I said nothing more. She was not strong enough to handle this. I hadn’t ever felt the need to protect my mother and now that I was choosing to do it made me worry about my own darkness. Was it growing inside me and I didn’t notice it? My mother was not one to inspire compassion. How could I care about her after all she had done? Either the cursed blood we shared was getting thicker in my veins or it was the goodness of my father allowing me to care for her still. I hoped it was the latter.

“It’s time you accept who you are. If the three of you were joined then you’d have the power to read this. Understand it,” she spun around and pointed her finger at me. That vulnerable moment gone. The vicious monster I knew she could be was, once again, flashing in her eyes. “If there is danger out there, we won’t know because you’re selfish and stupid! We are meant to be unstoppable. All powerful! I had THREE OF YOU!”

I opened my mouth to defend myself when Annabelle appeared. She snatched the cigarette from my mother’s fingers and pressed it against her bare thigh. This was Annabelle’s favorite place to burn my mother. It seemed to hurt the worse. Annabelle had made note of that over the years and went for the leg closest to the inner thigh as possible.

“MOTHER FUCKER!” my mom screamed from the pain. Annabelle giggled then dropped the cigarette on the floor in front of her and was gone. Meanwhile, my mom was holding her thigh and cursing.

“You need to be more careful with those things,” I told her just as I did every time Annabelle burned her.

She shot me a glare then held her hand out for the cigarette to fly back up and into her palm. It was still lit when she took it between her fingers. I could see in her glare that she thought it was me that burned her. She was trying to figure out how I did it and got away with it. I never moved my lips to cast when it happened. Even though I had tried to tell her about Annabelle when I was younger she refused to believe me. Not because she didn’t believe in spirits. That would be silly, considering what we were. But because when she moved in she had used a spell to send the others away. It just hadn’t been strong enough for Annabelle and her anchor here.