Chapter One

Introduction

My name is Rhiannon Pierce, but my friends call me Rhi, never Ann. I am so not an Ann. Anns simplify the world by taking Order and making of it Organization. Without the Anns of the world, our civilization would not be possible. Just ask my Aunt Antoinette. She is one of the most terrifyingly organized people I have ever met. While I can, if forced to, find a place for and put everything in its place, I prefer a more … fluid structure. Auntie Annie doesn't exactly approve, but she loves me anyway.

I first discovered the phrase "riding the whirlwind" in a work of fiction and it describes me quite well. I need some bit of Chaos, of the whirlwind, to make my world work. Without a focus for my need to engage the complex, I start looking for that engagement. Fortunately, magery creates more than enough of a whirlwind to satisfy my needs. Most of the time.

Like any psychic ability, you are either born to it or you're blessed or cursed with it (depends on your point of view). Else wise, you ain't got it. I was born to it. Red magic is actually one of the higher forms of energy manipulation dubbed magic. At least, it's "higher" as in "more powerful and takes a butt load of skill, luck, and Will to control".

Green, or Hedge, mages get the name from working with plant energy, which is a much more sedate energy base. Red magic – blood magic – comes from animal energy and, shockingly enough, the more intense levels draw power from the blood of animals, hence the name. Blood carries in it each of the five alchemical elements – Water, Fire, Earth, Air, and Spirit – and it is the last one, Spirit, which gives it such a bang. There is something in the process of releasing Green magic that separates the Spirit from the magic, something that does not occur in Red magic. It's why necromancy requires blood and not plants to animate the dead – they require Spiritual essence to function in the Land of the Living. That's also why vampires feed on blood.

As a side note, I am not necromanticly inclined. My magic is more all-purpose. Necromancers are born with a resistance to the spiritual deterioration that working with the dead brings. It is more than just having a crap load of Spirit essence; it's almost like having an especially potent Spirit. Since magic takes from the caster, the less needed to achieve a specific result the better off you are, especially with the essences that are slower to replenish. Did I mention that Spirit is the slowest?

Every living being feeds upon magic in the form of Quickening. Without the Quickening, no new life would be created and none could sustain because it is the Prime energy. It is literally what holds us together. All magic taps directly into the Quickening to effect changes. That's what differentiates it from a "mere" psychic ability (the quotes are there because there are some … culturally challenged mages who actually think the ability to work with raw Quickening is somehow more effective or impressive than the filtered processes more commonly thought of as psychic).

I didn't start training my magic until I hit puberty. It was deniable until then and when you have two uber-conservative parents, well, if it weren't for the "Incident" they would still be in denial. That's how they refer to it – so you can hear the caps and the quotes.

I have two older brothers and a younger sister. Bruce is the older of my brothers and Curtis is the younger. Roslyn is two years my junior. Bruce pretty much left us alone. I guess when the age gap is right around seven years there really is no point to being mean to the babies. Curtis was almost four years older and an attention whore. He would be cruel just to get you to notice him. About the time I turned five I figured that out and I tried ignoring him. He started beating me up at every opportunity, discovering in the process that he liked inflicting pain. I took it because it kept him away from Ros, which made the beatings bearable. I tried bringing it up to the folks, but they didn't want to know about it. That pretty much summed up my life until the day I hit menarche.

I was ten when I first bled out the contents of an empty womb. It was scary to wake up with bloody sheets and a dull, burning pain in my back and my belly. I thought Curtis had violated my slumber, taken a baseball bat or something to me when I slept. It was the blood that scared me the most. Curtis had bloodied me once before. He broke my nose. The tanning his hide wore after that convinced him it was safer to be a, ah, "gentleman" and only use his open hands on my face. That was also when I stopped seriously attempting to convince the folks that he was abusive. Their response was pretty much that he shouldn't have broken my nose, but I shouldn't exaggerate so much and to stop being such a drama queen. So I started running out the door, to the safety of the big, wide world beyond.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I cried with relief to find that I could stand and I went looking for Mom. If he had bloodied me again, then maybe, just maybe, Mom would make it all better, right? I was scared enough that I wasn't thinking and somehow the hope lodged in my head that this time, now, she had to believe that he wasn't just playing games or that this was some kind of normal sibling rivalry.

