She comes to me with soft eyes. “I get it, son. But if we move too fast without strategizing, one of us is going to get hurt.” She looks around the room—at Tiana, Kiara, Samara—then back at me. “Let one of you get hurt. Don’t piss me off. I’ll turn into Anora, I promise you.”
Samara scrunches her whole face up and frowns at our mother.
Mara slips out from under my arm and carries her bowl into the kitchen, setting it in the sink.
“Aaron’s got a point about Eric,” Kade says. “Him having access to dark magic isn’t a good thing. The longer we let him sit with it, the more damage he can do.”
“I can find him,” I say.
Tiana steps forward. “How? We’ve tried locator spells. They don’t work.”
I hold my hand up and let my magic come, blue-gold sparking off my fingertips.
“Something is different about my magic. I’ve known this for a long time.” I watch the light move between my fingers. “It draws magic from any witch or warlock I come in contact with. I can’t even tell when my magic is doing it.”
“What?” My mother takes a step toward me, staring at my hand.
Mara comes back around the sofa and stands beside me, close, her shoulder against my arm. I look down at her, and whatever is on my face makes her tail sway.
I sigh. “It’s probably better to show you than tell.”
Tiana grins. “I’m curious. But that also explains how you were able to take my magic and use it to seal the Witching Glen again.” She tips her head. “Which is, in fact, holding up pretty well.”
I look at Mara and steal a kiss from her. She doesn’t deny me, and when her tail comes up and embraces me, the tassel brushing over my cheek and then settling against my chest, I almost want to fall apart right there in my mother’s living room.
Kade rolls her eyes. “Oh, please.” She waves a hand at the two of us. “Well? Are you gonna give us a demonstration of this power or what? I’ve got to check on the Glen. You know. My hourly checks.”
I look to my sisters. Kiara and Samara are grinning, leaned in, eager to see what my magic can do.
I look at my hand, silently hoping my magic doesn’t make a fool out of me.
31
Mara
Aaron leads us out of the cabin and down the porch steps into the grass, and the rest of the Blackwoods come down after him. Jacob is already out here, standing in the open with Kane, Levi, Gabriel, and Micah ranged at his back, and the whole pack turns to watch us come down. I catch Seth’s scent before I find him, tucked in close behind Jacob and peeking out around his father’s arm, curious. I settle in at the edge of it all beside Kade.
Aaron walks into the middle of them and lifts his hand, and the light pours off his fingers in a ribbon of blue and gold. My lion presses up hard against the inside of me to watch it. He turns it over once, easy and unbothered, like he’s the only one out here who isn’t bracing for something.
“I don’t know when it happens,” he explains. “That’s the part I can’t give you. My magic pulls from any witch or warlock I touch, and I never feel it leave them.” He closes his hand and the light winks out. “But I always know when I’ve got it. And I always know where it came from.”
Angie steps off the porch with her arms folded over her apron. “How long have you known?” Her voice has gone flat and careful. “And why didn’t you say anything?”
Aaron shrugs one shoulder. “Daddy issues.”
Angie rolls her eyes.
“Don’t play with me.” She jabs a finger at him.
He grins, and then it fades into something steadier. “Ma. You’re a master of conjuring. You’ve studied the old spells. Your magic remembers things the rest of us have to read off a page.” He turns his palm up toward her. “Cast one. The oldest one you’ve got.”
Angie’s gaze cuts around the ring, to her daughters, to Jacob, to me. Then she sighs and lifts her hand.
Angie closes her eyes, and the chant rolls up out of her low and even, the words round and ancient, a tongue I’ve never once heard spoken.
Anwe na’thari. Vos Blackwood, vos vael. Anwe na’thari, ko’re.
Her fingers curl and beckon as she speaks, and where they move the air thickens. Marks bleed up out of the nothing, gold lines folding and locking one over the next like a door being built. My lion draws back, and my ears go flat.
