Mark of Damon by Eva Chase Page 0,9

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 then I could 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.

We should be 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—of any men—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 defending us—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.

Jin had been able to participate in a certain amount of protective magic using his artwork... although he’d still needed Rose to add the real power to the magical glyphs he’d incorporated into his paintings and set down around the house. That came down to her too. I wanted something we could turn to ourselves, independently, if worse came to worst again.

My searching turned up nothing, as expected. I closed my eyes, letting myself think back to our past struggles even though my chest was still a little tight from the vivid recollection in the office.

There were witching men among the enforcers—the Assembly’s police and security force. They hadn’t been using demon powers. Right, they’d had those magically-charged batons like the ones Rose had gotten for us when we’d gone up against the demon at the end, as much good as they’d done.

Maybe the batons couldn’t overcome an entire immense monster from another dimension, but they must work well enough against witching people, or there’d be no point to