Unfortunately for Curtis, he found me before I found Mom. It was just him and me in the hallway and he grinned his evil "I can hurt you" grin. That grin added anger to my fear and the blood was seeping down my legs. Things still might not have gotten so out of hand if he hadn't casually backhanded me. The sheer arrogance of it fanned my anger into rage and drowned out my fear. It broke something in me, some filter that keeps us seeing only the surface of the world. The blaze of auras flaring around me was damn near blinding, but then again, so was my rage.

I smacked Curtis open handed across his face. It wasn't the first time I had fought back, just the first time in a while. I gave up on fighting him a few years before because it just got me hurt worse. Now, I smacked him and out of that break inside me poured a hurt-load of rage. I was pure-blind with fury and trying to beat the hell out of that rat-stinking bastard. It didn't occur to me until later that part of the reason I may have gotten in so many hits was the sheer shock of me actually fighting back after I had appeared broken. Regardless, I did.

Now, none of that may seem all that magical. When the folks pulled me off him, they weren't too concerned that I had actually hurt him. After all, he was thirteen, almost fourteen, as big as his daddy and a boy to boot. A scrawny, ten-year old girl should not be able to hurt anyone that much bigger than she. Poppa told him to get up and, carrying me so he could control my arms, went into the dinning room.

I don't remember what I was ranting, probably something about not taking it from the rat bastard anymore, but I remember getting one last kick in as we passed Curtis' prone form. Poppa didn't appreciate that very much and so he tossed me up, caught me around the waist, and spanked me.

That shocked me clear to my toes. Poppa had never hit me before. Oh, he had no problem rough and tumbling with the boys, but it was always very well understood that Roz and I were girls and Poppa believed firmly that Boys Don't Hurt Girls. Conversely, I think the firmness of his belief in that principle may have been what kept him from realizing just how bad things had gotten between Curtis and me. I don't know for sure because so far we've managed to avoid that particular talk.

I learned about the rest of the "Incident" later. Using magic takes something out the mage and can cause a proportionate level of fatigue. Add the adrenaline crash and the shock of Poppa's hitting me on top of that and I just let go of reality for a bit.

From what I gathered, after Poppa had set me down and assured himself that I wasn't going to go running back to beat some more on Curtis, he went to see what was holding up his son. Mom took one look at Poppa and told him to call an ambulance. I left second-degree burns everywhere that my fists had connected with Curtis' flesh and some of the blisters were already broken, streaming blood and ichor. In a couple of places, I broke bone.

If the folks had not interceded, I would have been the youngest witch sentenced to death under the "freak laws", the series of laws that legalized witches, vampires, and shifters – and set death as the most common penalty for law-breaking by the human-kin. Intent is the most decisive factor when initiating untrained magic. I wanted him to hurt as much as he ever hurt me. While I wasn't actually thinking that I wanted him dead, I knew that I was a hell of a lot safer with him out of this world. Without the folks stopping me, I'm damned sure that my survival instincts would not have allowed him to continue to endanger me. In the end, what he felt wasn't even half of what he did to me, but he had had over half of my life to inflict his torments while I had gotten back quite a bit of my own in one go.

Hospital: Meet the parents

When the ambulance arrived the paramedics also checked me out and decided I needed a ride to the hospital, too. I came back to reality in the children's ward, in a room with pale yellow walls covered in Pooh Bear and honey pots and balloons. There was a man I had never seen sitting on the edge of my bed. He held one of my hands. The other was taped down and had an IV drip plugged into the vein. Mom was standing back, as if she didn't want to come any closer than she had to.

The man's hand was warm and dry, calloused. It didn't feel so much that he was holding my hand, but more like supporting it. His fingers brushed over the pulse in my wrist in soothing little circles and he asked me, "How are you feeling?"

