Free Sleeping Angel (Ravenwood Series) by Mia James

looked into his craggy face. He still seemed the same man – huge head, overlong wavy grey hair, bushy eyebrows and deep laughter lines around his mouth – same old Gramps, but were there deeper bags underneath his eyes perhaps? A slight paling of the skin? Or was that only her nervous imagination?
    ‘But you’re okay, aren’t you Gramps?’ she asked.
    ‘Of course,’ said Thomas banging his chest. ‘Strong as bear.’
    Not “strong as a bear”, noted April with an inner smile – her grandfather had integrated well into British society, but occasionally his mask slipped and his Eastern roots showed through a little.
    ‘It’s just it feels like you’ve lost weight.’
    Thomas laughed. ‘Ah, you females and your obsession with weight. You complain when we’re too fat, complain when we’re too thin; you’re never happy. Your mother? She’s always telling me I eat the wrong things and that I should join a gym. I tell her “I get enough exercise running around after my girls.”’
    April giggled, but then looked at him. ‘I just don’t want anything to happen to you ... I’ve already lost dad.’
    ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Thomas. ‘I fully intend to live until I am one thousand years old. And even then, St Peter will have to bring a team of horses to drag me through the pearly gates.’
    ‘Sorry,’ smiled April. ‘I just get worried.’
    Thomas nodded and patted April’s hand. ‘I understand. Worries can be good, worries can keep you safe. If no one worried about falling off cliffs, the human race might never have made it out of the caves. But you can’t let worries rule your life. You are young, you should be going out into the world, enjoying yourself,’ – he nudged her with his elbow – ‘kissing this boy Gabriel, eh?’
    April felt herself blush. ‘Gramps!’
    ‘Hey, I know you young girls, you think of nothing but boys, boys, boys. Your mother was the same.’
    April twisted her mouth. ‘I don’t think she’s quite grown out of it.’
    Thomas’s smiled faded a little. ‘No, and I don’t condone what your mother has done. It was a bad thing, a very bad thing. One thing I value above all others is family and Silvia?’ he shook his head. ‘She has turned her back on it. But still, I love her, and I think you do too.’
    ‘Of course I do, but that doesn’t mean I want to be around her at the moment.’
    Thomas tipped his head to one side and looked at her shrewdly. ‘But I think you’re worried about her too, yes?’
    April shrugged. ‘I suppose. I mean, she’s up there in Highgate all on her own and there’s still some maniac on the loose. I don’t want anything to happen to her.’
    ‘She will be fine, Prilly. I know you laugh at me for saying that Hamilton women are strong, but it is true. I had a sister, did you know that?’
    April shook her head. Thomas paid constant lip-service to the importance and strength of the family unit, but beyond her mother, father and grandfather, with rare visits from Uncle Luke, April hadn’t got the foggiest idea who any of her extended family were. She had a vague idea that there was a tangled family tree of cousins, half siblings and uncles three times removed back “in the old country”, but no one had ever taken her to a family gathering or talked to her about family history. April had always assumed there was some sort of family feud going on that no one wished to acknowledge. Not that April had any particular desire to go to dull family parties where she’d have to make small talk with strange old ladies and eat weird pickled fish, but even so, she had always been curious about the strange dark portraits hanging in Thomas’s hallway.
    ‘Your mum’s Aunt Katrine – she was your great aunt, I suppose,’ began Thomas, a smile drifting onto his lips as if he was picturing her. ‘God, she was a feisty child, but her mind was always on other things. Once our mother scolded her for something – letting the milk boil