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Naturally she’d never consider hefting it herself. I debated carrying it just to show her it could be done without paid help but decided that would look too much like a pointed insult. Within a few minutes, I’d gotten one of the staff to deliver it to Evianna’s car outside.
She set the case I’d packed on the front passenger seat and took one last glance at Hallowell Manor. This time, the slant of her mouth looked more unsettled than haughty.
“Well,” she said. “I suppose we’re completely out of each other’s hair now. It’s not as if we were everreallyfamily.”
And now I was even more glad of that fact. I bit back the urge to say, “Thank all that is lit and warm for that!”
I gave her a little wave as she drove off of the estate, and then I went back inside with a renewed restlessness gripping me. Without really thinking about it, I found myself walking into my childhood bedroom.
I hadn’t slept in that airy room with its view over the back garden since I was thirteen—when Evianna, come to think of it, had ousted me shortly before we’d made the move to Portland. After I’d taken over the manor as the official head of the Hallowell family, I’d claimed the master bedroom as mine. With the guys’ help, I’d made over that suite to my tastes, to suit the fact that I had five partners and lovers to make room for—and to erase the reminders of the room’s most recent former inhabitants.
This bedroom hadn’t gotten the same treatment. The manor held so many rooms I hadn’t needed to give it over to any of the guys either.
My feet paced the length of the room of their own accord. I trailed my gaze over the bookshelves, the bed, the desk.
Where would that crib had stood when I’d first slept in this room? What had those early years been like, when my mother had still been with me, protecting me as well as she could? From the letter she’d sent to her family back in New York state, I knew she’d caught on to Dad’s more ominous plans. Maybe she’d have managed to flee with me if she’d had a little more time. I had every reason to believe that he and his co-conspirators had been as responsible for her illness as for my stepmother’s death.
That thought provoked a memory so vivid my mind reeled. The click of the lock, the whisper of footsteps across the floor. Celestine sneaking to my bed in the room I’d slept in when we’d first returned here, grasping my shoulder to haul me off to the ceremony she and my father intended to chain me to my supposed fiancé. The jolt of my pulse as I sprang up and confronted her with a rush of magic I’d only just come into, the thump of her body hitting the floor, the horror crossing her face when she realized what that power meant—
I wrenched myself out of the vision of the past, needing so much real force that I stumbled against the side of the bed. My heart was racing, my skin abruptly clammy. I rubbed my hands over my arms.
It’d happened again. I hadn’t told Meredith this part, hadn’t wanted to make it more real by saying it out loud, but in recent days, there’d been more than just a general sense of wrongness dogging me. Painful moments from my life here sprang at me here and there, consuming me so fully that I came out of them shaken, as if they’d only just happened.
For the first several months I’d lived here after my father’s imprisonment and the battle with the demons he and his faction had summoned, I’d been fine. Why were the worst times from back then assaulting me so determinedly now?
I hadn’t found the answer yet. All I knew was I wanted those moments gone. By the Spark, what I wouldn’t give to tumble even farther back to the idyllic childhood days when I’d roamed the estate with the guys as if it were perfectly natural, without any more worry than getting back to the house in time to wash up for dinner.
If there was a way to bring that happiness here again, I’d jump on it in an instant.
Chapter Three
Damon
The huge table in Rose’s dining room felt under-used even with all six of us sitting around it—clustered by the head. You’d have thought we were missing at least half of our expected company. None of the other guys gave any sign that it struck them as strange, of course. They dug into the dinner and discussed their days with their usual good humor.
How much lonelier had this space been when Rose and her dad had been the only Hallowells living here?
The thought of Mr. Hallowell sent a jab through my gut. Even a few days after our phone conversation, his parting words amplified the other gnawing sensations inside me. I couldn’t totally shake the impression that his last remark had been a curse he was laying as much as a hope he was expressing.
I rubbed the back of my hand against my temple as if that would work the uneasy thoughts out of my head. No such luck. On my other arm, under the table, the demon’s mark itched at me with a faint burning sensation. I’d have been willing to bet my entire—if not huge—bank account that it was glowing again.
“The building we’re working on for our internship project is just getting to the final stages of construction,” Seth was saying. He glanced across the table at me. “They’re still taking bids on the electrical. You could mention it to Mr. Lewis. It’s a big job, but if he brought on a few assistants, the two of you could manage it.”
Was he ever going to let me forget that he’d been the one to set me up with the apprenticeship in the first place, shifting me away from my life as a small-time criminal? The flare of irritation leapt straight to my tongue, best behavior be damned. “I think we’ve got plenty of jobs to keep us busy already. You don’t need to heap more on.”
Seth shrugged. His expression turned a bit more serious, but he wasn’t the type to snap even under pressure. Solid and reliable—good old Seth. “I figured it was worth mentioning,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if I was more irritated at him for taking it so well or myself for being so sour about the whole thing. Rose was shooting me a curious and probably concerned glance from the head of the table.
Then Gabriel, naturally, swept in with a smooth redirection. “I got a call just before dinner. We might have a buyer for the Bentley.”
Rose had decided to finally sell off some of the Hallowell automobile collection, her dad’s pride and joy, seeing as they had four cars just here on the estate and she only really used one. Somehow that remark rankled me too. It wasn’t as if a Bentley was my style, but I could never in a million years have bought even a used one on my own.
“Rich fucks,” I muttered.
Jin tapped his foot against mine and grinned. “We’re all rich fucks too now, thanks to our consort. Enjoy it.”
“Some of us like to know we can still pay our own way when we need to,” I retorted.
