Mark of Damon by Eva Chase Page 0,23

but somehow most of the artwork in his gallery area was still on the walls, from what I’d seen.

He motioned for me to follow him, and we crossed the sidewalk in the dwindling daylight. The sky was just starting to darken, the street lamps coming on with a faint glow. When Jin had asked if anyone could come by to help him pack up, I’d volunteered to swing by after work with a generosity I might be regretting now.

At least the late summer heat was retreating. The long-sleeved shirt I’d put on this morning had been weighing on me all day, but I didn’t dare take it off. The silvery mark of my scar had crept a few inches across my skin out from under the cuff. How the hell else could I hide it? Especially when every now and then it gave off that eerie shimmer.

Small price to pay for what it let me do, right? But I wanted to be sure I had a complete handle on this new power before I tried to explain it to anyone else. I had to be able to reassure Rose that no matter how I’d gotten the mark, I’d mastered it for my own ends.

“This is the part I really needed another set of hands for,” Jin said as I trailed behind him up the stairs to the second floor storage room next to his workspace. “Thanks again for pitching in. By the time I had the dates sorted out, the guy I’ve hired to help out around here couldn’t make it.”

“It’s no problem,” I said. “We’re all family now, right?”

Jin smiled in a way that made me feel guilty about the fact that I’d suppressed a bit of sarcasm in that remark. He led me to some sort of sculpture thing constructed out of paint cans, rope, polished chunks of glass, and what looked like a rusted bicycle frame missing its wheels. The whole piece was wider across than I could stretch my arms.

“Wow,” I said, which seemed like the most appropriate response. Further confirmation that I really didn’t get art. Some of it, anyway. Even I couldn’t deny that the treatment our artist was giving Seth’s gazebo was turning out spectacularly. Rose was going to flip over it.

More than she had for my early apples, no doubt, but hell, how could I have competed? Later, when I had more practice with my newfound magic, I could conjure more. I’d offered her something first—that should be enough.

Jin’s smile had lifted into a full-out grin. “The L.A. gallery asked for this one emphatically. I wasn’t going to say no. Here, can you grab that end? It’s pretty sturdy, so you don’t need to be too delicate with it.”

I managed to find a couple places to grip the sculpture that would let me balance the weight adequately, and Jin hefted the other end. We half walked, half lurched downstairs and out to the van. Then we discovered we had a problem: the damn thing wasn’t going to fit.

Jin peered into the back of the van and then clambered up into the shadowy space to shift around some of the pieces already inside. “There should be some way to make enough room,” he murmured to himself. “I packed everything as close as I could.”

I cocked my head. “Maybe we’ve got to take the rest out and start with this piece?”

“That’ll take forever. And it doesn’t do me any good if I still can’t fit everything and have to leave something else they wanted for the exhibit behind.” Jin let out a bit of breath in a huff. “It might work if we tip it upright… Let me get some drape cloths to cushion it before we try that.”

He headed back into the gallery, leaving me alone with the van and the massive, bizarre sculpture. I eyed the thing, and a sliver of pain jabbed through my arm from my scar. If I kicked it into the heap of junk it looked like, then it’d definitely fit. An itch to do just that ran down to my leg.

I tensed the muscles there and studied the van again. I didn’t think the piece would fit no matter what way we angled it. Why the hell were the people in L.A. so keen on this thing anyway?

And why the hell was Jin galivanting off there when his supposed “family” was here? When he’d announced the show to us yesterday, he’d said he was going to be