Mark of Damon by Eva Chase Page 0,1
still there.
A shiver of inspiration shot through me from beneath the more caustic feelings the thought of him stirred up. Since he was sadly still alive… maybe he could bring himself to be useful. If I could tackle the problem that’d been gnawing at me without ever having to disturb Rose’s hard-won peace, it’d be worth having to interact with that asshole for a few minutes.
“Send the girl to dig through it all herself,” Meredith suggested in her no-nonsense way.
Rose grimaced. “She never liked me much, and she likes the family even less since her mother died. I don’t want her having access to all our things—who knows what else she might take or damage. It’ll be a quick call—not worth a face-to-face visit. I’ll speak to the Assembly to arrange it.”
Since they didn’t exactly let him hang onto his phone in that prison cell where he was rotting.
“Let me handle talking to him,” I said, a little too abruptly.
The other guys blinked at me. Rose looked startled too. I clarified as smoothly as I could, holding Rose’s gaze. “You shouldn’t have to put yourself through a conversation with him over something like this. It’s a simple enough question. When you get the Assembly to approve it, I’ll handle the call and write down the answer if he gives one.”
Jin’s eyebrows had arched beneath the fine fringe of his hair, the black currently streaked with purple. Our resident artist found something to be amused by in just about any situation. “Are you sure you’re the best person for that job?” he asked in a teasing tone.
All right, so I wasn’t exactly known for my even temper. I might have let out that temper in not-entirely-legal ways here and there in the past. But that was in the past. I’d been on my best behavior the past year, for Rose. For the future I didn’t want to ruin.
I glowered at Jin. “I think I can manage to ask a few straightforward questions without blowing up. And it’s not as if I can do much to the guy over the phone anyway.”
“I’m sure Damon is up to it,” Gabriel said. “Give him credit for volunteering.” He smiled at me, but the warm glint in his bright blue eyes rubbed me the wrong way too. It wasn’t as if I needed his approval. We were all supposed to be on equal footing now.
During the past catastrophe, I’d thought I’d come to peace with where we all stood with Rose and how our lives had played out since the childhood days when I could have said without hesitation that these guys were my best friends. But I could only give them the benefit of the doubt if it went both ways. Lately they’d all been getting on my nerves with comments that suggested they still didn’t see me as a real equal after all.
I held back my annoyance—best behavior—and simply tipped my head. “Thank you. You can get the Assembly people to go for it, can’t you, Rose?”
Even though none of her consorts had been part of the witching world, the Assembly had granted us honorary status and officially recognized our consort bonds with her after everything we’d done to help fend off the demons. That supposed respect had better extend at least to making telephone calls.
Rose hesitated just for a second—I wanted to think because of worries about how her dad would behave, not about my self-control—and then a small, soft smile returned to her lips. “All right. He definitely can’t get any personal leverage over you the way he’d probably try to manipulate me. I’ll tell the Assembly you’ll be handling the conversation and give them your number.”
She stepped into the living room to make the call—calm murmurs broken here and there by a slightly sharper tone that told me the Assembly representative was being less than fully cooperative—and returned tearing a page from a notepad she’d pulled from her purse. She held out the paper to me.
“Here are the things Evianna told me she’s looking to collect that I’m not sure where to find. The Assembly officer said you’ll get the call in about an hour.”
As I stuffed the list into my jeans pocket, the twins came in, already grinning in anticipation. Technically identical, the two didn’t share much more than their imposing height and the same tawny hair and gray-green eyes. Kyler the eager brainiac was skinny as a stick, his face clean-shaven and his messy waves nearly reaching the