face the true threat if they knew, but the words she had spoken to Cole were true: it was hard to prove the existence of the evil creatures to a large, disorganized populace to a satisfactory degree. The world wasn’t ready to understand that the myths actually represented a very real part of the world.
And a part of her.
Cole Granger, the tall, sturdy, striking fellow who had nearly staked her, paced the room. His eyes were more than suspicious. He was thinking that he should have staked her.
Select—very select—Union troops had been called in for the cleanup of the prison fight. And so, now, there were four of them at the boardinghouse, and she sat on a chair in the center of the music room—the music room, rather than the parlor, which faced the street and afforded less privacy—seated very much as any prisoner of war might have been.
She was being questioned.
Cole kept pacing, trying to keep silent, and let Cody Fox take charge. She was attempting to explain to them all that she was Cody’s sister. And it was interesting, of course, because she knew that Cody would certainly have told them all that he’d grown up without a sister, which would have been, in his mind, correct. They didn’t know what she knew, of course, because she was Cody’s younger sister—and she knew everything that their father had told their mother long after Cody had left. Still, she hadn’t thought that it was going to be this difficult to explain.
But none of them had actually managed to sit quiet long enough for a nuanced discussion. She tried to remember the barrage of questions they had last voiced—in the order they had voiced them.
“No. Yes. No. And yes, and yes, I believe,” she said, staring from one man to the next. Brendan Vincent first, older than the other two men and straight as a ramrod—a military man, possibly retired. His eyes showed age and knowledge; the hollow structure of his face betrayed pain even as the mobility of his mouth hinted at a kindness remaining despite the lessons of the world. Then there was Cody Fox. Her brother. He should easily believe her—apparently, the wheaten color of their hair had been their father’s, along with the strange hazel-and-gold hue of their eyes. He had sharp eyes, ever watchful. And shouldn’t he be able to sense their mutually other nature? And Cole Granger. Rock solid, with piercing blue eyes of a shade deep and dark blue, enigmatic. In contrast to the others, his hair was almost jet-black. Each of his limbs seemed muscled and toned, as did the breadth of his chest. He was evidently a physical man, one accustomed to constant movement—the look of a frontiersman, someone who met every challenge. His mouth was grim and one that had apparently forgotten all about trust or kindness. Maybe that wasn’t true. He seemed to trust Cody Fox and Brendan Vincent.
“She’s got a sarcastic mouth on her, that’s for sure,” Cole said.
“Yeah. That could mean some proof that she’s Cody’s sister,” Brendan commented.
Cody’s gaze turned on Brendan, ever so slightly dry and indignant.
Cole Granger was suddenly hunched down in front of her. “Who are you really, and what were you doing there?” he demanded quietly. But even when his words were soft, they felt deep enough to fill any room.
She inhaled deeply, refusing to be intimidated by the man.
“I’m Cody Fox’s sister, Megan Fox. You can ask me a million times, and I will give you the same answer. There is none other to give,” she said, staring back at him.
“I don’t have a sister,” Cody said harshly.
“Well, yes, you do, and it’s me. Oh—and there might be others out there, too. Our father is out there, still, I believe. I know about you, and I’m sorry you know nothing about me. My mother actually looked for you for many years and discovered that you were in New Orleans. But you were gone by the time I managed to get there.”
Cody glanced at his friends, a glance that assured her that he might be starting to believe her.
“Anyone might have researched Cody Fox,” Cole Granger said. He was still directly in front of her, and his proximity was unnerving. The man seemed to have iron in his jaw, and she wasn’t sure that he’d yet blinked since the interrogation began. If she didn’t have a certain inner sense that she’d developed as a child, she might have thought he was one of…whatever she and Cody were.
A unique kind of “half-breed.”
“And you just happened to be at the prison tonight?” Brendan Vincent asked, his words filled with doubt.
“Nothing just happens. I knew Cody was there. And if a Texas sheriff can be found in Washington, D.C., right now, there’s obviously something going on. Of course, absent even those indicators, I knew already. I was sent by the government,” Megan explained.
Brendan Vincent snorted—very rudely—she thought. “We were sent by the government—I know that. And I know that you weren’t.”
She stared at him coldly. “There are two governments in this country right now, sir. I realize that you prefer not to recognize the second, but it does exist.”
She thought that he would pull his gun then and there. He refrained because Cody had lifted a hand. “Brendan, come on, we all know that we don’t take sides in this.”
“She’s taking a side!” Brendan protested.
Cole continued to stare at her.
The whole thing was bizarre. Cole Granger was a Texas sheriff. Her half brother had hailed from New Orleans. From the research she had done, she was pretty sure that Brendan Vincent hailed from Texas himself, though he was clearly U.S. military through and through. But, then again, Lincoln had asked the South’s major asset—General Robert E. Lee—to lead the Union troops. Lee had suffered long and hard while making his decision, but in the end he had thought himself a Virginian above all else. The war was a horrible tangle of loyalties, with half the boys on the bloody fields not sure of exactly what it was that they fought for.
With a pang, she remembered her mother’s words.
The war itself is wrong. Doesn’t matter, we’re all losers in this debacle. Time, talk and the legislature should have taken precedence over the use of arms, and now…well, we have dead boys everywhere.
She’d loved her mother. Loved her so much. Her look at the world around her, and her ability to discover the truth, no matter how many layers of opinion and variation were piled upon it.
“No. I’m not taking a side. Any more than you are,” Megan told Brendan.
“So, then…?”
Megan hesitated again. “All right. I’m from Virginia. I grew up in Richmond.”
“The capital of the Confederacy,” he said, nodding, as if that immediately meant she had fallen in from the skies.
“Brendan,” Cody protested. “I was in New Orleans, and you came after me. And you’re not even on active duty these days.”
Ah! So the man who seemed to think of himself as the Stars and Stripes wasn’t even official.
“Please, I don’t know who is right and who is wrong anymore, really,” Megan said. “And I can’t do a damned thing about the fact that the two sides are just
