“It had been a month since the theft of the talisman when we met Ivo on a hiking trail in the Chartreuse Mountains, two hours’ drive from here,” Mom says.
“Yvonne!” Dad glowers at her.
She glares back. “If Stella was going to report us to the police, she would’ve done it after she found Darrel. Not only did she not do that, but she asked him to not retaliate against us!”
He sits back, crossing his arms.
“It’s time we began to trust her, darling,” Mom says to him, her voice softer now. “She was too young at sixteen to understand, but she can now. She will.”
He snorts. “You’re dreaming!”
“Maybe, but I’m willing to take a chance.” She blows her nose before addressing me. “We were desperate to recover the Ever Mage talisman. It had been so good to us! We owed it the purchase of my clinic for a fraction of its value, your dad’s ascent to mayorship, Bertrand’s success in business, Lana’s remission from diabetes… Everything!”
Dad says, picking up where Mom left off, “That’s when we bumped into Ivo. We hit it off at once. He was just as crazy about hiking and mountains as we are.”
Mom gives him an encouraging nod.
“When Ivo removed his windbreaker after a climb, we noticed the Mage’s mark on his arm,” Dad continues. “I asked him how he got that tattoo, hoping for the truth. But he just gave us some yarn.”
“What yarn?”
“He told us he loved symbols,” Mom replies. “Apparently, he’d seen that rare design in a book, loved it, and had it tattooed on his forearm.”
“Why couldn’t that be true?” I ask.
Dad arches an eyebrow. “What were the chances? Coincidences like that don’t exist, Stella. It was a sign for us.”
“Either Ivo was knowingly lying,” Mom says, “or he’d been made to forget what he knew, or didn’t know what he knew, and his knowledge had to be retrieved from another plane.”
The dreamscape!
Dad picks up, “We invited him over for dinner. I spiked his drink. Yvonne hypnotized him. Lana and Bertrand came over, and we began a ritual to help him remember. But then…”
He pauses and glances at Mom.
She turns to me. “His heart stopped. He must’ve had a preexisting condition. We performed CPR, but he didn’t wake up from the trance.”
“You gave him an overdose.” I give her a hard look.
Dad protests, “Like your mother said, he must’ve had a heart disease or a rare allergy.”
“Really?” I narrow my eyes. “You were going to let him live, just like you were going to let Darrel live?”
Mom nods vigorously. “The plan was to hypnotize him into telling us about the talisman and into forgetting everything about the ritual. After that we were going to send him on his way. His death had been a tragic accident.”
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t report it to the police,” Dad says.
Because you’d drugged him, and the autopsy would’ve shown it.
We spend a good minute in silence.
“Would you like some tea?” Mom asks.
I can’t help quipping, “Spiked or plain?”
She bristles.
Dad’s mouth twists with censure. “I see that someone has taught you to hate your parents. Was that Gaby or Darrel? Have you been in touch with him?”