Page 56 of Unbound

I don’t know if I should send or to that. Though according to my middle school patients, emojis are cringe and show our age.

Send both. Be cringe.

I put my phone down and give everyone an awkward smile.

“I’m sorry for the mess that followed me here.”

“Don’t be,” Xavier says seriously. “None of this is your fault.”

“Not directly,” Theo adds with a shrug.

I look at him. “What?”

“It’s true. We didn’t have demon problems until you came into the family. Seven hundred years. Not one fucking demon problem in seven hundred years.”

“But what did you expect?” Mabel asks, narrowing her eyes at him. “You’ve been accepting bribes from the Order for years. The Order hunts demons. You never thought those worlds might cross?”

Antonio turns his head, clearly trying to hide a smile.

“If you wanted to avoid demon problems,” Mabel continues, “maybe you shouldn’t have gotten into bed with an organization that’s dealt with demons since its inception.”

Theo just stares at her. I can tell he desperately wants to argue, but Mabel is making far too much sense. And really, did he and Xavier genuinely believe taking a human incubator from the Order every twenty-five years would never come with consequences?

Mabel lets out a pointed sigh, picks up the remote, and turns on a Disney movie. We all sit there watching the opening credits for a few minutes before Theo finally gets up and disappears.

A while later, Devon and Leo return. Leo sets the laptop on the coffee table while Devon flips through a stack of papers he printed.

“You were right,” Leo tells me. “This wasn’t random.”

I resist the urge to say no shit, Sherlock and let him continue. He turns the laptop toward me. I freeze. There’s no mistake. Blown up on the screen is a section of adoption paperwork. Marcus Henry adopted Eudora Claire Bellamy when she was only a year and a half old.

“I did a little digging into the mother too,” Leo says. “There’s no father listed on Claire’s birth certificate, and Eudora was only sixteen when she had her.”

He gestures toward the papers in Devon’s hands.

“It was a closed adoption. No option for Claire to ever search for her birth parents.”

Devon lays two documents side by side on the coffee table. “Look at the signatures.” He taps the first. “This one seems legitimate.” Then the second. “This one doesn’t.” I lean closer.

One is the birth certificate. The other is part of the closed-adoption paperwork, including the documents surrendering parental rights. The handwriting doesn’t match.

“I’m guessing her parents signed it for her,” I say.

“That’s so sad,” Mabel murmurs, shaking her head.

“I’m still not following something,” Antonio says. “Marcus adopted Claire, but she still ended up in a group home?”

“He surrendered his parental rights when she was thirteen,” Devon says. He places another stack of papers on the table. “I went through court documents, school records, therapist notes, doctors’ notes—everything I could find.” He looks at me.

“Marcus claimed she had serious behavioral problems and that she was becoming unsafe around his other children.” I immediately frown.

“But?”

“But none of the records support that.”

Devon starts sorting through the pages.

“She got decent grades. No juvenile record. Her school attendance was actually pretty good. She was evaluated by multiple therapists and psychiatrists, and there’s no documented mental illness or significant behavioral disturbance.”