It was like his words finished waking me. I looked at him, studied him, while I thought about the answer. Since he was sitting down I couldn't tell how tall he was, but he looked a little smaller than Poppa, though not by much. Poppa was 6'2", wide through the shoulders, a solid bear of a man. This man's hair was a shade of burnt auburn similar to mine, just a bit darker, like he saw less sunshine. There was something about the set of his hazel eyes that reminded me of someone, but I couldn't remember who. He didn't look like a doctor: he wore no lab coat, just jeans and a white T-shirt with a flannel thrown over it.

"Where's Curtis?" I asked. At least, I tried to. My throat was so scratchy I ended up coughing. I caught sight of Mom fluttering out of the corner of my eyes as I bent forward to hack up a lung. She looked like she wanted to come comfort me, but there was wariness, a fear, in her eyes when she looked at the man who held my hand. In the end, she stayed put, watching as he released my hand to rub my back and bring a glass of water to my lips once the coughs faded.

"Take a sip and just hold it in your mouth at first. Let the water soak in. You've been out of it for most of the day and you did some damage to yourself with the magic burst. That's a girl. Now let's try another sip, same deal. Hold it for a while before you swallow. Good." He kept up the patter, his voice almost hypnotically soothing, until I drank the entire glass. He poured it full again from a pitcher on the bedside tray and set it down before he took back my hand. "Now, can you speak?"

I wet my lips, swallowed, and tried again, "Curtis?"

"That's the fella who got on your bad side, right? He's had his bones set and been treated for the burns. He should be ok to leave the hospital by tomorrow or the next day if no new problems pop up. They won't, now will they?" As he asked that, he gave me a very pointed look, his eyes demanding my honest answer.

"Ii-ii d-d-dooon't kn-n-noooo. Iii-ifff hhheee …" Knowing Curtis was still alive scared the breath from me and I had to stop, had to think to breathe before I tried again. The pause gave me a moment to find out that the burning rage was still there and still going strong. For some reason, that burning rage made the idea of Curtis being burned seem rather reasonable. "If he hurts Roz like he's hurt me, I'll kill him so dead he won't wake up in the afterlife."

Mom let out a tiny sound, a gasp without air, while shock radiated from her like cold from an open freezer.

My hand squeezed the man's because as I said it, I realized I meant it with every fiber of my soul and that scared the crap out of me. The knowledge that I could - that I would - slay my personal demon for hurting my little sister tarnished a part of me that, until then, had remained innocent.

The man stared into my eyes, weighing not only my words, but my resolve. I could feel the probing nature of his regard and I gave him back that tarnish upon my fresh lost innocence and my acceptance that I would not survive Curtis long if it came down to that. Marta Herzog's execution for magical malfeasance in the pursuit of self-defense was fresh cover. I knew I was magical long before my parents accepted the fact. With my Will alone, I healed the ribs that Curtis kept bruising and breaking. I had given up trying to make the folks see reason by the time he started doing that much damage. Without blood, and with only bruises that were written off as the product of tomboyish adventures, to back up my "tales" I got used to just eating my frustration and fixing things.

"How, precisely, has he hurt you?" There was no change in tone, no condemnation, but I could feel a tension in his hand that told me he was pissed louder than any mere words could have. This time it was my turn to turn that seeking stare on him. The anger wasn't directed at me, but that was all I could tell. His eyes reflected a waiting stillness, like the eyes of the great cats that they show on the Discovery Channel.

I knew I was in trouble. I knew, no matter what, that what I had done to Curtis would have to be punished, but there was a quality to this man's stillness that told me perhaps, just maybe, Curtis would finally get the punishment his years of bullying and beatings deserved. Maybe, if he got a very strong lesson, it might even make him a better person. I realized as I thought that that despite everything the rat stinking bastard had done, he was still my brother and I … I won't say I loved him, but I definitely felt the bonds of family between us. Even during his worst, Curtis had protected me from outsiders' teasing and bullying (I'm guessing probably more out of a sense of possession, but possibly he might have felt a similar familial bond). There had even been times when he was down right nice to me, freaky as those times were.

