help us out.  Seems plausible.  Even for someone presumably as wary as her, she could confirm this was a real thing that happened and our investigation into high society people would be perfectly reasonable, because the owner might have been involved or someone targeting him.  Let’s go with targeting him, that seems more likely to draw out other names, which is what we want.  And we can even say we’re approaching her because she’s not high society and most of the high society people won’t let us talk to her, but we know she was at some of those parties based on the paper.”

“We’ll still need an incentive to get her to cooperate,” Dana pointed out.  “She won’t do so out of the goodness of her heart.”

Lola made a face.  “I mean, I hate to say it, but money?  She seems like the kind of person who’d do a lot for money.  We say there’s a reward for information, offer to reimburse her at a kind of large amount for ‘taking her away from her work’ just to talk to us, that ought to be enough, right?  I kind of hate to give her a penny, but to get the information we need….”

“We have to,” Bonnie sighed.  “You’re right, appealing to her better side won’t work.  We need to appeal to her greed.”

“Um,” Rhys hesitated, “and then what?  We’re not just going to get the information and walk away and ignore her, right?”

“No.”  Bonnie sounded positive.  “We’re going to keep looking into her and confirm our theory.  We need to have rock-solid evidence before we tell Violet what we suspect about Gretchen, but once we do – we need to leave it in her hands.  I know, it’s somewhat distasteful if she decides to just ignore it, but this is her family we’re talking about.  This woman seems pretty bad, and I doubt Violet won’t want to do something about it, but this is a time we need to leave that decision in her hands.  Or Riven’s, whosever call it is here.  Point is, it’s not our call to make.”

We could all agree with that.  We didn’t have to follow the rules specifically, and this was one of those times we might have to just let something go even if we didn’t entirely want to.  It needed to be up to someone else to ultimately decide how to handle Gretchen.

“Let’s call it a night for today,” Bonnie suggested briskly.  “We’ve done a lot, figured out a lot, and we need a break.  Tomorrow, Lola and I can start to come up with an interrogation plan.”

I glanced at my watch, surprised at how late it is.  “Oh, shoot – Rhys, we need to get to the school!”

He looked as guilty as I felt as we ran out shouting goodbyes over our shoulders, but at least none of the girls seemed annoyed by our sudden exit.  In fact, Lola was laughing as she yelled after me to say hi to her favorite nephew.

If I hadn’t been in such a hurry, I’d have pointed out that Sammy was her only nephew, but she got off with just an eyeroll instead.

When Rhys and I had decided to adopt, I had one main goal in mind.  I wanted to find a kid that was a male witch, a hybrid, a disliked type of supernatural – someone who would normally face discrimination like what Dana, Lola, and I had dealt with.  Then I wanted to make sure that kid never experienced the same thing, at least not when it came to their family.

Rhys, as it turned out, had similar goals.  He just wanted to give a kid unconditional love and support that he hadn’t ever gotten, no matter what they were or how smart or mentally challenged or perfectly normal or whatever they might be.

So when the adoption agency had found us a baby male witch who’d been surrendered, we’d both been over the moon about it.  Our little male witch would grow up with loving parents, a supportive extended family, and even a supportive coven around him.  Now that Sammy was seven, we were talking about adopting a second child, but right now we just had our little Sammy who could make us both light up with his shy little smile.

When we reached the school, Rhys waited in the car at the curb while I hopped out and ran inside.  I didn’t even get to the door of his classroom when Sammy came rushing out, nearly crashing into my legs.

“Daddy, Daddy!  Look at what I drew!”

I took the piece of paper from him.  “That’s so pretty!  Look at all the colors!  What is it for?”

He took my hand and started skipping along next to me as we went out to the car.  “They said to draw our families, so there’s you and Pappi with me, and then there’s Dana, and Lola, and Bonnie, and Drew!”  He pointed them each out to me as he said their names.

I felt an immense amount of happiness over this and had to pause to give him a squeeze and a kiss on top of his head – despite his protests – but let him show the picture to Rhys on his own.  Like me, Rhys lit up over the drawing, but he had to pay attention to driving us back home while Sammy started chattering on about the rest of his day.

Sammy was happy and well-loved and he knew it.  As far as I was concerned, that was the main thing we wanted for our son.  We might never be able to fully prevent others’ discrimination, but we could teach him to be confident anyway because he was perfect just as he was.

When we got home, I worked on preparing dinner while Rhys helped Sammy with his homework, then we played with him for a while before it was his bedtime and us adults decided to snuggle on the couch for a while after our son was in bed.

“I’ve been thinking,” Rhys murmured.  “About the kid Violet’s son is dating – Riven.  Everything we can tell so far about his mom is bad, and Violet even mentioned some abuse and neglect.  I can’t imagine a kid growing up like that.”

I had honestly forgotten to think much about that, focused as we were on trying to locate his father.  “Yeah,” I agreed slowly.  “I imagine it was pretty bad.  But he should be better now, if he has Violet’s family on his side, right?”

“That’s true.”  Rhys relaxed a little.  “He’s got one of the best families now.”

I hadn’t actually talked much to Violet’s family over the years – we occasionally talked to her husband or her eldest son, but it was pretty rare – but I didn’t need to in order to know that Rhys was right.  Despite whatever Riven had been through with his mom, Violet’s family would make sure he was safe and well-loved now.

Yet another example to me of how sometimes, the families we find are the best families of all.