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“Me too.” Gabriel lifted his beer bottle toward me, and we clinked them together in an unspoken toast. For the first time in I didn’t know how long, I felt like I was fine exactly where and as I was.
I hung out in the apartment for a while longer as I finished my beer, falling into a conversation with Gabriel about the quirky potential buyers who’d inquired about Rose’s cars and a couple of oddball clients whose wiring I’d worked on lately. When I headed back down after, my whole body nearly floated, as if a huge weight I hadn’t even known I’d been carrying had disintegrated.
I emerged onto the driveway and turned toward the row of garage stalls, planning to give repairing the Buick another shot. I should be able to keep control now. It’d been a simple matter of—
A crackling heat shot through my left arm so abruptly I didn’t have a chance to brace myself. It smacked me with that familiar urge to smash, to destroy.
My breath hitched, and my arm jerked to the side of its own accord. Before I could catch myself, a bolt of crimson light sliced from my palm and shattered into one of the lights along the drive.
Shards of glass tinkled onto the asphalt. My hand stung, and I wrenched it to my abdomen as if I could take back the damage I’d done that easily. The searing spread all across my skin.
Ducking into the shelter of one of the empty stalls, I peeled back my shirt sleeve. For several seconds, I could only stare. The scar’s silver lines had stretched all across my forearm, wrapping around my wrist and slashing through my normal skin as far as the crook of my elbow. The glow that seeped from the mark pulsed when I bent the joint.
The release I’d found during my conversation with Gabriel fled with a sudden chill. Talking to him, getting a grip on my emotions, hadn’t fixed everything after all. The mark’s power had never been able to override my intentions like that before.
It was getting stronger, even if I was too. It was digging into me, in ways I had to admit I didn’t totally understand.
What if that blast of vicious magic had hit something important? What if it’d hit Rose or one of the guys?
The thought of hurting one of them brought an ache into my gut. My fingers curled into my palm. My body balked against the idea, but I knew I couldn’t justify keeping this to myself any longer.
Based on the darkness in the manor’s upstairs windows, Rose had already gone to bed. The thought of waking her with more trouble knotted me up even more. It’d only been a small slip—I wouldn’t bring the house down overnight. Tomorrow morning, as soon as I had a good chance, I’d bring this to her and see what we could make of it together.
Chapter Twelve
Rose
Just before I reached the dining room, my mouth already watering at the sweet doughy smell of this morning’s waffles, my phone’s ringtone sounded in my pocket. I restrained a sigh and checked the display. It was an Assembly number.
I still wasn’t at ease with witching society’s governing body after a whole lot of them had tried to imprison and in some cases even kill my consorts and me not that long ago. My gut twisted.
But the Assembly’s leadershadrecognized our relationship and made things as right as they could in the end, and they weren’t likely to be calling me if it wasn’t important. With a longing glance toward the dining-room doorway, I veered into the neighboring music room instead.
“Hello?” I said, keeping my voice firm and steady. At only twenty-six, I was one of the youngest heads of a witching household out there—possibly the absolute youngest among the more prominent families—and I didn’t want to give the Assembly’s people any additional excuse to see me as incapable.
“Lady Hallowell,” said an equally steady if somewhat resigned voice I recognized at once. It wasn’t just any Assembly officer calling. I was hearing from Eleanor Northcott, one of the presidential pair that ruled over the entire Assembly. Technically the most powerful witch in the country, considering she had magic and her husband simply stoked her spark.
I pulled my posture straighter as if she could see me across the phone line. “Lady Northcott. What can I help you with today?”
“This is more to inform you than to request anything,” Northcott said. “I thought it’d be best if you heard this news and all its particulars directly from me. Based on cooperation in custody and confirmation of no lingering unearthly powers, the Assembly has deemed that your father may leave our direct supervision.”
“Oh.” The announcement hit me harder than I’d expected. I couldn’t summon a more articulate response than that one syllable.
I’d known they weren’t going to keep Dad cooped up in a cell needing every aspect of his life cared for in perpetuity, but still…
Northcott went on with a hint of sympathy in her tone. “We have been given to understand that you have relinquished any claim on the Hallowell family’s Portland residential property so that it may go to his use when necessary. He will continue to exist under house arrest there, enforced by spell, with highly restricted avenues of communication and only leaving the building with Assembly escort. You can rest assured that we will offer no possible opportunity for him to resume his illicit activities or cause you and your consorts any further harm.”
I believed that. Without the power the demons had lent him, there was nothing my father could do to combat the magic the Assembly would use to keep him in check anyway. Even if he somehow slipped past their wards, I could easily fend him off even with my shattered spark. All the same, knowing he’d have a little more freedom than before left my stomach unsettled.
“Thank you for letting me know, and for your care in monitoring him,” I said, because that was the right thing to say from a political perspective. I couldn’t ask anything more of them. I didn’t even know what I would have wanted to ask. “I assume he’ll be prevented from contacting this estate or any of us unless I give express permission.”
“That is correct. The approved contacts will be limited to essentials like food delivery and business associates we have thoroughly vetted.”
He did still need to be able to conduct some kind of business, considering I’d taken control of the Hallowell bank holdings. I’d left his most recent earnings in a new account I’d set up separately, but with his tastes, those funds wouldn’t last terribly long.
“That sounds acceptable,” I said.
“Along that line…” Northcott cleared her throat and continued in an apologetic tone. “He requested that certain physical records of his business dealings be shipped to Portland for his use. We would of course look them over first. If it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition for you to find them in his office at your current residence…?”