Staring into this stranger's patiently waiting eyes, I saw the peace and hope buried so deeply within my soul that I had forgotten they existed. For the hope of that hope and the hope of that peace, I told those waiting hazel eyes everything, as far back as I could remember. I poured my pain and my heartache, my doubts and my fears, out for those eyes to examine, to know and to understand. I let the tears brought on by remembered misery flow freely in front of another person for the first time in far too long. It was cathartic. By the time I was done, I found some of the peace inside me that I saw reflected in this stranger's eyes. He gently wiped the wetness from my face and in that moment, I felt closer to him than to anyone I ever knew.

There was a moment of silence between us when I finished. Mom's quiet tears fell into that silence. I looked at her and I wanted to comfort her and at the same time I didn't. She never wanted to hear what Curtis did. She'd told me so many times that "tale-bearing is not a nice trait to cultivate". Now she knew what ugliness her blissful ignorance had covered and it pleased the hurt part of me to know that she was hurt enough to cry. Her refusal to hear me had robbed me of a safe home. She was my mother; she was supposed to have protected me and she chose not to. But she was still my mother and she was hurting. I was a ten-year old child and I didn't know what to do.

The man must have seen my confusion because he said, "You can forgive someone without forgetting what they have done. You can love someone who's betrayed you without letting the betrayal consume you. Forgiveness helps a lot there." He gave my hand a squeeze, a comforting gesture that told me he understood and could help. Mom flinched.

"I don't know how," I confessed.

"I'll teach you, if you'll let me. It's what fathers are for."

I looked at him funny, confused six ways to Sunday. "But you're not my poppa. Poppa's my poppa."

He froze with every muscle in his body tense. He froze with shock, but he filled up with a quiet rage that was more terrifying than Curtis at his worst ever could be. His voice was almost a whisper, but it filled the room. "Evelyn, why doesn't my daughter know about me?"

Mom's voice shook with fear, her eyes wide and panicky, as she gasped out, "She's not a witch! I won't let you make her one! I won't let you steal her soul! I won't!"

"You got full custody in the divorce by pulling out the danger card, but you were obliged to give her my letters, at the very least. I respected your wishes, I even agreed that it could be dangerous to see her, but, dammit, Rhiannon is my daughter! How in the hell do you justify denying Rhiannon her father?!" His voice deepened and filled with a trembling base with each word. The glass on the side table began to shake, the water sloshing over the rim to spill on the table.

I think I whimpered or made some small noise and it brought his attention back to me. With a visible effort he calmed himself. Despite the worst of his rage, his hand had only tensed around my own. He hadn't hurt me. Somehow, seeing how the sight of me brought him back from his rage calmed me and made me feel safer with this stranger who claimed to be my father than I could remember feeling with my family.

Mom was getting her own fear under control by getting angry. "Rhiannon has a father! Rick has been more father to her than you ever could be, Damien! What kind a parent leaves his baby girl with a witch to go kill vampires? You only ever brought home trouble! That's no way to raise a child! Do you know how close we came to being eaten? Do you?"

"Why do you think I didn't fight that hard for visitation rights? I thought you were right, that she was safer with someone who wasn't going out to stir up the hornet's nest! From where I'm sitting, I see how wrong I was to think you'd keep her any safer than I would have! You're endangering more than her soul by refusing to accept that she has my genetics, that she's got the magic in her blood! Your youngest step child came close to dying, Evelyn! By the grace of the Gods Above, he's still alive and you're not burying two children! If she doesn't learn how to control the magic, it's going to ride her and Bad Things Happen when a mage gets ridden! I have had to clean up after witches before, Evie; I will not let you make my child into a witch just because you refuse to see her learn to control her magic!"

