Aaron
Mara hovers over Seth’s fruit board, picking through it piece by piece until her little bowl holds nothing but watermelon.
I watch her from the sofa and keep my mouth shut.
Her lion burned through a lot today, and watermelon is rich with natural water, so my mate is putting back everything she spent one sweet cube at a time.
She’d swear up and down she just likes the taste.
I keep my smile to myself and let her have it.
She’s the best thing I’ve seen since we left Detroit.
She comes back around the coffee table, bowl cradled against her, and turns to sit down beside me.
Her ass doesn’t belong on the sofa. It belongs on me.
I catch her by the waist and pull her down into my lap. She frowns back at me over her shoulder, a piece of watermelon halfway to her mouth.
I don’t give a shit. I settle her against me, and she huffs, gives up, and goes back to her bowl. Two bites in, I’ve stopped existing.
Across the room, Tiana starts pacing.
I grin. I know that walk. Her mind is going a mile a minute, and all the rest of us can do is wait for whatever comes out the other side.
“Henry is a problem,” she says.
My mother rolls her eyes. “Ya think?”
Jacob wraps an arm around her waist and draws her back against him, and the stiffness runs out of my mother’s shoulders, her crossed arms coming loose, all that temper settling under her mate’s hands. I pull Mara tighter against me.
She squeals around her fruit and wiggles against me. But her tail rises off my knee and the tassel comes up to brush my cheek, and I turn my head and steal a kiss from it before it can pull away.
“The problem isn’t just that Henry exists,” Tiana goes on, still pacing.
“It’s what he’s holding. The first Blackwood spell book.
The original. Every founding spell our coven ever set down is in that book.
The transfer rite they used to lend him his magic in the first place.
The bindings. The seals.” She stops and looks around the room at us.
“Our family has been working from copies and memory. He has the source.”
Kiara sits forward slowly.
“Think about what that means,” Tiana says.
“The rite that made him is in his hands. He can lend magic the same way it was lent to him. Stand up loyal warlocks out of nothing, owing everything to him.” Her mouth goes flat.
“And the seals. Every seal in that book is written in our family’s hand.
He doesn’t have to break Blackwood work.
He can sit down with the source and unwrite it, page by page, like correcting a letter. ”
The room is quiet. Mara has gone very still in my lap, and her ears are turned toward my sister even though her eyes are on her bowl.
“I had a run-in with him today,” I say.
Every head in the room turns to me. Tiana stops dead mid-stride and pivots on me. “What?”
I clear my throat. Mara shifts in my lap and becomes very interested in her watermelon. “Yes. With the help of Josiah. He seems to know how to draw him out of places.”
Tiana turns her head to our mother. My mother just sighs and throws her hands up.
“That damn Josiah sure knows when to be useful.” She shakes her head. “I haven’t seen him in a while. He left to go back to the Master Coven and didn’t say why.”
“Don’t look at me.” I shrug. “I don’t know either.”
“Henry’s mastered eluding us because he has to,” Tiana says, picking her path back up. “He’s always known that if there were any Blackwoods still alive, they’d eventually come asking for the book to be returned. Something he never intended on doing.”
“So if we’re bound by the same laws as the Baileys,” Kiara asks, “how do we get it back? We can’t just take it without consequence.”
Tiana perks up, and her attention comes straight to me. “So what exactly made Henry come out of hiding?”
Mara’s tail goes alert against my arm. Her ears stand. She says nothing, just keeps munching on her bowl of fruit like the answer doesn’t involve her at all.
“Jo and Layla murdered all of his help in broad daylight,” I tell them. “In one of the studies of the Detroit Main Library.”
Jacob snorts. My mother’s head turns with a frown already loaded, and he starts choking it back immediately, coughing into his fist like something went down wrong.
Tiana smiles at me. It’s a fake smile. Underneath it she’s cringing so hard it nearly breaks through.
“Apparently,” I say, “Jo figured out how to get under his skin.”
She crosses her arms. “Apparently.”
“I have a few ideas of my own,” I murmur.
That gets the whole room. My sisters turn toward me, and even my mother stops mid-eye-roll to hear it.
“I think to defeat Eric, we have to know who and what we’re dealing with.”
“Oh, I know exactly who and what we’re dealing with,” my mother chimes in. “A bottom-feeding, soul-selling, dirt-licking coward of a—“
Jacob gives her a gentle squeeze. She stops mid-tirade and presses her lips together.
“What I’m saying is,” I continue, “I think I need to go into the Witching Glen.”
The room gasps. All of them at once, but Samara’s is the loudest, sharp enough to make Mara’s ears flatten.
