Daughter, Daughter

The library was considerably busy for a Friday afternoon, full of students rushing to finish their work before the weekend. Normally, the louder than usual background noise of turning pages and not-so-quiet whispers would have irritated her for invading her usually peaceful sanctuary, but today, considering the conversation that needed to be had, she was grateful that the busy atmosphere would provide cover.

She found Alec at his work desk, surrounded by tall stacks of recently returned books, tapes, and CD cases. He was sorting everything into new, individual stacks, and seeming to be in no particular hurry. Despite his lack of zest for his work, he seemed to be in a better mood than he had been of late. His blue flannel was without wrinkles, worn with the sleeves all the way down to fend off the chill from the air vent, and his face was clean shaven without the same puffiness that had stuck to his features in the days after Maggie's death. He wasn't the same Alec he had been a week ago, but these little changes were promising.

Evaine announced her presence by plopping into the nearest office chair with such force that Alec was startled out of his skin, nearly toppling one of the sorted stacks of books in the process.

"Geeze, kid, you gotta warn an old man," he grumbled, dramatically patting his chest as if he might have a heart attack.

"Yeah, next time I have life-changing news, I'll keep that in mind," she teased, watching with satisfaction as his expression registered the impact of her words.

"Alright, you have my attention. Spill."

"So, last night," she began, forcing herself to slow down instead of blurting it all out at once, giving Alec time to grimace deeper with every word she got out, "Jesse took me to Redwood for a party—"

"He what?"

" —to meet an elven woman—"

"A what?"

"—who took me on a spirit walk—"

"E, no." He tapped his hands in a T to signal for a timeout, his jaw tight as one large vein appeared over his left eye. "Ignoring the fact that I warned you to stay away from this guy, you let a vampire take you to a secondary location? To meet an elf, whose people are no friend of humans, by the way, and you let them take you on a spirit walk? Possibly the most dangerous thing you could do with a complete stranger?"

"To a party," she corrected as if that could make it any better for him. "It was a normal thing; a bunch of people from school were there, and they had a band and everything. And the elf was a friend of Jesse's, so she really helped as a favor to him, and she's some kind of expert with this stuff, so the spirit walk was no biggie for her. It was completely safe!"

"Okay...okay..." Alec removed his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose like he was about to get a headache from the onslaught of information that was so far from his comfort zone. "We're going to have a conversation about risking your life with these stupidass decisions when I can talk about it without screaming at you, but needless to say, I am disappointed, Evaine. Reckless, naive, disrespectful to everyone who loves you...all that jazz."

Evaine's excitement to tell him everything fractionally sobered at his words. She had known he wouldn't exactly be thrilled by her continuing to see Jesse after their talk the other day, but she hadn't expected this level of reaction. Then again, she didn't exactly know how deep his aversion to the supernatural world ran, considering who he was and what his job used to be. Just because he wasn't a hunter anymore didn't mean he stopped seeing people like Jesse and Chelle as the enemy...as a them.

"But that isn't what you came to talk to me about," he said with a weary sigh, effectively putting away his feelings for another time. "Did this spirit walk tell you anything? Hopefully something worth risking your life for?"

"Yes," she said, resolving to edit some of the more "juicy" bits, as Tayshia would say.

Moving forward with more caution for his pessimistic attitude, she relayed the story from the beginning. The spirit world and everything she saw, the memories of Aunt Barb and her mother, and that last hint of a vision of her birth mother and everything implied by it. Alec listened with a stony expression, a bitter resentment that eased up in slow increments as his anger became overrun by surprise and revelation.

"Invisibility curse, huh?" he repeated back to her, nodding slowly as he chewed over everything she had just said. "If it was anyone else, anyone but you, I'd say they were just yanking your chain. But after everything you've been through, the way people in this town treat you...it makes sense. But your birth mother? What reason would she have for doing something so vile to her own child?"

"That's the thing," Evaine continued, her face scrunching up over the one part of last night she hadn't been privy to, her memory completely blank after they had stepped through the door that belonged to her bedroom. "Chelle thinks it all ties back to my nightmare, that tree woman I keep seeing. She says the curse is probably to keep me hidden from her, or vice versa. She said I'd have to find my birth mother to know for sure...but the last real thing she told me about it was that the creature called herself Demibor. Have you ever heard of anything like that?"