Hospital: Authorities

I don't know what my mom might have said to that because there was a loud knock on the door and it opened. Two men in department store suits came in, followed by a nurse. The first suit, a burly, darker Hispanic in his late thirties, turned to Mom and said, "Mrs. Burquet, I presume?" He paused for Mom's tight nod, and then resumed, "I'm Detective Valdez and this is Detective Cleary with the Special Crimes Division. We're here to ask you and your daughter a few questions, if we may."

The nurse came over to check me over. He stared into my eyes with a flashlight, checked my pulse, the IV bag, my reflexes, the whole gambit. I answered his questions as best I could and I think it satisfied him. After a few minutes, he left with the admonishment that I was to drink as much of the water as I could hold and to keep the questions brief.

Det. Cleary was a small, very white man with a shock of dark red hair and pale eyes. While his partner spoke with Mom, he asked Damien, "May I ask who you are, sir?"

"Damien Pierce. You're new."

The detective seemed to snap to attention. "May I ask why the state executioner is here?" His partner stopped talking and turned to Damien, too.

"I'm Rhi's father."

Det. Cleary blinked. "Rhiannon was admitted under the name Burquet."

Damien flashed a scorching glare at Mom. "I never gave you the right to change her name. I may not have fought for visitation, but I have never given up my paternal rights. That's coming back up in court."

The detective just took it all in while he waited for Damien to return his attention to him. "Mr. Pierce, how much time have you spent with Rhiannon?"

"Evelyn and I finalized our divorce when Rhi was a year old. A pissed-off vampire followed me home and tried to kill Evie. Fortunately, Rhi was staying with my mother, but Evelyn was understandably shaken by the experience and didn't want to have anything like that happen again. I couldn't blame her so I gave up visitation rights to avoid drawing attention to them. We stayed in contact through the lawyers. Evelyn's husband had them contact me when Rhi was hospitalized this morning."

"So this is the first time you've seen Rhiannon since the divorce?"

"Yes."

Det. Cleary started to say something again when the door opened once more. This time a cheerfully busy-looking matron entered. "Oh, good! You haven't started yet. Mrs. Burquet, I presume? Gladys Morley, Department of Child Protective Services. How do you do? We spoke with your husband and son just now and I need to get statements from Rhiannon and you."

Mom gave a tight nod and murmured some pleasantry. The social worker turned to Damien. "Sir, may I ask who you are?"

"Rhiannon's father, Damien Pierce."

"Pierce … Any relation to Lucille Pierce, the healer? I was informed that she looked in on Miss Burquet. Would you happen to be her son, the spook slayer?"

"I am a state contracted preternatural executioner, yes," Damien nodded, and then asked, "What's brought CPS to my daughter's bedside?"

Ms. Morley gave Damien a sharp glance. "That's an interesting way to phrase the question. CPS was called in for two reasons. The first is that there are two children who are in the hospital with severe injuries caused by fighting. That's just not normal. The second is that the hospital is legally required to report signs of severe and repeated child abuse. During the course of Miss Burquet's treatment, evidence of multiple bone fractures and internal scarring, in addition to heavy and varied bruising, were discovered. CPS, in the person of yours truly, is responsible for investigating the causes of these injuries, especially since there do not appear to be any medical records to justify the atypical degree of damage she's sustained."

At that point, I had had as much emotional stuff as I could take. I started sobbing, convinced that the social worker was going to put me in juvenile hall for the assault on Curtis or at least put me in foster care and I'd never see Poppa and Roz again. Damien, careful of the arm still taped down, arranged us so I had his shoulder to cry on. I saw the accusation in his eyes as he glared at Mom, then he turned all his attention to me. He let me cry it all out and just tried to be a safe harbor in the emotional storm. It was a unique feeling. I was spent and exhausted by the time the tears stopped. He offered the glass of water to me and helped me drink.

"Do you think you can answer the detectives' questions, Rhi?" he asked, his eyes taking me in, searching, I think, for my limits. There was a new tightness to his lips and his eyes were slowly dilating.

