another set of protective charms on the house. This time, since he was in residence, if any other witch hunters came calling, they would not be able to breach the perimeter as long as he was within shouting distance. He shut the door with his mind and made his way back to Dallas.
He found Dallas right where he’d left her, except she’d nodded off back to sleep, curled into a fetal position on the couch. Finley sat in the large matching leather armchair directly across from the couch. “Try to be quiet. I’ve never seen her look so pale. She’s so tired I wouldn’t be surprised if she slept for days. One of us will have to carry her up to her bed.”
“I’ll do it,” Oliver volunteered without missing a beat, making Finley smile.
“I can see the two of you share an instant attraction. Just be gentle with her heart. She’s not as otherworldly as you, Oliver. She’s fragile, even if she thinks otherwise. The power within her has been a very heavy burden to bear, and it’s led her down the path to great tragedy.”
Oliver sighed. “I expect that tragedy would be the death of her mother?”
Finley met his gaze. “The agents blabbed about it, didn’t they? Those little shits. I’ll give them a blistering earful the next time I see them. Fortunately, they don’t know the real story. Angelica kept the truth from the public. Only a special few of us know what really happened that day as we were the ones who answered Dallas’s frantic call for help.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Dallas was only thirteen at the time, Anya was eleven. Anya lived with her parents in a village a short distance away from Gerrans. When the witch hunters came for Dallas she was alone with her mother at Redgrave House. Her mother attempted to engage the four witch hunters in combat, and considering she stood alone against them, she was giving them pretty good resistance and took out one of them with her magic. But Dallas knew her mother couldn’t keep it up so she called for help.
“She called Angelica first and Angelica told her to call us because we might not be the best fighters in the magical world, but we are trustworthy and loyal. Angelica knew we would do whatever we could to stop them and not back down even if we feared for our safety—they were witch hunters from the Black Death Coven, and so therefore quite formidable. I’d say they were on an even scale with the Bloodbaynes.”
“I take it everything didn’t go as smoothly as you all thought it would?”
“That would be putting it mildly, Oliver. Everything was getting pretty desperate. Dallas was absolutely beside herself with worry. She thought they were going to kill her mother and she couldn’t let that happen so something extraordinary happened, something that none of us believed Dallas had the capacity to do—least of all Angelica. I think that her mother knew she was capable of it though. That would explain why Bryony was always so concerned about keeping Dallas calm at all times and urging her to never use her gift no matter what happened.”
Oliver’s thoughts raced. It sounded as if Dallas carried a gift that was more of a curse than a blessing. His gaze rested on the strikingly vulnerable scene that Dallas created as she lay on the sofa. She looked as if she couldn’t hurt a fly although he was getting a sneaky suspicion that was far from the truth.
“What did Dallas do, Finley?”
“She activated her time-manipulation power, and in her temperamental state, she didn’t create one separate time portal, she created time portals within each and every person within a certain radius of her. I don’t think she knew how it would affect everyone it encompassed, and I just don’t think she realized the breadth and ferocity of her gift.
“You see, when Dallas gets angry enough, she can activate time bombs within anyone she directs her power at. Her mother got caught up in the deluge…and the results were horribly heart-rending.”
“You mean she’s actually a ticking time bomb?”
“Yes.” Finley sighed heavily, scrubbing his hand over his face. “She’s more powerful than any witch I’ve ever known. Her gift opened the time rifts within each of the witch hunters and her mother, causing them to be splintered by time. Sadly, the effects of it killed them all at once. When Dallas realized what she’d done…”
“She lost it, didn’t she?”
“Wouldn’t you?” Finley asked.