Mark of Damon by Eva Chase Page 0,4
just that,” I admitted. “The last few months, the feeling has kept creeping up on me that something isn’t quite right, that I’m missing something… Maybe it’s only baseless anxiety getting the better of me. But the past couple weeks I’ve had trouble tuning it out.”
“Wrap yourself up in those saucy books you love,” Meredith suggested with a sly grin.
I did have an extensive collection of romance novels that had long been my favorite escape, but… “Those don’t quite do the trick anymore.” Maybe because I had so much actual romance in my life now. Although even spending time with my consorts hadn’t erased the inexplicable worries.
“Well, if there is anything wrong, you’ve proven you’re more than up to tackling it. I have every faith in you.” Meredith tilted her head at the chime of the doorbell. “That’ll be Miss Priss now.”
I couldn’t restrain a laugh at the nickname as I followed her to the front door.
Evianna stepped inside all haughty airs and cool expression. I hadn’t seen her in ages, not since before her mother had died, and it struck me all over again how much she took after Celestine. The same pale blond hair, the same icy blue eyes… the same hint of disdain in the curve of her mouth when she rested her gaze on me.
“I don’t want to make this a real visit,” she said in a similarly cool tone, as if I had any illusions about us making friendly. “You found everything?”
I motioned to a case I’d packed that was standing by the wall. “All the documents you were looking for and the smaller items like the jewelry are in there. The footstool you mentioned—I wasn’t sure exactly which one it is. We seem to have a bit of a hoard in the attic. You can come up and take a look.”
Evianna let out a faint huff, but she tramped up to the second floor and then the pull-down steps to the attic without any other remarks. I’d dragged the footstools I’d found over to the area around the top of the stairs for easy access. I had no idea where any of them had come from or what significance the ones that were Hallowell-owned had to the family—as far as I was concerned my stepsister was welcome to any of them.
Watching her examine each of them in turn—it appeared she wasn’t completely sure which had once resided in her bedroom either—dredged up slivers of memories in the back of my mind. The glares and furtive kicks at the dining table. Her chuckling when her mother had found something about me to criticize. Her satisfied smirk when we’d been packed into the car to speed off to Portland, back when my father and her mother had forced me to leave behind the guys who’d been my only real friends.
Eleven years I’d gone without them because of Celestine’s strict ideas about witches and unsparked folk mingling. Not that my father’s attitudes had been much better…
I shook myself out of the uncomfortable reverie. Dwelling on the past didn’t help anyone. But the hollow in my stomach remained, images and emotions stirring in the back of my mind. I meandered deeper into the attic as if I could escape them on foot.
My eyes caught on a shadowed structure I hadn’t noticed when I’d been focused on footstools before. In the far corner of the attic, a rectangular wooden frame with carefully spaced slats and railings carved with flowers stood under a layer of dust.
A crib. My crib, I had to assume. I was the only child who’d been born in this house since my father more than fifty years ago.
I squeezed between the boxes, chests, and assorted other abandoned furniture to reach it. It even had the mattress still in it. I ran my finger through the dust, wiping clean the cherry-wood surface. No memories of using it rose up. It’d have been put away before I’d been old enough to remember much. I hadn’t realized it was even still in the house.
“Here. It’s this one,” Evianna announced. When I hustled to rejoin her, she’d nudged a footstool with a purple silk cushion toward the stairs. “I assume you can have someone bring it down?”
Naturally she’d never consider hefting it herself. I debated carrying it just to show her it could be done without paid help but decided that would look too much like a pointed insult. Within a few minutes, I’d gotten one of the staff to