“The what?” I felt very small looking up at the two of them. It didn’t help that they were ignoring me entirely, and that I was at least two steps behind in the conversation. “What’s the mandate?”
“Or she’s a spy?” Stellan said. “Are the Saxons using American teenagers as spies now?”
“A spy?” I looked around. “Is this a hidden camera show?”
“Of course she’s not a spy.” Jack’s mouth tightened in irritation. “She’s got nothing to do with the mandate. I was sent to find her because she’s related to the Saxons.”
I let out a breath. At least that made sense. “Okay, you do have the wrong person,” I said. “I don’t have any family.”
Jack looked down. The grim set of his jaw looked like it belonged to an entirely different person than the guy who saved my grade in history class, but his eyes softened. “Yes, Avery, you do.”
“I think I’d know—” But I stopped, the tiny locket-sized picture in my memory box springing into my mind. I felt my face go slack.
Jack lowered his voice. “In class you told me you didn’t have any family. Maybe your mother doesn’t, but your father did.”
I had to wet my lips to get words out. “Are you kidding?”
“No,” he said quietly.
My vision darkened at the edges, and I went light-headed. I must have looked like it, too, because Jack put a hand on my elbow.
I blinked up at him. Could this be real? My father was looking for me? After sixteen years, my father actually cared?
“Where is he?” I said, whipping around. “Is he here? Who are you?” Was Jack some kind of private investigator?
Stellan looked up from studying his fingernails and heaved a sigh. “As fascinating as this is, I don’t care. My orders are to find the girl and take her, so I’m going to go ahead and do that.” He took my arm in a death grip.
“What? No!” I tried to pull my arm back.
Jack lunged for me, and Stellan reached under his jacket. A flash of silver glinted in the low light. I did a double take.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. Stellan had pulled out a knife the size of a small sword. I shrank away, but he didn’t let go.
“I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this.” I could hear the smile in his words.
“No you didn’t,” Jack said through clenched teeth.
“You’re right. So much more entertaining this way.”
The microphone screeched. “And now, the Lakehaven High prom king!”
I couldn’t stop staring at the knife. Jack stepped in front of us. “I’m not letting you take her.”
“Oh, right—you’ll want to stay for the prom king announcement. Might have a chance at it this year.” Stellan started to drag me away, knife to my side.
“Quit it!” I finally snapped out of it and fought against his hand, careful to avoid the knife. “Let me go!”
A few curious sets of eyes turned toward us, and I stopped struggling. As much as I wanted to get away from Stellan, I didn’t want to make a scene. I needed to hear what Jack had to say about my father.
“Hey.” I pulled on Stellan’s jacket. If Jack was an investigator, what was Stellan? He cocked his head down at me, but didn’t stop steering me around the edge of the dance floor, past the DJ booth. “If you don’t let me go, I will scream and you will get arrested.” I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt.
A laughing, jostling group of guys walked by and peered curiously at us. With a sigh, Stellan hid the knife.
The second he did, I ripped my arm away and ran to Jack, who had been following us. He tucked me behind his back and surveyed the exits—the front doors, the emergency exit out the back. “The side doors would be the easiest way to get out,” I said, panting. “But are you absolutely sure you have the right person? My father’s name is Alexander Mason.”
Jack’s shoulders tensed.
“What?” I pleaded. “Stop being so cryptic. Just tell me what’s going on.”
“Avery, I’m—” He glanced at me over his shoulder and eyed Stellan, who typed on his phone as a teacher made her rounds past our corner of the gym. Jack let out a breath and turned around. “I’m so sorry. I know very little about your father. I don’t work for him. I work for his family. He’s—it appears he passed away, some time ago. His family didn’t know you existed until recently. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”
Passed away. On the stage, the new prom court stood waving, and their faces blurred into one artificially lit grin.
My father was dead. I felt something shift within me, a key turned one click farther in a lock, a compass spun in a new direction. I wasn’t a girl whose father had left. I was a girl whose father was dead.
“You’re sure?” I whispered.
“That’s what I was told.”
It shouldn’t hurt like he was a real person. He’d been dead to us for a long time. But still, my throat burned with the promise of tears. I hadn’t realized how much I still harbored that secret wish of meeting him, and now I never would.
But if Jack was telling the truth, he had family.
Stellan glared daggers at the white-haired teacher who was now chatting about the weather with the very tall and intimidating football coach, not ten feet away from us. I’d be safe for a couple of minutes. I sat down at an abandoned table littered with glitter and streamers and empty punch cups and played with a star-shaped piece of gold confetti. “Do they want to meet my mom, too?”
“I was told to approach you specifically.” Jack pulled out the chair next to me. “Is it possible your mother wouldn’t want you to know about them?”
Yes. It was more than possible.
I’d never made a secret of wishing we had somebody, and she’d never made it a secret that she was bitter about my dad. It must have been easier for her to tell me he had no family than to say I couldn’t meet them. Anger bubbled up hot inside me. I half wanted to call her right now and yell at her. Moving for her job was one thing. Hiding a whole family was another.
“You said distant family?” I asked. Stellan was still watching us. I turned my back to him, facing Jack. “Like, how distant? Siblings? Cousins?”
Jack held up his hands helplessly. “There are quite a few family members. I’m not sure which ones are related to you.”