The warlock took a pull from his cigarette and then leveled his eyes on me. “Lucas Delvaux could have never produced a child as talented and lethal as you, dear. He was a wealthy, spoiled mortal that was as weak to Persephone’s charm as all the others.”

“He is the reason I’m not like them. I can choose the good in me because of MY FATHER’S BLOOD inside me. My entire life I have had the ability to be who I wanted to be and not fall into their way. I was able to refuse the power of three and I was able to do things they cannot. I can love.”

He wagged his fingers that held the cigarette at me. “Mortal blood would have been too weak to withstand the Kamlock’s way. It wouldn’t have made you strong enough to be different. You don’t love and you’re not kind. You choose to love and you choose to be kind. You choose to fucking care when it suits you but, Catalina, you don’t like people in general. You decide who you will care about and then you do. That isn’t weak mortal blood.”

I shook my head, straightening my shoulders. He would not take this from me, too. He wasn’t taking my father from me. “It takes goodness. My father was good.”

He laughed. A deep dark cackle that I hated immediately. He then took another smoke and looked at me. “Why do you think you see the souls of those unable to let go of this life? The ones hanging on to someone or something. Do you know a caster who can do that?”

I said nothing. Many casters had different abilities.

“Why does the earth, the soil, the air, why does it obey you? What caster do you know that can do anything like that?”

I didn’t know. I had never understood it. I just accepted it.

He sat down on the edge of the trunk of Margo’s car. One black combat boot on the pavement and the other on the bumper. He looked comfortable. Relaxed. I hated him. He was taking everything from me and he didn’t seem bothered by it at all.

“Your father is Diabolus, Catalina. Denying me is pointless. You’ll need me and I will be here when you do. The Kamlock beauty and sorcery mixed with my omnipotent evil,” he flashed a wicked grin. “It was a brilliant and devious idea.”

“Satan?” I asked, not having a hard time believing that at all. He was making my life Hell.

He made a disgusted face. “Catalina, please. Don’t refer to me as such.”

“I speak Latin. I know what Diabolus is in English.”

He raised a single eyebrow. “Technically translated in English it is Devil. But that’s so general. There are so many of those.”