"Demibor...Demibor...it doesn't ring a bell," he said, thoughtfully rubbing at his jaw where he would usually be growing a stubbly beard, probably missing the feel of it. "Not to discount the fact that this elf woman could have definitely been lying to you, but if this creature really exists then the Jameson Archives would be the best source to consult. I'll call ahead and see if I can get someone on it. If you can find out anything about your birth mom before we fly out for the funeral, they've got resources to look for her, too."

"Good, awesome," Evaine agreed with a nod. This was what she had come to Alec for, the comfort and security of someone who always seemed to know what to do, even if the way ahead wasn't exactly clear.

"In the meantime," he continued to say, reaching for the key ring at his belt, flipping through keys like they were file folders, "I don't want you going to sleep without protection until we've figured this out. We in the business treat dream walking the same as a psychic attack, and best thing for that is—aha!"

From the mess of keys, he managed to single out a short chain which securely held a small, painted rock. No bigger than a quarter, and smooth like a skipping stone, the surface of one side had been unskillfully painted in a series of blue, white, and black rings. At first glance, it looked like a childish craft, much like the ugly little birdhouse Evaine had made for him as a kid—only hanging around for the sentiment. But a closer examination of the rings revealed the rough image of an eye.

"Is that...an evil eye?" she asked, squinting at it critically. "Did you make that yourself?"

"Never claimed to be an artist, but yes," he answered, unclipping the chain from his key ring so the rock could drop freely onto his waiting palm. He reached out to hand the rock over to her. "Doesn't have to be pretty as long as the intention is clear, and I've had this one blessed three different times, just in case. It's not the same as magic, but it'll help close that door in your dreams, so to speak."

Evaine nodded slowly as he spoke, running her fingers over the polished surface of the stone in her hands, wondering how such a simple thing could possibly have any power, let alone be able to protect her from something in her mind. Maybe it was just a placebo effect, meant to make her feel safe enough to lower the possibility of having another nightmare, or maybe it really did have some kind of mystical property beyond her own understanding. Either way, she pocketed the stone and Alec nodded his satisfaction before he resumed sorting through his stacks of books.

Evaine reached out for the nearest stack to help out, even though she famously hated doing work in the library when she could have been reading instead. She hadn't planned to stay longer than it took to tell Alec about the spirit walk, but Friday nights were usually hangout nights with mom, and the sooner she left the library, the sooner she had to have the talk.

"Have you thought about what you're going to say to your mom?" Alec asked as he worked, eyeing her like he knew exactly what she was doing.

"That's all I've been thinking about since last night, but I still have no idea what to say," Evaine admitted. "Like, I know it shouldn't be that big of a deal, it's a normal thing to ask about where I came from, but what if she realizes something's up and I accidentally spill the truth? What if she finds out I've been lying to her for a whole week and she hates me forever? What if...what if she thinks I'm being ungrateful, or that I think she's not enough for me as a mom?"

"Why would your mom think something so mean about you?" Alec asked, and Evaine was so surprised to hear it phrased that way that it almost shocked the worry right out of her. Those thoughts were pretty mean, and it was unfair to put them on her mother without even giving her a chance. To her blank expression, Alec could only laugh and shake his head. "Look, if there's one thing I know about Mary Dawson, it's that she loves her daughter more than anything in the whole world. There's nothing you could say that can shake that bond, not when you talk to her with the love and respect I know you're capable of. I know it's hard, and this is some new territory for you, but you've got a long road ahead of you to bring her in on the truth. This is the easy part."

He was right, as always, Evaine thought with just a hint of annoyance. In the perspective of all the things she would have to tell her mother, from coming clean about all her little lies to explaining the impossible situation she'd found herself in, asking about her birth mother should be no sweat.

"I know, I know. I'm just...scared."

"Sure you are, but you're dealing with a whole new world of scary, and it's time to be brave, little lady." He reached out to slide away the stack of books Evaine had been sifting through, effectively cutting her off from her excuse to procrastinate. "So, here's what you're going to do: you're gonna stop wasting daylight and get yourself home before dark. You're going to talk to your mom, and hopefully get something we can use to find this person to lift the curse. You'll sleep with the evil eye under your pillow tonight, and then the next night, and by this time next week we'll be on a flight to Montana. Can you do that? Just keep it together until then?"

