“How many of those plans had anything to do with your art?” She peered at me sideways. “I’ve been by the gallery, and you haven’t had it open that I’ve seen in at least a week.”
One of the downsides to having set up shop just a few streets away from my parents’ home—it was way too easy for her to keep an eye on my comings and goings if she decided to.
“I’m taking a little time off from the public side,” I said. “I’m stillpainting. I’m still working on my art. I couldn’t not do that.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But have you been pouring your whole heart into it the way you used to? The way your father does with his music?”
No, I hadn’t really sat down and lost myself in my studio the way I used to all the time in the past. But I’d had other things on my mind. Sometimes youhadto let other parts of your life take priority. Did she really not understand that?
“I haven’t set it aside,” I said. “I just have other things in my life that are important too.”
She shook her head. “It worries me, Jin, that’s all. To see you losing your artistic passion like that, all for agirl.”
“I haven’t lost anything,” I said. My hand tightened around my glass. I set it down without taking another drink. “Mom, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. You’re making up some huge problem where there isn’t one.”
She tapped her finger against the table. “It’s my job as your mother, no matter how old you are, to watch out for you. And I don’t think all the attention you’re giving to Rose is good for you. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Okay,” I said, standing up. “I heard you. I don’t agree. And I really don’t want to keep listening to you talk like this. I’m happy, Mom. That should be what matters to you.”
She just stared back at me, unwavering.
I sighed. “I’ll talk to you again soon. Hopefully you’ll be in a better mood then.”
Even though I was pissed off, I still brought my dishes back into the kitchen. Some expectations of behavior were hard to shake.
Outside, I hesitated, not sure where I wanted to go now. Maybe I didn’t agree with Mom, but I might have been spending more time at the Hallowell estate than was a good idea in general, as far as murmurs around town went. I could open up the gallery for the rest of the day. Why not? It would make for a good change of pace.
I set off for the two-story building that housed my independent art gallery, composed partly of my works and partly of those by local artists I enjoyed, and my second-floor apartment. An acrid smell tickled my nose. I frowned, glancing up, and noticed smoke streaking across the sky.
What the hell was that from? I grabbed my phone, ready to dial the emergency department, as I hustled over. My eyes started to water with the thickening smell. The streak of smoke turned into a billow.
I rounded the corner and stopped dead. An icy knife of panic cut through me despite the heat wafting through the air.
Flames were leaping from two buildings side by side at the other end of the block, their faces already charred. And one of those buildings was my gallery. My home.
Chapter Ten
Rose
“It can’t be a coincidence,” I said. My stomach churned as I looked at the photographs Ky was flipping through on his laptop. We’d all gathered around the dining room table to go over his findings. He’d hacked into the various networks to nab the fire and police departments’ records on the fire at Jin’s gallery—the gallery that now wasn’t much more than a blackened shell. “There hasn’t been a fire that bad in town in the entire time I’ve lived here. Now there’s a huge one, and it just happens to hit Jin’s home and workplace? Right after the Frankfords were making those veiled threats?”
“Those bastards,” Damon muttered, his hands balled at his sides.
“They shouldn’t be able to do anything like that, should they?” Jin said. His usual playful energy was subdued, his expression drawn. Seeing how the loss of all that work had shaken him made me even more queasy. “They swore in the oath not to do or order anything that would hurt us—including our happiness. It’s not like it takes much thinking to realize that a person’s happiness is partly tied to their home and the things they’ve made.”
He’d lost all the paintings he’d been keeping in his studio and displaying in his gallery. Dozens of pieces of art, some of which I’d never even gotten the chance to see. My jaw clenched.
“What do the reports say?” Seth asked Kyler. “How did the fire start? Are the police thinking arson?”
“They always consider that possibility when an insured property burns,” Kyler said. “It looks like they determined it was a freak accident. No one could find any cause of the fire, but it started with a couple of wires inside the wall of the neighboring building. The guy who owns that place just had the wiring inspected six months ago to make sure it was all up to code.”
Anger started to burn through my nausea. “That’s it,” I said. “That’s how they got around the oath. They sent a witch to work some magic on the building next door, and the oath didn’t stop them because technically it wasn’t directly harming us. The witch who did it probably didn’t have any clue what the real target was. Those cheating assholes!”
“We can’t know for sure that’s what happened,” Gabriel said in a low voice. “Itcouldhave been a freak accident. These things happen.”
Damon spun on him. “Oh, come on. You can’t really believe that these fuckers didn’t set this whole thing up.”
“I’ve got to say, I agree with Damon on this one,” Ky said slowly. “I also found…” He clicked through to a different set of photographs of a silver sedan. “I checked the traffic cams at the intersection where people usually come off the highway heading east. This car came into town about an hour before the fire started and headed back just a half hour later. I ran the plates. It’s registered to a woman on Frankford’s employee list.”