“But you can’t, brother.” Samara’s on the edge of her seat. “There’s no telling what’s going on in there.”
“Samara is right, Aaron,” Kiara says. “The Witching Glen was closed off after Aya Bailey’s demise. They’ve been imprisoned in that realm a long time.”
“Yes,” Tiana says. “There’s no telling what kind of mind those witches and warlocks have after sixteen years of imprisonment.”
“There’s something in there that can help us.” I push.
“I don’t doubt that.” Tiana levels a look at me. “What I’m arguing is your safety.”
The door opens and Kade walks in, shutting it behind her. “What did I miss?”
Jacob looks down at my mother. “I’m gonna go deal with the pack,” he says it to her, but he’s practically glaring at Kade the whole time.
Kade stares back at him. “What? You should be thanking me for that distraction.”
Jacob groans.
Seth comes around the counter. “I’ll come with you, Dad.”
“Seth.” My mother’s head comes around. “Don’t you want to stay? This is Blackwood business, and you’re a Blackwood.”
“I’m going to go be with the pack.”
“Go, Seth,” I tell him. “It’s fine.”
My mother glares at me. I shrug it off. Jacob doesn’t get involved in any of it. He just grins at Seth and holds the door open for him as he steps out, then looks back at all of us and quietly tips his head before stepping out and shutting the door behind him.
My mother scoffs and shakes her head at the closed door.
I rub Mara’s back, and get us back on subject. “I still think I should go in there.”
Mara’s head whips around to me. “Alone? No.”
I groan.
“I think your family is right, Aaron,” Kade says. “What’s left in the Witching Glen is the worst of the worst.” Then a wicked grin crosses her face, slow and savoring. “Including Ellie.”
Samara snorts.
“I say we focus on Henry,” Tiana says.
“No.”
She glares at me. “I don’t give a shit about Eric, Aaron.”
“Well, you should,” I say. Tiana smirks at me.
“Why? Because you still somehow—which I cannot figure out for the life of me—want a relationship with this imbecile?”
“Shut up, Tiana!” I snap at her.
Mara looks up at me and shakes her head, and the rest of what I was going to say dies in my mouth. Then she turns on my sister with a glare she usually saves for me.
“You cannot punish him for wanting the love of his father.”
Tiana opens her mouth. Then she shuts it. She groans and lets her hands fall to her sides, slapping against her thighs.
My mother crosses to her and places a hand on her shoulder. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Mara is right.”
“I know,” Tiana groans.
“I think we all need some time to think this over,” my mother says.
I shake my head. I pat Mara’s hip and she stands, and I stand up with her. “No time, Ma. Eric has dark magic and there’s no telling what he’s going to do with it. And it doesn’t help that he’s working with Henry.”
She comes to me with soft eyes. “I get it, son. But if we move too fast without strategizing, one of us is going to get hurt.” She looks around the room—at Tiana, Kiara, Samara—then back at me. “Let one of you get hurt. Don’t piss me off. I’ll turn into Anora, I promise you.”
Samara scrunches her whole face up and frowns at our mother.
Mara slips out from under my arm and carries her bowl into the kitchen, setting it in the sink.
“Aaron’s got a point about Eric,” Kade says. “Him having access to dark magic isn’t a good thing. The longer we let him sit with it, the more damage he can do.”
“I can find him,” I say.
Tiana steps forward. “How? We’ve tried locator spells. They don’t work.”
I hold my hand up and let my magic come, blue-gold sparking off my fingertips.
“Something is different about my magic. I’ve known this for a long time.” I watch the light move between my fingers. “It draws magic from any witch or warlock I come in contact with. I can’t even tell when my magic is doing it.”
“What?” My mother takes a step toward me, staring at my hand.
Mara comes back around the sofa and stands beside me, close, her shoulder against my arm. I look down at her, and whatever is on my face makes her tail sway.
I sigh. “It’s probably better to show you than tell.”
Tiana grins. “I’m curious. But that also explains how you were able to take my magic and use it to seal the Witching Glen again.” She tips her head. “Which is, in fact, holding up pretty well.”
I look at Mara and steal a kiss from her. She doesn’t deny me, and when her tail comes up and embraces me, the tassel brushing over my cheek and then settling against my chest, I almost want to fall apart right there in my mother’s living room.
Kade rolls her eyes. “Oh, please.” She waves a hand at the two of us. “Well? Are you gonna give us a demonstration of this power or what? I’ve got to check on the Glen. You know. My hourly checks.”
I look to my sisters. Kiara and Samara are grinning, leaned in, eager to see what my magic can do.
I look at my hand, silently hoping my magic doesn’t make a fool out of me.