Hearing the steps laid out like a clear-cut roadmap helped her to nod with confidence, feeling more secure in what lay ahead of her. She was still nervous as hell to talk to her mom, her stomach in knots over the unknown, but when Alec talked to her like she was a perfectly capable adult who could handle anything, she suddenly had the courage to push through it.

Evaine left the library soon after, her time cut short by the fall sunset which was coming faster and faster every day. While she didn't really believe that there was danger for her in the dark anymore, she had promised Alec she would play it safe. Far be it for her to argue that she was kind of dating the most dangerous thing in town.

As she arrived home, she could feel her stomach bottom out at the sight of her mom's car in the driveway. She knew it was selfish and a little cowardly to hold onto the hope that her mom wouldn't be there, that she could blamelessly put it off for another day, but now was not the time to try to bury her head in the sand. Not when her life and safety were being called into question.

She walked through the front door and found her mother sitting on the living room couch, curled up under a throw blanket with a couple bags of fast food on the coffee table. She had her blonde hair pulled up into an oversized scrunchie, and she'd already ditched her work clothes for her fleece pajama set. There was a movie playing on the TV, something romantic and up-beat, and when she saw Evaine walk in, she smiled.

"Hey, sweetie. I got you some nuggets and fries; you hungry?" She sat up and reached for the paper bag that had been carefully folded closed to trap the heat inside.

Evaine walked further into the living room and sat on the couch beside her, not bothering to take off her shoes or drop off her bag just yet. Her heart was suddenly a squirrel in her throat, scrambling for rhythm, making it hard to breathe, hard to think. She didn't know how much of it she could really blame on the curse, affecting her instincts to try to deter her from this topic which had been so craftily denied her until now. How much of it might just be her own fear, terrified of breaching this line of safety that had always existed in their relationship?

"Mom..." she said, and the little waver in her voice, the smallness of it, was enough to make her mother sit up straight with alarm.

"What's wrong?" she asked, reaching out to brush the curls out of Evaine's face, feeling her cheeks with the back of her hand. "You're so pale, are you feeling sick?"

"No," she said, forcing herself to breathe in a full lung of air so she could get the next words out. Time to be brave. "Mom, I...I need to know about my birth mother."

"Oh, baby, is that all?" she asked with a relieved laugh, scooting across the couch to reach for her. Evaine slumped over into her arms and just let the anxious tears fall freely, knowing her mom wouldn't mind that she got her shirt all wet. "It's okay, it's only natural to be curious, that's not a bad thing. Of course you want to know where you came from, where you get your hair and your eyes...you probably have so many questions."

She wasn't wrong, but there was only one question that she needed answered to understand the mystery of her own life, to understand why a mother would want to curse her own child. A surge of anger at that thought overcame her anxieties, and she pushed herself upright to face her mother once more, face stained with tears and brow furrowed with a heated resolve.

"I do have questions, but more than anything...I think I'm mad at her," Evaine said quietly, the tears falling for a wholly different reason, now. "I just have to know why, what was the reason, and how she could just walk away without even caring to know what would become of me."

"Hey, you listen to me, now," her mother said sternly, but not without care. "No one simply walked away from you; her situation was complicated and the decision to adopt was not an easy one for her. And besides having to lose one mom, you were chosen by another; I wanted you to be my family more than anything in this world, and that is all that matters, you hear me?"

Evaine's anger toward that faceless woman in the magic memory fizzled in the face of her mother's overwhelming love and logic. It had been so hard to see past her own feelings of being victimized that she almost forgot that there were two other women involved, each with their own feelings and issues over the event of her birth.

While she wasn't quite ready to let go of all her emotion, she did back down enough to drop her eyes with shame and nod her agreement. "I'm sorry, mom. It's just been on my mind a lot lately, and I guess I don't really know how to feel about it, yet. That's why I want to know more about her, so I can just...know."

"My sweet girl," her mom remarked, smiling with equal sadness and pride in her eyes. She took up Evaine's hand and gave her fingers a comforting squeeze. "If you're sure about this, we'll go on ahead and talk about her. Just give me a little time to pull the adoption papers out of storage and gather my thoughts. It was such a long time ago, and I want to get it all right. Does that sound good?"

Evaine nodded, wiping her face clean of her tears. At last, she kicked off her shoes and dropped her bag before curling up on the couch with her mom. She told her all about her day at school, about her new friends, about how excited she was to make plans with them and learn about their lives and interests. Her mother held her close the whole time, and they were both reassured that nothing had changed between them.