Auras are not something you physically see or touch or taste, but those parts of the brain interpret whatever sense we use to recognize them. They don't change what is normally sensed. If you were to take a picture and compare it to what your eyes saw, they would show the same scene. The aura is more an awareness laying over the actuality, like an expectation.

I caught a flash of Damien's aura and he was not a happy camper. I got the impression of a deep and burning rage building within a cage of cold, iron-hard control. The need to protect, focused on me, was both the fuel for that rage and about the only thing making up the control containing it.

Mom snapped, "Of course not, Damien! She's just a little girl and she's had enough shocks today!" Damien's aura flared briefly. He did not turn to look at her, instead keeping his eyes centered on my face.

I looked at Mom and I saw the fear in her face and it hurt. It hurt more than I cared to admit. I wanted to scream, "Why didn't you believe me? Why didn't you ever look at me?" but instead, I cried and turned back into Damien's arms, afraid to look at Mom and unable not to.

She turned from me and the glare she gave Damien was venomous. "What spell are you using to turn my daughter from me, you bastard??" she hissed.

He gave her back the anger and he added contempt, still refusing to look at her. "There's no spell involved but your own negligence." He took a moment, his eyes on the wall behind me before he turned to me and it was if in that momentary pause he dismissed Mom from his mind. I could almost see him reinforcing the cage of his control. When he turned back, he was focused on me, serious and protective.

"Rhiannon, do you feel up to telling these folk what you told your mother and me? If not, just say so. I'll tell them, but they will probably need to talk to you anyhow."

"Don't let me go, please," I asked.

"I won't, baby. I promise you." And he didn't. I answered the authorities' questions snuggled up in his arms. I had been through too much to feel safe and I knew the fall out was not going to be all sunshine and happiness. Nothing was going to be all right again, but somehow leaning into Damien I felt more confident that whatever was coming would be no more than I could deal with. I didn't feel so alone anymore.

Mrs. Morley was very solicitous towards me. She was very interested in how many visible signs of abuse I left when I healed myself, how long it took to complete the healing and how the self-healing worked, how often I went to the folks about Curtis, and what they did when we spoke. All that I understood, but when she asked how safe Roslyn was, I looked at her funny. Despite my first reaction upon waking, the thought that Curtis could sink so low was hard to truly grasp.

"Curtis liked to hurt me, but he tried it with Roz only once. I think he did it because he knew I can't stand to see her hurt. He couldn't do it and he started crying. He was nice for a few days after that. If I wasn't there to beat on, maybe he could get over it, but Rozzie's … she's special. You can't hurt her without hurting your self."

"Is she a mage, too, then?"

"It's not magic, it's Rozzie. She's – you know the rhyme about boys are made of slime and snails and puppy dog tails? She's the sweetness and spice and everything nice. You have to be a monster to hurt her. Curtis likes pain. He likes to see it, but he's not – he's not that far gone. There are people like him and they're safe people, but they, they know what they are and –" I stopped and looked at Mom. I didn't know how to say that Curtis was a sadist looking for a masochist and not have Mom freak. Shoot, even Poppa had a hard time dealing. He would, and finally did, do much better, but to this day there's a deeply disappointed puzzlement in his eyes when he talks about Curtis' proclivities. With a deep breath I committed to the truth. "And they make sure the people they do things like that with like what they do."

Mrs. Morley gave a long, slow blink. "What do you mean?"

"I think it's called 'beedeanessem'. Curtis had a magazine he showed me once and it had whips and stuff in it. He said he was going to try to get some of them and if I wasn't nice to him, he'd use them on me. He was pissed when the catalog people told him he had to send a check or use a credit card to buy from them to prove he was an adult." Damien squeezed me reflexively, more like an all body twitching of his muscles. Mom sputtered incoherently and slammed out of the room. The social worker watched Mom leave with narrowed eyes. She eyed the door for a moment, thoughts flashing across her face.

After it became clear that Mrs. Morley wasn't going to start her questions back up, Damien cleared his throat to draw her attention. Seeing he had it, he asked, "What is going to happen to my daughter's siblings?" She raised her eyebrows and Damien added, "I've worked with CPS in the past. If the boy isn't juvie bound, he's at least headed for a group home. Rhiannon is my daughter and I want her. If you do decide to remove the other kids, then they're welcome with Rhi."

