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Gabriel eased to the side, peering down the passage we’d entered through. “I don’t see anyone else,” he reported, his voice hoarse.
“If anyone were coming, we’d have heard from Naomi,” I said. One way or another. My gaze stayed fixed on Dad, and his on me.
“They’ll come,” he said. “But maybe not for a while, if you got this far.”
“So, you were just hanging out here waiting for us alone?” Damon said.
“I thought if we couldn’t overpower you, maybe talking would get us somewhere.”
“And where exactly is that?” I asked. “What are we going to talk about? How you were planning on shackling me to Derek or whatever other consort you could dig up who’d agree to your contract? What the hell that thing we just saw was? How you know how to talk toit?”
Dad’s jaw worked. “I’m sorry, lamb,” he said.
His old nickname for me hit me like a punch to the gut. He had treated me like a lamb, hadn’t he? One he was going to lead to the metaphorical slaughter.
“You’resorry?” I repeated. “Are you fucking kidding me? Is that supposed to smooth everything over?”
He winced. “No. But it’s true. I wanted to say it, before we got into anything else.”
“Why did you do it?” I said. The question had been gnawing through my mind since the first moment I’d realized he was part of this scheme. “Why would you want that kind of future for me?How could you?”
“It wasn’t that I wanted to,” he said. He stayed where he was, by the wall of the cave, but he spread his hands as if in appeal. “I made a deal, one I didn’t have a lot of choice in, one I didn’t fully understand before I’d ever had a wife or a child… I made a deal. You felt the energy around the being that came through that portal, didn’t you? You know what kind of power it has. You don’t break your word when it comes to something like that.”
I stared at him. “You made a deal with that thing? What does that even have to do with me and the corrupted consorting?”
“What the hellwasthat thing?” Damon broke in.
“Yeah,” I said. “That too.”
“We call them ‘demons’,” Dad said. “It must have seemed like the most appropriate word, when witching kind first summoned them. They’ve never really been clear on what they call themselves.”
A demon. Like something out of an old story. Except the thing that had peeked into the cave—through the “portal”?—had been utterly, horrifically real.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Gabriel folded his arms over his chest. “You came here to talk. Why don’t you start the real explaining?”
“There isn’t much to explain,” Dad said. “We need magic to hold them back. We need magic to make use of them.”
“And so you need to be able to force witches into doing that magic for you?” I demanded.
“It’s complicated.” Dad took a step toward me, and every muscle in my body tensed. “I don’t want this. But we need to think of the larger consequences. You see how big this is now, don’t you? How much could be at stake?”
“You could haveaskedme,” I said. “You could have said you needed my help instead of trying to trick me into having no choice.”
He gave me a pained smile. “No one who’s had the choice has ever been much help. Rose… I tried to forget about it. I tried to pretend that everything could be normal. Everythingwouldhave been normal, most of the time.”
“Except when you were using me the Spark only knows how.”
He ignored that point. “We were counting on you,” he said. “We needed you. The balance of power has already been shifting too much in their favor. The families tied to the portal can’t afford to let you go, Rose. If they did, it could be catastrophic for our entire world. Not just us but all of witching society, and all of their society too.” He nodded to Damon and Gabriel. “Is that what you want?”
“Don’t try to turn this around on me, as if I’m somehow failing you,” I said. My voice shook with a sudden surge of anger. “Don’t youdaremake this my responsibility. I still don’t even know what the hell is going on. You’ve hardly told me anything that really makes sense.”
“I’ve told you all you need to know,” Dad said. “I need you to trust me that I wouldn’t have brought you into this situation if I hadn’t thought it was the only thing that would work, if I hadn’t hoped I’d find a way to get you out of it again. I—”
“Trustyou?” I sputtered, my rage flaring hotter alongside a crackle of my spark. Magic thrummed through my body, ready for my command. The man who’d raised me, who’d taught and comforted me, who’d planned to shackle me to a consort who barely tolerated me for some scheme involving the monsters behind that glowing ring—he wanted to talk abouttrust?
The hot rush of power melted my hesitation. A jolt of resolve shot through me. My hands swiveled through the air in front of me. “I can make you tell us everything. I can drag every detail about this portal and those families—”
