Page 12 of Bitten By Chaos

It didn’t matter. I would trust Julian. I would trust my own instincts.

My father was a disturbed man and desperate to convince me to forgive him for some reason that I was pretty sure wasn’t related to love. And I couldn’t judge Elsa based on someone she may have wrongly chosen to turn for reasons unknown. For all I knew , Carmichael may have twisted her instructions when he remade my father.

“If she’s so dangerous that you felt you had to hide from your family, why are you here working for her again? You seem perfectly safe and happy. And she’s funding your research once more. Wasn’t that your only qualification when Silas paid you to build him a machine to change me into a psychic vampire and a torture device to keep me locked in for all eternity?”

His face fell, shoulders drooping in defeat. “I was glamoured. I never would have endangered you otherwise.”

I bristled and crossed my arms before letting out a huff. What was the point in arguing if he refused to take personal responsibility?

“I suppose sometimes children can only learn through experience, even when you offer to spare them. Have your meeting, Charlie. But know you can always count on me because, whether you agree with my decisions or not, I’m on your side.”

Charlie. It was a name only he’d ever used for me, and it made me wince. Instead of the warmth it used to bring, now I felt only nausea and hurt.

With no retort from me, he set his goggles down and left the room. Without him in it, the lab felt enormous, daunting. I’d avoided looking at the corner where the battle with Silas had gone down. Where my power had risen to overpower his. The machine he’d glamoured Dad and Lydia into building—basically a casket with a hole on either side to both extract and infuse blood—still sat in pieces on the floor. I shivered, hugged myself, and swiped my hand through the air, sending the pieces into the farthest shadows, out of sight.

The moment it was done, I whipped around, terrified I’d had a witness and already blown my big secret by using my telekinesis without thinking. But the lab remained empty and silent aside from the soft whirring of some machinery busy analyzing materials and computers running simulations.

With several minutes before anyone was likely to show, I sat on the stool behind the station Dad had been occupying when I’d arrived. Swiveling back and forth, I drummed my nails on the metal countertop. Settling down wasn’t easy when I had so much energy combined with everything on my mind. I started tidying his area. Dad had always been messy, so engrossed in his mental calculations that he barely noticed the ice-cold coffee in his mug or the stains on his scattered papers. Even as a child, I’d instinctually cleaned up after him, just like Mama.

Sighing heavily out of habit rather than need, I pulled all the loose printouts and graph papers toward me. It was a wonder he still used so much old-fashioned paper when most of what we did involved computers. I supposed old habits died hard.

I began sorting into piles, calculations, notes, and graphs scratched out in pen on one side, printouts with simulation results on the other. I was about to toss a ripped half-sheet with fold marks when I zeroed in on the chicken scratch scribbled across it.

Fae blood

The words were circled with several exclamation points. I smoothed it out on the table. There was more but the sentence was cut off where it had been torn.

Why it transfers when we?—

And that was it. Who was “we” and what transferred? I bit my cheek, this time able to contract my fangs all the way, and dove into the rest of the papers at super speed, searching for the missing half. But it wasn’t among the torrent on the table.

I was about to go through the trash when the doors opened, and a group of familiar faces stormed the lab. The tightness in my chest unwound, and a smile curled my lips at the sight of all my friends and sister. Zoe, Sam, Lydia, Tabitha, Daphne, Hazel, and even her familiar Karma in raven form who perched on her shoulder. But it was the last two to enter that made my heart leap. Julian, arm circling Em’s small shoulders, met my gaze as he swung the door closed behind him.

Before I could run to her, the rest of the group had ascended, pulling me into bone crushing hugs that no longer hurt. Instead, I returned them with fervor, careful not to break any humans.

When I got to Daphne, I breathed in her floral scent, ignoring the sharp spike of anxiety that came with the lavender in the mix. My heightened senses immediately isolated the tell tale sign I’d come to associate with changelings. The fae had created several human-like doubles to murder the demon board members and one to capture me. The queen had kidnapped the real nymph and replaced her with a monster that killed my mother and almost did the same to Julian. I had to remind myself the changeling who’d impersonated Daphne was dead now, and this was my true friend that gripped me like a lifeline.

“Thank you,” she said in her breathy voice as she released me. Tears swam in her eyes. “I knew you’d figure out how to free those of us captured by the queen.”

“I’m sorry it took so long to find you and figure it out,” I admitted, but she smiled, alleviating some of my guilt.

“Char!”

I turned just in time to catch Em, who’d leaped into my arms. I swung her around, feet flying out behind her as she giggled. She smelled of gingerbread, and I pressed my cheek to her head where her unruly dark hair had been pulled back into a ponytail. Then she tilted her face up to me, russet eyes filled with a mixture of innocence and unsettling wisdom beyond her years. She’d been through so much already, having been used by others just because she was psychic. I’d been shielded by my family until I was an adult, but she hadn’t had that privilege.

“Are you okay?” I asked, setting her on her feet and squatting down to her level, gripping her arms.

“I’m good now,” she promised with a sweet grin. “Uncle Sammy gave me chocolate cake for breakfast.”

“That was supposed to be our secret,” Sam teased from the sidelines.

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly.

“That’s okay. You deserve it,” I agreed, suppressing a laugh at the nickname Sammy used for a fierce alpha werewolf.

“She’s staying at the coven house with us,” Zoe said.

I looked up to find her and Hazel gripping each other’s hands tightly.

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