Page 116 of Magic of the Damned

“Fine,” he conceded with a groan. “But tell Nancy and Cliff I don’t want to hear it about my new career.”

“Keep calling them Nancy and Cliff and you won’t have to worry about them discussing your career. They’re going to spend the evening ripping into you about calling them that.”

Forest’s passive-aggressive show of defiance was calling them by their names. Initially, they pretended it didn’t bother them, thinking it would discourage him. It became a challenge for Forest to make sure it did.

I swallowed all my questions about his new career. I guessed he’d moved on from being an apprentice electrician. Curiosity burned in me, but I pushed it aside, deciding to get answers when my parents ultimately examined him about his new journey. Despite my brother’s claims he hadn’t missed me that much, he didn’t immediately get off the phone. When our conversation ended a half hour later, I was surprised by the rumbling of my stomach in response to the smell of pizza wafting into the room. I must have been recovering from the days without food.

Cutting my reprieve short and returning to the living room, I found Anand and Dominic on the sofa and two large pizzas stacked on the nook being ignored. Emoni padded the length of the room, taking sips from her vodka-filled coffee cup between pressing the bridge of her nose.

“What’s the worst that would happen if you all became known? It would give us autonomy and not allow you all to perform magic on us without us knowing?” Emoni asked, Dominic’s intense eyes watching her carefully as if deciding whether to answer her. I was sure she’d been peppering him with questions since she’d left my side.

“How would you enforce that abnegation, human woman?”

We both glared at the tone of superiority and derision that drifted over the word ‘human.’

“I think you’ve underestimated us,” Emoni countered.

“I believe you’ve overestimated them,” he said in response. “Once they are no longer required to remain secret, they’ll have license to do whatever they feel is necessary to survive, which would mean decreasing your numbers. Shifters have infiltrated your military and law enforcement; they thrive on that structure. The numbers won’t be any use if you’re dealing with preternatural speed and access to tech-witches who can disrupt all your technology, and witches who can do spells to manipulate human minds or whatever they please to do to them.”

Emoni frowned, reminded of what had been done to her.

“Vampires with preternatural speed and the ability to compel. There’s no defense against that. It only takes a look for them to enthrall you. If humans rose up against the supernaturals, what would prevent them compelling humans to turn on each other? And, it doesn’t take long for them to sire humans to vampires. The vampire bond formed between the sire and sired means they will ally with their creator. All human connections are forgotten with their vampire rebirth. Yes, you have the numbers, which is a benefit, but seeing the division and discord that exists between humans, how likely is it that those numbers would benefit you?”

We had numbers in our quiver, but that wasn’t the advantage we believed it would be. Emoni was taking the news worse than I had. She looked defeated. Dominic’s confidence that even in the middle of a potential civil war among the supernaturals, they would put that aside to subjugate humans only added to her troubled frown. She’d finished her cup and had refilled it.

“Now that it’s your job to uphold the secrecy of supernaturals, you must reinforce it, and they have to know that the onus falls on them if it’s violated,” I interjected. My assertion sounded more pleading than intended. The mocking amusement fell from his expression, his depthless amber eyes turning sincere.

“I will.” A satisfying promise in his simple words.

Perceptive as usual, Emoni hadn’t missed the exchange between us. Although she hadn’t fully warmed up to either Anand or Dominic, her demeanor had relaxed significantly.

Nothing about the current situation was innocuous, but everyone seemed okay with moving on to me figuring out if my family were vessels of Tenebras Obducit magic, too.

I filled a glass with water instead of more alcohol. Tomorrow morning I planned on speaking with Cameron and didn’t want to do so while dealing with a hangover.

With the exception of the dinner with Dominic’s family, I’d never seen him eat, and watching him eat pizza fascinated me in a way it shouldn’t have. Emoni, who kept her distance from everyone, stayed near the nook, taking small bites of pizza, her brows drawn in with thought.

“I don’t really understand you. You’re a wolf shifter who doesn’t shift. But if you were a real wolf, you’d need to hunt for food,” she asserted, pulling a piece of pepperoni from the pizza and eating it. “You have to desire raw meat at some point, right? I’m sure if I gave a lion a steak medium rare, he wouldn’t eat it.”

Of all the things revealed to her, she found shifter magic the most intriguing. Or maybe it was Anand, because he was a defunct shifter.

“If that’s all he had to eat, he would,” he countered with a smirk.

She considered it. “I don’t think that’s true.” She looked at him. “Can you eat? Do you eat? Do you sustain life just by magic?”

I went to the kitchen and got my friend some water. Her consumption of nearly half a bottle of vodka was showing in her boundless curiosity and lack of filter. Taking it with a grateful nod, she gulped it and didn’t stop until it was nearly empty.

“I don’t like this,” she eventually admitted to the room. Liquid brown eyes showed a disturbing level of sorrow and angst that I’d never seen on her before. Intrigue had eked from her expression, leaving behind a solemn troubled look.

“The situation or us?” Dominic scrutinized her, not as a threat but as the reflection of what would happen if they were to reveal themselves.

“Both,” she acknowledged. “I don’t like feeling helpless. And knowing that you all live among us and we just don’t know, how do I go to work tomorrow, with customers moving throughout the café, and not suspect at least some of them are creatures of magic?”

If she was calling them that in her head, of course the situation would spiral.

“Supernaturals have always walked among us, Emoni,” I said in an attempt to comfort her.

“What about the Broad Street wiccans?” she blurted, referring to the people who could be seen dressed like they were about to attend a Renaissance fair or Steampunk festival. “Or the People of the Night?” They were just as flamboyant as our Broad Street wiccans with their theatrical midnight-black or platinum-white hair and dark clothing, depicting the vampire noir look from old films.

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