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“There you go, acting like you’re impervious or something. You want me to spill my guts when none of you will admit anything’s even the slightest bit hard? Fuck you.” I pushed the dessert plate away, shoved back my chair, and vaulted to my feet. Right then, I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing any of their puzzled, well-meaning faces for a moment longer.
“Damon,” Gabriel started, all calm compassion, and he was lucky I didn’t hurl the slice of pie right at him.
“Sort out your own shit before you come asking about mine,” I said. “You can’t ignore the crap you’re still sitting in forever. And hiding it doesn’t make you better than me.”
Before any of them could respond, I spun on my heel and stalked out of the room.
Chapter Four
Kyler
Anyone who thought computer work was all sitting in a chair at a desk had clearly never revamped the IT for an entire two-hundred-employee company. Right now, for example, I was lying on my backunderone of those desks, making sure all the cables lined up correctly so this entire room would be able to use the massive printer beside me.
My nose itched with the sickly sweet scent of the cleaner the janitor must have used to wash the linoleum recently. I switched a blue cable from one port to another since the first one was proving finicky. There, hopefully that would do the trick. With an awkward roll of my shoulders, I reached for the leg of the desk to help pull myself up and out from under it.
My body swung toward the dreary gray underside—and a jolt of sensation hit me. For a second, all I could see was a blur of sunlight and grass hurtling toward me—no, I was hurtling towardit. Pain burned across my back, and an invisible force walloped me down even harder…
My forehead smacked into the desk bottom. The images jerked away with that more immediate pain. I found myself sitting partway up on the floor, my head spinning not just from the impact.
That moment wasn’t real. Not now. I didn’t have to ask where the images had come from. Every thump of my heart and twinge of adrenaline now racing through my veins brought me back to my mad dash from Charles Frankford’s house more than a year ago. It’d been the first time I’d really gone on the front lines in our battle with the witching people who’d wanted to enslave Rose and destroy the rest of us. Also the first time they’d caught and almost killed me. The echo of an enforcer’s restraining knee radiated through my back.
I eased myself the rest of the way out and let myself sit by the desk for a minute before I moved to the chair. The adrenaline eased off, but it left a hollow in the pit of my stomach.
It didn’t matter what had happened back then. We’d won. Rose had found a way through, and I’d helped her get there. We were all safe now. If at times I’d put us in a worse position because I hadn’t been quite ready for everything our enemies would throw at us, there wasn’t any point in dwelling on it.
The remembered sense of helplessness stuck with me as I tapped at the keyboard to test the printer, though. By the time I’d finished with my work, my mouth was dry.
We didn’t know for sure that we wouldn’t face any more enemies from within witching society, did we? Or that some new supernatural beast wouldn’t emerge?
Last night when Damon had started ranting, I’d wondered what had gotten into him. It’d been a little over the top even for him, especially since he’d seemed to mellow out from his usual caustic self in the months after we’d settled in at the manor. But maybe he’d been at least a little right. I was happy—I’d been happy—but maybe only because I’d let myself ignore certain future possibilities.
“How’s it looking?” someone said right behind me, and I nearly jumped out of the chair. The department manager let out an apologetic chuckle at my reaction. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s fine,” I said quickly, pasting on a smile. “The printer appears to be online and fully connected. Why don’t you have a couple of people try printing from other stations, and we’ll confirm it’s good to go.” And thenIcould go—it was almost five.
Seeing the printouts emerge as expected didn’t settle my mind much. My thoughts kept whirling while I made my way downstairs to where Seth would pick me up in his truck, his last class of the day having ended a half hour ago.
Weshouldbe prepared for a fresh attack, just in case. It was common sense. But how could I say that to Rose when I didn’t have the slightest idea what those preparations should look like?
Normally when faced with a problem, I’d have dug right in, scouring the internet for every particle of information to form as comprehensive a picture as I could. Unfortunately, the world wide web couldn’t tell me anything about the witching society that operated in secret alongside us “unsparked” regular people, and the records their Assembly had allowed me access to, the books in Rose’s library, were of limited use at best.
The witching folk simply hadn’t recorded very much practical information about how their powers worked, especially to harm. Most of the stories that went into any detail along that line were more fairy tale than history.
The one thing I did know for sure was that there was no mention of witching men—ofanymen—being able to use magic of their own. The only case I knew of was the powers Rose’s father as well as Frankford and the rest of their faction had borrowed from the demons. If I or any of the other guys wanted a chance of really defending Rose and our home against a magical attack, summoning more monsters obviously wasn’t an option.
In other words, as Damon would probably have put it, we were shit out of luck. It’d come down to Rose defendingus—defending me, like she’d had to outside Frankford’s home back then—all over again. And now the spark of her magic was only a fraction of its former brilliance.
My frustration must have shown on my face. Seth took one look at me when I climbed into the passenger seat beside him and said, “Hard day?”
After growing up by my side, my twin didn’t miss much, as different as we were in interests and attitudes. I grimaced. “Nothing major. Just caught up in my head a little.”
Seth offered one of his rare smiles. “You do spend a lot of time in here.”
I elbowed him. “Hey, there’s something to be said for being the guy in the know.”
Except that it felt awfully uncomfortable when you couldn’t fulfill that role and there wasn’t much else you could contribute.
I put on the most upbeat front I could for the drive home, but the worries that had risen up kept stewing in the back of my mind unceasingly despite our casual chitchat. After a while, I made an excuse to my brother and dug out my phone in case, in the next forty-five minutes I was stuck in this vehicle, I’d somehow turn up a crucial piece of information I’d missed before.
