“She was totally hysterical, absolutely devastated. Fortunately, Angelica arrived just in time, because if she’d arrived a second later, she fears that Dallas would have figured out a way to take her own life, her grief was so severe, and her self-loathing was beyond any I’ve ever witnessed. No one could comfort her, not even Angelica. Everyone knew it wasn’t her fault. They knew she hadn’t meant to harm her mother—well, everyone that is except for her father. He could never forgive her…even when Angelica altered Dallas’s memory in order to give her the ability to move on from what she’d done.
“We were all sworn to secrecy because Marion, Nicholas and I arrived in time to witness Dallas’s hysterical reaction and Angelica’s decision to rewrite Dallas’s memories of the events. She didn’t take the call lightly, but she knew there were only so many things a soul could live with, and she determined that unintentionally killing her mother with the gift that Dallas had sworn never to use was that one thing.”
“Does Anya know what really happened?”
“Of course she does. She was with her mother when they rushed to Dallas and Bryony’s aid. And she knew that Angelica made the only possible choice.”
“You do realize that decision, my mother’s decision, is now slowly eating away at Dallas to the detriment of her health?”
“There’s no actually proof to substantiate that, Oliver. I would stop worrying. Your mother would never have done something that was going to hurt her niece.”
“No proof? I have seen the proof with my own eyes, Felix. I have seen those who have been impacted by memory switches. I have seen the witches and warlocks who have gone absolutely nut-ball crackers from it.”
“And no doubt those particular witches and warlocks had been the victims of witch hunters—so ergo they had their minds touched by dark magic, not the white magic that Angelica would have used.”
He grimaced. He had to give it to Finley on that, he was right. Witch hunters rarely used the light side of the craft. In fact, he himself used to dabble in the dark arts and he was quite guilt-ridden from that.
“I’m still not satisfied. Despite everything you’ve said, I sense something off within Dallas, and I’m rarely wrong.”
“Be that as it may, you must proceed with extreme caution. Don’t blow her world to hell unless you have good cause to, Oliver. You can’t just restore her memory of events based on your vanity as a warlock. She’s not your cause. She’s not something you can just swoop in and fix instantly in order to alleviate any of the guilt you carry around for what you’ve done in your past.
“Using her to wash away your sins isn’t the way to go, and I’m sorry to say these things to you, but that’s just the way it is. You can’t change your past. You just need to do whatever you need to do so you don’t end up repeating it.”
Oliver silently considered Finley’s words. He wouldn’t do what he desperately wanted to do when it came to Dallas. He would leave the threads of her false memories in place, but at the first sign that her world was becoming frayed at the seams, he was going to step in and make things right—despite the reworking of her memory being the creation of his own mother, a mother he yearned to know. He couldn’t let this go—he had to do something if the time called for it. He felt certain that if his mother was around and witnessed the way that her beloved niece was acting, she would take the spell off her immediately. He wanted to think she would not want Dallas to continue suffering so.
“I’m going to carry her upstairs and then maybe we should all get some shut-eye. Things are going to get crazy come tomorrow,” he mused.
Finley nodded. “Yes, I’ll use my communicator to get in touch with my brother and make sure he and Marion are really okay. After that I’m going to haul my ass into the guest room bed and sleep the rest of the night away. I’m not sure she has any other rooms opened up…”
“Don’t worry about me. In my line of work I’ve gotten used to being able to sleep almost anywhere.” It was true, he often wondered if he could nod off while standing up if the situation called for it. He gathered her in his arms and activated his magic to keep the afghan