Mark of Damon by Eva Chase Page 0,3

behalf,” I said with an evenness I felt was impressive. “Your former stepdaughter, Evianna, wants her to turn up some things she left with her mother after she moved out. Rose figures you’d know where they are.”

The older man sighed. “And why should I bother?”

My scar prickled again, and a flare of annoyance shot through me. “I don’t know,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. “Maybe because as far as I know no one’s bothered to investigate you for your second wife’s death yet. You’re hoping to get out of that place eventually, aren’t you?”

We didn’t know for certain that he’d been involved in orchestrating Rose’s stepmother’s fatal accident, but Rose was pretty sure. The threat seemed to hit home.

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to have to go through all that hassle,” her dad said, sounding twice as weary now. “What is she looking for?”

I went through the list, and Mr. Hallowell gave curt but seemingly complete answers for me to jot down. I got the impression he’d decided that getting this conversation over with was preferable to stalling any more. The whole exchange took less than five minutes.

After the last item on the list, I paused, debating how to continue.

“Is that all?” Rose’s dad shifted with a rustle on the other end. “If so, I’ll take my—”

“Hold on,” I broke in. “I— There’s something else I need to ask you about.”

“Spit it out then.”

I could only barrel onward now. Might as well get straight to the point. “The demons. You and the rest of your group had ways of controlling them and their power. What did you use on them to keep them in line?”

He was silent for a moment, long enough that my skin started to creep. “Why do you ask that?” he said finally.

“Just in case. For the future. Who knows what could happen thanks to the shit you all stirred up.”

I thought that was a reasonable enough answer, but a thread of humor came into Mr. Hallowell’s tone that suggested he didn’t entirely believe me. “I see. For the future. Well, Mr. Scarsi, the best thing I can tell you is that you don’t have a hope in hell of wielding any influence over those fiends. From what I hear, Rose and a full contingent of Assembly enforcers barely managed to contain one. If you don’t want whatever’s got its talons in you to wrench you apart completely, your only real hope is to figure out what they want and give it to them as swiftly as you’re able to.”

My hackles rose even as a punch of hopelessness hit me in the gut. “You have no idea what you’re talking about or what I’m capable of. There’s got to be more to it than that. Just tell me—”

“If I have no idea, then I certainly can’t help you. Good luck, unsparked boy. You’ll need it. And I look forward to learning how badly you fall.”

With a clack, the line went dead.

Chapter Two

Rose

The tang of the lemon polish I was rubbing on the table made my nose itch. I paused to swipe at my face, and Meredith peeked into the dining room. She crossed her arms over her chest and tsked.

“You pay people to do your cleaning for you—and me to boss them around into doing it. What’s got you so worked up that you’re putting us all out of a job?”

I rolled my eyes at her jokingly chiding tone, but I also straightened up with a sigh. “I just need to do something while I’m waiting for Evianna to get here. And you know she’s going to look down her nose at anything she can.” My family might have been of higher standing in witching society than hers, but from the moment my stepmother had moved in with her two daughters to Evianna’s moving out of our Portland home seven years ago, the older girl—well, woman now—had made it clear she saw her new circumstances as a trial.

Meredith shrugged. “What of it if she sneers? Ignore her and see her on her way. I’d take ten of you over one of her any day.”

The corners of my lips twitched upward. Our housekeeper had been with us long before my father’s remarriage and long after, the closest person I’d had to an actual mother since my birth mother had died when I was too young to remember, and she wasn’t fazed by much. But her comment didn’t totally settle the jittering of my nerves.

“It’s not