Page 136 of A Witch-ish Guide to Protectors and Pendulums

“Luc never wanted control. He wanted to give them choices.”

“Now, they’ll have one master.”

“Why’d you kill Jeffery?” I asked, non-sequitur, I know, but I needed to know the point of it.

“Because of you. I thought you’d have hunted down his murderer two years ago when the police failed to bring his assailant to justice.”

“I know why they failed to capture his assailant. You had one in your pocket.”

“So you figured it out.”

“Why Cain?” I asked. “He’s not a magic holder.”

“I’ll let him explain.” Beelzebub waved his hand and a portal opened, floating above the ground, large enough for a man to walk through. Cain.

He sauntered over to me all cocky and I wanted to punch him in the gut so badly, but I needed to hear what he had to say, and I’d accidentally knocked into him once before. That man was solid muscle. I didn’t need to break my wrist at this crucial point in the war.

“Simone Lamia. It took me a long time to hunt you down. Bitch kept a low profile, but I found you.”

“Why?”

“That magic belongs to me. The magic of the garden should’ve been mine. It should’ve been passed down to my children. We’d have been the most powerful family in the world. But your whore mother refused to give me sons.”

Gross.“That’s incest, you perv.”

“Now the power goes to me.”

“It doesn’t. Whatever he promised you, he was lying. Even if I die right now, my power goes into the ether. You won’t get a drop. Magic gets passed to the offspring of magic holders. You’ve been unremarkably ordinary your whole life.”

He shot his hand out, slapping it hard across my cheek open palmed, hard enough to bust my lip. I bit the inside of my cheek,causing my mouth to fill up with blood. I spat the blood onto his shoe.

“Make you feel like a man? Slapping a woman. Just like your dad. You want to blame someone for not having magic, blame him. The magic of the garden never belonged to him. It belonged to my grandmother. Had he been kind, she’d have shared it. But not him, not Adam. Oh, no—he abused Lilith and his children until she had no choice but to leave the garden.”

“I will end you, bitch.”

He meant it. Cain wrapped his meaty fingers around my throat and began to squeeze. I couldn’t move. My body wanted to drop me to my knees, but I had no choice other than to stand there while he squeezed the life out of me. “Beelzebub,” he screamed. “I’ve done what you asked. Give me my magic!”

Beelzebub shot his hand out.

Connor screamed, “No!”

Sim shouted, “No!”

I’d have shouted or screamed my ownnoif I’d been able to. And before my eyes, Beelzebub’s strike hit Cain square in the back. The large man dropped tohisknees. He turned his stunned, dying eyes on Beetle and I swear I saw a betrayed ‘why?’ right before he slumped to the ground.

Gasping for breath, I took in large lungfuls of air that burned my throat and lungs. “What just happened?” Sim asked.

“Ah… Simeon. Brother to Simone. That was quite the show you put on out there.” Beelzebub pointed outside the cube. “I didn’t see it coming. Rarely does anyone get one over on me.” Then his voice turned serious. “It won’t happen again.”

“You always planned for him to die,” I said, assessing the situation.

“Well done, Simone. Yes, he always had to die.”

“I get why he wanted to come forward in time, but why did you bring him?”

“So greedy and power-hungry, he actually thought I’d give him your magic. How would that have benefitted me?Iget to control the humans. Not Cain. But to answer your question, your grandmother is why. I put out feelers all over the world to track you and your brother down, but the witch had bound your magic. I couldn’t find you. Ineededto find you for any of this to work. So, since he’d already killed off his own brother, I knew Cain would be more than willing to come forward in time—see, I needed his blood to track you down. You share DNA, as Adam’s child and grandchildren. We isolated DNA in Cain and I have people in my employ who were able to use that to magically locate your brother.”

“You went after Sim first,” I muttered.

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