Page 114 of A Bond with the Dark

And vampire-pleaser now, too, apparently.

Adaline looks at me crossly. “So can I,” she adds.

“The more witches, the more powerful the spell,” answers Hattie.

“How long from when she was marked to when she was doing strange things?” Dom asks, no doubt weighing his own infliction against that of Hattie’s girlfriend.

“A few days,” Hattie answers.

“It could be different for you, son,” Everett says, picking up on Dominic’s concern. “You’re a vampire. She wasn’t.”

“Which makes his bond with the warlock even thicker,” Adaline says gravely. “She’s not going to give him up easily.”

“Which means we have to act fast. Tonight,” Dom says sternly.

Hattie gives him a hard stare. “We’ll have to get her blood somehow, though, Dom. It won’t work without it.”

“I’ll work on figuring that out,” says Adaline.

“Sayah can help with that too, Mom,” Dom offers. The look that spreads across Adaline’s face is doubtful. “She made me this talisman,” he adds, pulling the chain from under his shirt.

Adaline makes no motion that she’s the least bit impressed.

“It’s spelled. I can go in the sunlight.”

Now, her face shifts.

Eyeing the Lapis Lazuli with rapt fascination, as though it’s a piece of long-forgotten jewelry she hasn’t seen in a millennium, she pulls up the chair next to him. She sits down slowly, takes the trinket between her finger and thumb, and caresses it softly. “This . . . makes it so you can be in sunlight?”

“It does,” he murmurs and then nods at me.

My heart swells. “I can make one for you if you’d like.”

“Why did it work for her and not Scarlet? Or Mom?” Hattie asks defensively, her tone skeptical.

“I think it’s because the moon rules Scarlet and Mom. They have the same curse, so it wouldn’t work. Sayah’s not the same. She’s ruled by light. That’s why her spell works.”

“You’d make one of these for us?” Adaline asks, and in that moment, her hardness shatters.

The look on Dom’s face tells me I’ve done it.

I’ve won his mom over.

“I will. For all of you.”

I know what this moment has cost Adaline, her letting her warrior façade splinter even a fraction. I know what it means to the creatures of the dark to be reintroduced to the light. Witnessing Dom meet the light again was one of my defining magickal moments. There’s a great pleasure within me to help my boyfriend’s mom, and the urge to giggle bubbles inside me.

Choking it back down, I look to Everett.

He seems unimpressed.

It’ll be more challenging to win him over.

After breakfast, Adaline stands at the sink, rinsing the dishes. Dom and Everett are whispering amongst themselves, reviewing the situation and what has happened to bring Dom to where he is now.

“May I help?” I offer Adaline, handing her the plate.

“Sure,” she says coldly and lets me take over, the soft sliver from before all gone.

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