15
Colby had booked two suites, which worked in our favor. It gave us one big table for her to commandeer for her laptop and other essentials and us a place to work in a separate room, away from tiny moth ears.
The guys had a narrow balcony, just enough to step onto, but it overlooked the parking lot entrance. The cabin view had been lovely. This? Not so much. They would pay for the view with exhaust fumes wafting up through their open sliding door. And the noise. Yeah. They could keep it.
“Backup is forty-five minutes out,” Asa reported. “The Kellies advise us to sit tight until they arrive.”
“Works for me.” I stretched. “I’ll see what I can do about food.”
The only place open at this hour was a squat Italian restaurant that smelled like onions. We hadn’t eaten in ten forevers, so I placed a delivery order for three and hoped for the best.
“He could sense the ward.” Clay watched the security footage I’d sent him. “See that? He held up his hand to feel the magic. He must not have much if he had to trace its path like that.”
“There’s witch blood in that family.” I paced the floor in front of the small kitchen. “I chose Arden for the latent power in her. Camber’s family has magic too. That’s probably why they’re friends. Witches crave a coven. Their bonds, as well as those with their families, fulfilled that need. Until I arrived. Young witches gravitate toward powerful mentors. That was why they came to me asking for odd jobs until I took them under my wing. That’s why they satisfy that same drive in me—to belong to a community and better it.”
“That’s white witch logic.” Asa set down his phone after viewing the same link. “Black witches are loners until they require extra hands, blood, or power for spells.”
“Yes and no.” I turned his comment into a teachable moment, since that was my job description. “There are familial groups, multigenerational covens who live together their whole lives. They tend to perform sacrificial magic. On each other. They often sacrifice their own children. Infants, mostly. They get pregnant for the sole purpose of fulfilling a ritual and then spend the next nine months planning it.”
Aside from the obvious, that I was in the habit of throwing the worst of myself at people to force them a step back, I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to share that tidbit. Or watch while he absorbed it as if it might reveal some flaw in his character I could capitalize on. But that wasn’t me. Not anymore.
I was flawed, broken, ruined.
I was cruel, bitter, hopeless.
But I was trying. I was growing. I was learning.
I was closer to embodying that person I saw in my mind when I meditated on who I wanted to be.
Given my own struggles, I wasn’t going to shine light on his or anyone else’s until the glare blinded them to my faults. That was petty and small and wrong. Wrong. A concept that was beginning to take on new dimension for me.
A tentative knock on the door sent Clay sprinting for the food. I couldn’t tell if he was that hungry or that eager to escape the topic, but I wish he hadn’t left me alone to face the conversational fallout with Asa.
“You expect me to curl my lip or spit on you.” He kept his seat. “You know who my father is, what I am.”
“You aren’t your father, and being a daemon doesn’t make you a monster. Your choices determine that.”
“You’re willing to pardon me, but you can’t forgive yourself?”
“I’ve done horrible things,” I said softly. “I was a terrible person.”
“Your choices say otherwise.”
“You can’t use my words against me.” I glowered at him. “That’s not fair.”
“You haven’t sacrificed any babies.” He rose with fluid grace. “You never would have either.”
“You can’t know what I would have done. I was high on black magic. I had no moral compass.”
“The needle might have spun a bit, but you had one. Otherwise, you and I wouldn’t be here now.”
Asa crossed to me, took one of my wrists in each of his hands, and unfolded my arms from where I had cinched them across my stomach. That habit was damning in the wrong company. Any sign of weakness could get you killed in our line of work. I had to shed the tics living among humans had allowed me.
“You don’t know that.” I stood there, shackled by him and not minding it. “I might have enlisted aid from a daemon prince to help me conquer the Earth.” I bounced a shoulder. “If he wasn’t too busy ruling Hael to pen me onto his schedule.”
“I don’t want to rule.” His thumbs caressed my inner wrists. “Though I might not mind being ruled.”
“Eww.” Clay lumbered in, burdened with bags of food. “I don’t want to know Rue’s kinks. Or yours.”