“We knew nothing of Liv,” Patrick said. “Not until the Larsens were arrested. Then we realized that the girl was our Mallt-y-Dos. Which is why the elders facilitated her adoption. Hiding her until she was old enough to bring home to Cainsville.”

“The leak,” I said. “My identity. The Tylwyth Teg leaked—”

“Certainly not.” Patrick looked affronted. He might hold himself separate from the others, but he was still one of them. “We would not orchestrate such a debacle. It was careless and thoughtless, and could as easily have driven you to Peru as to Cainsville. I’m sure the elders would point fingers at the Cwn Annwn, but if pressed, they would admit it was too clumsy and dangerous for them as well. I don’t doubt that whoever leaked it wasn’t entirely human, but it was not one of us. Back to your condition, though. We had no knowledge of that. You were a healthy, happy child when we found you, and we had no reason to think you’d ever been otherwise. If it’s true, though, that this condition cannot be reversed by medical means, then you have almost certainly answered what was one of our biggest questions: why your parents did it.”

“You knew they were guilty.”

“We knew only what we read in the papers. We thought perhaps the mingling of blood, and the coming together of Tylwyth Teg and Cwn Annwn, produced . . . an unsatisfactory result.”

Turned my parents into killers, he meant. That their darker fae natures had played off each other and stripped away their humanity.

“This is a more satisfactory answer.” He caught my look and quickly added, without much conviction, “Though not as satisfactory as discovering they were innocent.”

“It was not the Tylwyth Teg who offered the Larsens this deal, then,” Gabriel said. “You are certain of that.”

“I am. We don’t have the power to reverse the condition, no more than we can alleviate the fevers better than modern medicine. At one time, that was different. Our knowledge of plants and herbal medicines helped. But these days, you can pick up something better on the shelf of any drugstore.”

Gabriel seemed ready to pursue it, but I shook my head at him. What I’d seen in the visions confirmed they could not fix the children their blood had damaged.

“Who has healing powers?” I asked. “Or what does? Which fae?”

“None.”

When I gave him a hard look, he threw up his hands. “We don’t. What you are looking at is a ritual. Presumably your parents killed in that specific manner for a reason, and that reason is tied to your cure.”

“If you tell me it was a satanic rite . . .”

He made a face. “Nothing so pedestrian. Or ludicrous. Demons are a very human creation. You look for ways to explain evil, and instead of seeing it in yourselves, you offload the responsibility onto monsters. The monstrous exists in the mirror, not in the sulfurous depths of some fantasy world.”

“Or in the fantastical world of fae.”

“It’s not that fantastical, as you can see. We don’t live in another realm. We’re here sharing yours. There’s no such thing as an evil race of fae. No more than there is an evil race of humans. Individuals, yes. But for the rest of us, we are like you—neither wholly good nor wholly bad. We simply don’t feel as compelled to hide the bad.”

“And as fascinating as this philosophical discussion could be, it doesn’t help me solve the problem.”

“True. Another time, then.”

“Or not . . .”

Patrick only smiled. “You should at least humor me, Liv.”

“You wouldn’t respect me if I did.”

“Also true. Back on topic. Fae may not have innate healing abilities or a direct line to the imaginary world of demon sacrifices, but there are . . . powers.”

“Like healing?”

“No, I mean . . .” He made a vague gesture. “Powers. Higher powers, you might say, though I’m not inclined to put it that way.”

“Gods?”

He made the face he had when he’d talked about demons. “That’s why I didn’t put it that way. I wouldn’t call them gods or deities. Just . . . powers.”

“Uh-huh. Are we talking about the Druids again?”

“Not really.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

He sighed. “There are powers. Those powers have greater abilities. It is possible to invoke their favor.”

“Like demons.”

He made a noise in his throat that sounded remarkably like Gabriel’s soft growl of frustration. “This is the problem with talking to boinne-fala. You have your boxes and everything has to fit into them or you’ll damn well cram them in. God, demons, saints, monsters . . . There are powers. They have powers. Those powers can be invoked.”

“By us?”

“No. Only fae. However, we could do so on behalf of a human.”

“How is that different from having the actual power to heal?”

“It’s vastly different,” he said.

“It still comes down to the same thing. Any of you could have made the deal with my parents.”

“I suppose that’s true,” he mused. He caught my darkening look. “But we didn’t. It wasn’t the Tylwyth Teg. At least, not the Tylwyth Teg of Cainsville.”

I heard Gabriel sigh. This was going to be a long conversation.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

We didn’t get anything more from Patrick. Nothing useful, at least. He suggested I begin with the Cwn Annwn. Not that he had any reason to actually suspect them, but it was a place to start. Except, you know, I shouldn’t actually attempt to contact them, because that wouldn’t be wise.