I WOKE TO THE SOUND OF MY MOTHER CURSING AT THE coffee machine in the kitchen. I rolled over and found the other side of the bed empty. With bleary eyes, I checked my phone. One text from Darek and none from Alex.
Had to go join the guys for a breakfast gathering, his text said. I’ll catch up with you later.
At eight in the morning? I threw the blankets back, unreasonably sad and irritated that he’d disappeared without waking me. I hadn’t slept so well in weeks.
“What’s wrong?” I croaked when I shuffled into the kitchen.
Mom sighed. “I’m exhausted, and I can’t get this stupid coffee pot to work.” She stood there in a raggedy old band T-shirt and men’s boxer shorts, glaring at the coffee maker as if considering all the terrible things she wanted to do to it.
“Move,” I said, and she stepped aside, pulling herself up on the counter, well out of my way.
Our coffee maker was possibly older than I was and just as stubborn. There was a trick to getting it to work. I unplugged it, flipped the On/Off switch a few times, then plugged it back in. It gurgled to life and a huff of steam escaped the crooked reservoir lid as hot coffee finally dripped into the pot.
I grabbed us each a mug.
As I spooned sugar into the cups, Mom gestured at the scorch mark on the counter. “That has Crowe Medici written all over it. You introduce him to Darek?”
“Not a chance in hell.”
I avoided looking at the evidence of Crowe’s being here, the reality of it in stark daylight somehow more troubling than it had been in the semi-darkness of night. “Crowe gave me a ride home.”
“And he was so overcome with joy at seeing you home safely, he left a permanent scorch mark on my glorious counter?”
“It’s orange laminate, Mom.”
“You are avoiding the question.”
“That was a question?”
She frowned. The morning light filtering in through the window at her back rimmed her in a pearlescent haze. She’d scrubbed the makeup from her smooth, light brown skin and tied her ebony hair into a messy topknot. There were faint shadows beneath her brown eyes, but they only served to make her look delicate instead of haggard.
Sometimes it hit me out of the blue how gorgeous she was when she wasn’t trying to be.
Both of my parents were beautiful beyond reason, but the older my mother got, the more slowly she seemed to age. My mom might not have had a lot of her family’s Cabrera merata magic, which made the people who possessed it invincible, but she must have inherited a few scraps. She’d never been sick in my entire life, and she looked better at thirty-five than I usually did at eighteen.
“What’s going on with you two?” Mom asked, and it took me a second to realize we were still talking about Crowe.
“Nothing.”
Mom hopped off the counter and poured her coffee, stirring in a truckload of powdered creamer. “What’s Darek think about it?”
I side-eyed her. “Why?”
She shrugged innocently. “Just wondering. I mean, from the look of it, the two of you have a thing, and I have to wonder how he felt when Crowe drove you home and then things got heated enough to barbecue without a grill.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
I’d never told her what had happened between Crowe and me, that we’d kissed, that it’d seemed like there was more to our relationship, only to have him ignore me afterward and act like a total jerk at last year’s festival and ever since, but she could sense that something had gone wrong, and she had obviously taken my side.
She looked thoughtful as she sipped her coffee. “Well, Darek seems nice. And safe.” For a moment, she stared out the window, toward the shed where Dad used to work on his bike. “Not a bad thing, especially for you.”
I poured myself some coffee while my throat tightened. “You mean because I can’t cast. Because you think I can’t keep up with Crowe or anyone like him.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“What did you mean?”
“You think it was easy for me to be with your dad? I loved the guy.” Her chuckle was laced with sadness. “So damn much. But he had power oozing from his pores, and I’ve always been…” She raised her arms, as if to say just look at me. “He never tried to make me feel bad about it.”
“But you did anyway,” I said quietly.
She gave me a sorrowful smile, and her thoughts were so obvious that I had to turn away from her. She didn’t want me to end up the same way she had—with a powerful guy, whom she had to watch from the sidelines. The idea stirred something rebellious and ragey inside me. I didn’t want that, either.
Was a guy like Darek, who was from a kindled family but had no power of his own to speak of, the answer? It didn’t feel right to make a choice because of that.
Or maybe I just had to admit to myself that I wasn’t ready to let go of Crowe quite yet. That I never had let go of the hope that he’d realize what an idiot he’d been, that he’d come back to me. “God, I’m so stupid,” I whispered, then buried my nose in my cup, breathing in the bitter fumes.
“No such thing. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Just make sure you use it.” She gave me that motherly look of hers that I rarely saw but always took seriously when I did.
“I will,” I said, and she smiled and nodded. The one thing I could count on my mother for was her ability to let secrets lie. Most people poked at them, prodding them from the shadows so they could see them standing naked in the light.
“Oh, by the way,” she said as she disappeared into the hallway, “your father will be here within the hour.”
“What?” I shouted, but she was already gone, her bedroom door clicking shut behind her.
I couldn’t believe my mom hadn’t given me more advance warning. Then again, the last time he’d visited, I’d hidden out at Alex’s, and when he’d done a locator spell to find me, I’d refused to speak to or look at him. Yeah, I’d been a typical pissed-off fifteen-year-old girl, but I guess Mom didn’t trust me. “He’s trying,” she’d told me.
He hadn’t tried much after that, but now he was coming to Hawthorne. It must be for the festival—the big party tonight was the kickoff and day one of the three-day event that would bring thousands of kindled to our town, and I guessed it made sense that the Syndicate would send someone to check it out. Just my luck, my dad was the law now. As if being basically powerless wasn’t enough, this would cement my status as the most popular girl at the festival.
Ugh.
He arrived an hour later in his ridiculous and totally not inconspicuous black Audi. I peered at him through a crack in the curtains, torn between locking myself inside my bedroom or climbing out the window and trying to sneak into the woods behind the house. He paused halfway to the door and looked at my curtained window like he could see me spying. His mouth twitched into a little smile, and I lurched back, my eyes stinging, my fists clenching.
“Mo?” he called as he let himself inside.
“Don’t call me that,” I blurted out, loud enough for him to hear me through my closed door.
Mo was the nickname Dad had given me when I was a kid. It was short for mo ghrá, which was Irish Gaelic for “my love.” I used to like the name. Now I hated it. If he loved me so much, he would’ve stuck around.
“Come out here and say that to my face,” he said, humor infusing his voice. “Or else I’ll never call you anything else!”
“Big threat, considering I hardly ever see you.”
I listened to the sound of his footsteps coming up the hall. He knocked softly on my door. “Come on, Jemmie. I’m here now.”
I could barely speak past the lump in my throat. “Yeah, for the festival, right? Did you draw the short straw to get this assignment?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Not exactly. Will you come out, please? I don’t care if it’s just to punch me in the face. I want to see my little girl.”
“A funny thing happens when you barely stay in touch. Little girls grow up.”
“If you come out, I’ll take you for ice cream. If you don’t, I’m just going to wait until you open the door. You’re going to have to come out at some point.”
Especially because I’d had all that coffee. “Ugh. Fine.” I whipped open the door.