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The corner of my mouth quirked up, but my stomach knotted at the same time. “It can’t ruin you,” I said. “A lit spark is a lit spark. It’s not as if the magic can tell who helped you wake it up.”
“But who’s going to want me?” Imogen said, starting to slur again. “Who’s going to want to be my consort if I’ve been messing around with men who aren’t even witching?”
“Anyone who counts won’t care at all,” I said, but that wasn’t the whole truth and I knew it. I remembered the way my ex-fiancé had sneered when he’d caught me with two of my consorts. How my father had talked about them. Most of the witching world looked down on anyone unsparked. If her aunt and uncle caught wind of a dalliance like that, they’d have one more thing to harangue her about. “You wouldn’t have to tell them anyway.”
“No. I guess not. ButI’dknow.”
She fell silent as we pulled past the gate. We parked close to the house.
“Thank you for picking me up,” Imogen said. “I’m sorry again about the trouble. I can get myself to bed—you don’t have to worry, really.”
She headed to the front door, swaying a little but steady enough that I let her go. I closed the truck door and leaned against it, sweeping my hands back into my hair.
Seth came around to my side and propped himself next to me. “Are you okay?”
“Of course,” I said. “It was fine. I told you it would be.”
“I just meant the stuff she was saying— I’m sure she wasn’t trying to criticize you.”
It hadn’t even occurred to me that she might be. “I know,” I said, feeling suddenly twice as tired. “She was just saying what most of the witching world thinks.”
“We don’t need to worry about the rest of the witching world,” Seth said. “We’re fine right here, aren’t we?”
“We are.” But Imogen’s stray comments gnawed at me all the same. The unfairness of it—that I’d had to fight so hard for my consorts, that even after I had, even if we brought the Frankfords down and could live without that threat hanging over us, there would always be more of the same if on a smaller scale. People in my society lived and breathed those prejudices with about as much thought as they gave to the air around them.
I didn’t need the oath to stop me from broadcasting the truth about my consorting. I wouldn’t have thought it was smart to shout it out widely anyway.
Even with witches coming to me for shelter and support, when it came right down to it, I was alone.
I shook off that thought. I knew that wasn’t literally true. Naomi had never acted like she judged me. And I had my consorts. That was enough.
I twined my fingers with Seth’s and walked back to the house with him, wishing I didn’t feel as if somehow the Frankfords had already won in the ways that mattered most.
Chapter Nine
Jin
Iwasn’t sure I was ever going to feel totally comfortable in Rose’s manor house. The place felt too much like the historic buildings I’d wandered around in when I’d traveled across Europe, tagging along on my dad’s tours, and nothing at all like the places I’d actually lived in. But adding my own touch in the narrow mural I was painting along the top of the walls got me partway there. The pungent smell of the paint fumes and the streaks of bright color against the reserved beige and ivory brought a little ofmeinto the space.
Rose’s cousin Naomi was working on the other side of the room, imbuing the glyphs with protective magic. Rose had handled the bedrooms herself, and she would have kept going if Naomi hadn’t insisted she take a break.
“One last way I can pitch in before I head back to New York,” she’d said. She was leaving this afternoon.
Now, as I dabbed a last bit of paint to the final corner, she stepped back from the wall and sighed. “We don’t need this kind of protection back on the Levesque property, but I’ve got to say, it looks so gorgeous I’m tempted to hire you anyway.”
“Hey,” I said. “The next time we’re out that way, let me know and I’ll bring the paints. It probably couldn’t hurt to have some extra security, right?”
“I suppose not.” She paused, a shadow crossing her expression. “Maybe we’re not all that safe. Rose said we shouldn’t need to worry… but she didn’t think you all would have to be taking precautions like this after whatever she agreed to either, did she?”
“After the way Frankford’s guy was poking around, and hearing that the witch from one of the other families had heard something that sounded threatening, she doesn’t want to take any chances.” I rinsed my brush and carried my set-up carefully down the tall step-ladder. “No one’s made any kind of attack since we’ve been back. And it’s been almost a month now.”
“But it feels better having as much security as possible in place, doesn’t it?” Naomi said.
I didn’t like to think of my life that way—like a cage we were building around ourselves to keep the bad guys out, but also in some ways holding us in. But after the battles we’d had to fight just making it back here alive, I couldn’t deny we needed it.
“It does,” I said. “If you want, I could make some portable pieces, ones you could take back on the plane and hang in whichever rooms you’d want them the most.”
Naomi flashed me a grateful smile. “Thanks. That’s really lovely of you to offer. I don’t want to distract you from the work you’re doing here, though. You’re the ones really under fire. And I don’t know how much we can trust my Aunt Irene. She’ll be poking around after I get back home—you can be sure of that. If she’s passing information on to the Frankfords or whoever, trying to stop Rose so the rest of the family doesn’t get implicated…” She grimaced and shook her head.
