If she could do that, ruin five people’s livelihoods and one person’s entire life over their children playing in the forest with me… What else would she be willing to do just to get her way when it came tomylife?
A rush of hopelessness swept through me. I clenched my jaw againstit.
“Rose?” Meredith said softly. “Is thisabout—”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.” The less I told her, the less chance Celestine would see our long-time manager as some kind of threattoo.
I pushed forward, past the house, through the back gardens, into the forest that sprawled across most of our tens of thousands of acres. My legs moved of their own accord, drawn by some internal pull that I couldn’texplain.
Twigs crackled under my feet. Bushes rasped against my jeans. I kept going, and going, at a relentless pace, until a clot of trees and vines filled the space in front ofme.
I stopped with a gut-punch of recognition. Then I stepped closer, easing aside the swaths of hanging vines. Beneath them were stones—old stones, but still solid. The stones of twin towers that stood with an arch between them, like some sort of ancientgate.
Stones carved with witchingglyphs.
Gabriel had found this place just a week or two before I’d been torn away from the estate. He hadn’t understood the towers’ magic, but I thought he’d felt their power all the same. Even the birds quieted their song near this structure. The wind dipped as if bowing inrespect.
I closed my eyes, letting the quiet stillness settle over me. My body began to move into the forms it knew by heart. The calling of power, the casting of power. The gestures that should have channeled the energy of my spark through my limbs and out to do mybidding.
Except I didn’t have the light of my spark yet. I only had my ordinary self and a piercing ache of hope. So it was the hope I grasped and pushed out into the universe with every curve of my arm, every shift of myfeet.
Somewhere out there was a young man. A young man with dark red hair and bright blue eyes and an air of assurance I’d never seen anyone or anything disturb. Maybe after all this time he’d held onto the token I’d given him. Maybe someday I could trace my way back to him, now that we’d losthim.
Let him hear this. Let him feel this call, somehow, through that little gift that had meant so much to me. By the spark that wasn’t yet mine, please, lethim.
Chapter Seven
Damon
Intimidating the people around this town was so easy it was almost painful. Seriously. Get a few guys together wearing slightly scruffy-looking clothes, hang out on a street corner just shooting the breeze, send one glance at a straight-laced jerk passing by, and he’s scurrying over to the other side of the street in two secondsflat.
So easy it was almost painful, yeah, but I did get a kick out of it at the sametime.
“Pathetic, right?” Brad said with a scoffing sound. He rubbed the side of his partly shaved head. His leather jacket clinked with the various chains he had hanging off of it. He’d gotten the jacket after eyeballing mine. I was pretty sure he’d added the chains as some kind of a statement that he was even tougher. As if what you wore had anything to do withthat.
“They wouldn’t have a clue what to do if we tried anythingreallyscary,” George said, scratching the scruffy beard on his knobby chin. “Walk through their neighborhoods swinging some pipes around, they’d all be pissing theirpants.”
“That’d be quite the sight.” I grinned, imaginingit.
Brad stuffed his hands into his pockets and sighed. “I need some more smokes. When’s the next shipment coming by, Damon? I could really use a cash top-up.”
“Silvio said soon,” I said. “But it’s supposed to be a big one. They’ll need us for a few days to get all the sorting done. How much do you need untilthen?”
He shrugged. “I guess I’ve got some KD at home to eat. Mostly I just want thesmokes.”
“I think we can manage that.” I tipped my head and sauntered down the street, glancing through the windows of the parked cars as I went. The town was small and quiet enough that hardly anyone except the occasional tourists locked their doors. I wasn’t going to shake up the status quo by outright taking off with one—that would just be dumb. But a quick dip into someone’s change stash was no bigdeal.
There. “Cover me,” I said. Brad and George shuffled closer to obscure the view from the laundromat we were outside. I tugged the door open, dug into the mess of quarters and dollar bills some sap had left in the cup holder, and shoved the door shut again. As we hustled off, I handed the cash to Brad. “Enjoyyourself.”
“Smooth, man,” George said.Henever bothered trying to one-up me. The awe got on my nerves sometimes,though.
“Soon as we get that next paycheck, I’m swooping in on that Melinda girl,” Brad said. “Just youwait.”
I snorted. Melinda was a clean-cut girl who worked at the dentist’s office. “Like she’s ever going to go for a guy likeyou.”
“One night. You’llsee.”
“Sure. Well, I’ve got a thing. I’ll catch you two bozoslater.”