Mrs. Morley opened her mouth, but Det. Cleary got his question in first. "When did you work with CPS, Mr. Pierce?" It was almost the first thing he had said since Mrs. Morley's arrival.

"If you stay with Special Crimes, you'll see for yourself, Detective. There are times when preeters pick children as their prey of choice. With most of my cases that CPS gets involved in, they're there because the parents are …" Damien looked down at me and picked his words, "no longer able to care for their children. There have been a few occasions where the children involved were procured with the consent of their parents."

Damien turned back to the social worker. "CPS is just what it stands for, Child Protective Services. You don't give a damn about the parents beyond their ability to adequately care for the children. Evelyn and her husband were either grossly negligent in protecting Rhi or they were incapable of protecting her. I've seen the kids taken for less reason than what Rhi's been through. I don't want her to lose all the family she's grown up with."

"You forget that there was magic involved, Mr. Pierce." Mrs. Morley gave good blank face, but not good enough. Her nose flared with the word "magic" like she was scenting something interesting.

"I'm not forgetting the magic. The things that Rhi told us …" I could feel Damien's jaw working as he tried to find the words. He gave up and tried a different tract. "The doctors and my mother didn't say a word about the signs of abuse. Mom knows that I would have been through the roof with Rhi out of it. I mean, it was bad enough thinking that the magic had slipped her during a normal childhood fight and knowing how scared Evie is of anything that even hints of the preternatural, but now … I may only have what Rhi's told us and what you said earlier to go on, but I can read between the lines really well. My daughter is damn lucky to be alive right now and that luck was being born with my genetics. The magic saved her life. I'm not forgetting that.

"My mother and Rhi can manifest the magic in our blood and that means that Rhi has to learn to control it. If she doesn't it's going to ride her. What happened to the boy is nothing compared to what mages are capable of. Without training, her magic is like if she was constantly carrying around a loaded gun with the safety off and a round chambered. The only person I trust to teach her how to control the magic is my mother because she's the only living person I've seen with a stronger signature."

"Say again? What do you mean, 'signature'?" Det. Cleary asked. Det. Valdez flashed him a look, but he didn't seem to pay it any attention.

"When a mage channels magic, some of their own essence goes into the mix. It's how they control the outcome. The essence is their signature and the potency of their essence is the strength of the signature. It takes a sensitive who's aware of auras to 'read' the signatures, but almost any aura sensitive can do it."

"Interesting," Mrs. Morley broke in. "Well, at this point, her testimony more closely matches the physical evidence, but there is still an element of 'he said, she said' to consider."

"And just what did … he say?" Damien's aura flared again, his eyes narrowing.

"He claimed that she instigated."

"And how many abusers blame their victims?"

"While you have a valid point, CPS is still investigating. You are correct that Curtis will be placed in a group home for a while. Dr. Kitchsal has requested that Rhiannon stay overnight for observation. My office is currently running background checks and if you clear, then yes, Rhiannon will be going home with you."

She rose and brushed down her skirt, saying, "As for the other children, the level of danger they may be in has yet to be determined. This entire investigation is just starting. If they are found to be in danger, then, yes, they will be removed from the Burquets' care. However, by your own words, Rhiannon may prove to be dangerous to them, however accidentally that may be. While they may be Rhiannon's blood relations, you are not and the law is clear that the only way they could be placed with you and Rhiannon would be if there were no closer acceptable relative willing to take them in."

"Understood, ma'am. Are there any other questions you would like to ask?" Damien swept his eyes over the detectives and back to the social worker.

Cleary looked like he wanted to continue, but Valdez beat him to it with, "Thank you, no". Mrs. Morley simply shook her head and left. The detectives murmured farewells and followed after.

I don't know how much longer Damien stayed because I fell asleep, exhausted, still curled up in his arms.