Page 37 of Blood Magic (Ariel Kimber 3)

I had read several of the letters before falling asleep. I hadn’t made it through all of them because there seemed to be a lot more of them than I had originally thought there to be.

Page after page of Rain’s anger, love for me, and hatred for his now dead sister. With each line read, each and every word, even the horrible ones, I fell a little bit more in love with the man who’d helped create me. Anyone who put that much effort into searching for me was worth falling in love with.

I was struck by a sudden thought. One that excited me. If Rain had used magic to search for me but couldn’t find me because Vivian had done something to block him, did that mean I would be able to find him myself? If he’d searched for me with magic, then wouldn’t it make sense that I would be able to do the same thing for him? Unless he had some magical block on him the same way that Vivian had, I didn’t see why not.

Of course, on my own, I wouldn’t even know where to start. There were plenty of books on the shelf in my room and they were all about magic and I guessed I could look through them. Then, if I didn’t find anything, I could always ask the guys to help me out. I knew they would be more than happy to help me out. I would look through the books before asking. Only because I didn’t want to seem helpless and I had no idea how I would even begin to pick out which one of them to go to for help.

Quinton was out because I didn’t want to disturb him. He’d walked out of my room in a bad mood and who knew what was happening with the Council. I didn’t want to know. It seemed like it was Quinton’s burden to bear so I would leave him to it. Better him than me.

Dash was out due to his injury. I knew he was healing, but he still needed some recovery time before I bothered him with anything. I hoped he was in bed and knocked out because of his pain meds. He was healing quickly, but not fast enough for my liking. Then again, I would have preferred him to never have been injured in the first place. Dash was out of the running. For now.

Damien was out purely because I wasn’t comfortable enough going to him for anything just yet. It would take a lot for me to get there with him. I also didn’t really want to tell him all about my messed-up family dynamic when I hadn’t discussed it with most of them yet. We were nowhere near where we’d need to be in order for us to be able to swap our dirty laundry with one another.

Abel and Addison were both out. They seemed to work as a unit, so I always lumped them together as one. They would be more than happy to help me, this I knew to be true. But it wouldn’t be worth their help because they would for certain laugh at me. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that they would have a good old time at my expense. Only after they worked the hilarity out of their systems would they help me. This meant the Salt and Pepper twins were out. This was too serious to me for laughter and amusement.

This left me with going to either Tyson or Julian. Funny enough, I didn’t think either would enjoy being lumped together at the moment. Maybe I could get them to hug it out.

Separately, they didn’t sound like bad choices. Together, it was a no-go.

I wasn’t interested in being alone with those two again any time soon. It hadn’t taken much for them to come to blows and thinking about a repeat gave me a really bad feeling.

Then there was Annabell. I was well and truly over the whole Annabell thing. I feared for the safety of the next person who brought that horrid bitch’s name up in my presence. I cringed inwardly every time someone brought up her stupid name.

If I had Tyson and Julian separately, then I felt like they were the perfect fit for this. That, and they were the only options left to me.

Tyson was my bestie, but when it came to magic, I didn’t have a preference between them. I had Ty’s phone number but not Julian’s so Tyson would probably win by default.

The letter I had been reading when I’d fallen asleep sat in my lap. I picked it up and folded it back up before putting it back into the box on the top of the pile. It was a mess in there now because I had been pulling them out at random and placing them back in the same way. I’d done the same with the pictures. I would need to find a better place for them that wasn’t a cardboard box. I didn’t want to put the pictures in frames and put them out on display for anyone who came into my space to see. For several reasons. First, a young Vivian was in a lot of the photos and, as pretty as she was, I had no desire to look at her face any time soon. Then, there was the little fact I had never met or spoken to Rain before and it would be weird on my part if I put his picture up all over or, at least, I thought it would be a little weird and slightly creepy. I also didn’t want to answer questions about who they were and their relationship to me. The fact we were related was clear to see in the pictures.

I had grown up thinking I had Vivian’s eyes but really hers were a poor imitation of Rain’s and his eyesweremy eyes to a T.

What I really needed was a fire safe lock box to put them in. They were important to me and I never wanted to chance losing them, but I didn’t want to put them on display either.

Fire safe lock box it was. I wondered if Quinton had one of those sitting around in his storage unit for me to use and seriously doubted it. I didn’t want to ask him out of fear he’d go out and buy me one.

I had my debit card from Marcus, but I didn’t like using it. I had checked the balance on an ATM machine while we were at the hospital because I’d wanted money to get Dash a diet pop and a candy bar from the vending machines. I didn’t think that Marcus would care that I used the money in that account to buy Dash a diet Coke and a Snickers bar while he was hospitalized. Honestly, I thought Marcus would be upset with me when he saw how little I actually used the thing. Giving me that card and the money in the account had been extremely important to him. It would hurt his feelings, that I didn’t want to use it.

The amount of money that was in that account was insane. And it was all there for me. Not that I wanted it or could ever even spend it in the next ten years. It felt too much like a payoff. Like Marcus had given me money to make himself feel better about leaving me. I knew this wasn’t the case. For shit’s sake, I’d told him to leave, even encouraged him to do so. He’d wanted me to go with him and I’d refused. My place was here with the guys. He’d given me money to make sure I would never want or need for anything, and he’d done it because he cared about me in a really big way.

I was bitter about the whole thing because I would much rather have Marcus Cole in my life on the daily than his money in the account he’d set up for me. But I had let him go all the same.

I missed him every single day. And I was going to spend some of his money on a fire proof box for my valuables.

I had never had things of value before to keep safe. Part of me wished I didn’t have them now.

I closed the lid on the cardboard box and essentially closed the lid on my feelings about what it held inside of it. This wasn’t the time to be thinking about Marcus Cole and how sad I was at him being gone. He was still in my life and a phone call away, not that I had tried to call him in the past few days.

I had books to look through.

I threw my legs over the side of the bed and climbed off. I padded across the floor and didn’t stop until I stood in front of the bookcase.

Most of the shelves were empty. Two were stuffed full.

I read the names and titles on the spines of the books.

Magic for Beginners

Spells for Beginners

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