Free Revenant by Kat Richardson Page A

happy gold sparks into the Grey mist of the room.
    Quinton asked a question of his own now, his demeanor much more focused and grim than it had been in the yard. “Did Dad introduce them? Say anything about them?”
    “No,” Sam replied. Then she looked at me. “That’s not odd for our father. He never says anything more than he has to, so I assumed the people with him were associates and not concerned with whatever brought him to my home.”
    “Do you see him often? Or was this a bit of a surprise?” I asked.
    “Oh, it wasn’t quite a surprise—I knew he was coming since he’d called and said so. I was almost not home, but he claimed he wantedto bring the kids some birthday presents, since he’d missed so many of those events. I should have told him to ship them. What was a surprise was his calling in the first place. I have done everything I can to stay off his radar. Our father isn’t a nice man and I don’t want my family mixed up in the things he does. I thought I had made that clear to him. This was the one time I had a moment of weakness over the possibility that Dad might have a paternal bone in his body—I’m an idiot to have imagined he’d be less of a son of a bitch after all this time. Now Soraia and the rest of us are paying for my bad judgment.”
    She didn’t sound bitter; it was just a statement. Sam was the most collected, calm woman I’d ever met who wasn’t some sort of gruesome magic user. It was strange, especially when coupled with her painful gait.
    “The leg made me think he’d lost his edge and might be feeling his mortality a bit,” she continued, “wanting to mend some fences now that he was disabled.”
    Quinton rolled his eyes. “Playing it up, was he? Leave it to our father to pull the sympathy card for knee surgery.”
    Samantha frowned and blinked at Quinton, confused. “I’m not sure what you mean. His left leg is missing from the knee down. He had a temporary prosthesis that didn’t fit very well, so his limp was quite pronounced. Worse than mine.”
    Quinton was startled and stared at her, shaking his head. “No. . . . He was fine when I saw him last. The knee surgery was ten months ago and he was a model patient. He needed a cane to steady his stride on that side, but he was otherwise perfect. What happened to his leg?”
    Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. He didn’t offer much of an explanation—just said he’d had an injury in the field. He acted as ifit were nothing and just went on with the rest of what he’d come to say.”
    Quinton couldn’t seem to get a grip on the idea of his father’s missing leg. “You’re sure it was a prosthetic? He wasn’t just limping from some other problem with the knee?”
    Sam rolled her eyes and gave him an exasperated look. “I did actually finish my medical degree, Jay. I know a cheap prosthetic when I see one.”
    “I just don’t get it. . . . It was fine when I saw him last.”
    “When was that?” I asked.
    He bit his lip and frowned at the floor, thinking. “Must be four or five months ago, about the time he was in Turkey. I lost track of him there, but I was able to stay on top of his assistants and follow his trail.”
    “Maybe it was a false trail,” I suggested. “He may have known you—or someone else—was watching him and created another series of events to follow while he did something that redamaged the leg.”
    “It’s possible. . . . I just . . . What did he do?”
    I shrugged and Samantha mirrored me. “You said he’d had surgery on his knee,” Sam started. “Dozens of things can happen to a knee if the patient isn’t careful with it early on. And our father is certainly the sort of man who plunges into things without too much worry about the potential damage.”
    Quinton was disturbed. “I suppose. I’m still a bit thrown by it, though. I have a bad feeling. . . .”
    I’d had a bad feeling about James Purlis for a long time and this was only increasing my alarm with