She lifted one shoulder again. Beside me, Vas was very still, but the way he held his head told me he had his listening ears on.

“She never told me. She was inconsolable, Danica. We’d been friends for years and she told me she needed my help and I couldn’t ask questions.”

I tried to put myself in my mom’s shoes. Tried and failed. “Why leave Evie?”

“She said it was for your sister’s own good. For her safety. She loved both of you girls more than birds love the sky. I can tell you now that leaving her baby behind… it nearly killed your mother. She became a shadow of herself the moment she realized she needed to run.”

Harriette reached for her cup. “If you like, I can find a way to redo the suppression spell.”

Vas snarled. Harriette’s eyes went wide as he leaned forward. “Just fucking try, seelie.”

I gaped at him. He let out a low growl at whatever he saw on my face. “Don’t let them tell you you’re broken, Danica.”

I smiled. “You’re a good friend, Vas.” Then I turned back to Harriette. “No thank you.”

She wasn’t surprised by my answer. She simply gave me a nod. Then, with a wary glance at Vas, she got to her feet and hurried out of the room with a muttered “be right back.”

“You wanna tell me what that was about?”

Vas sipped his coffee as if nothing had happened. “She never would’ve told you what she did, you know that right?”

I nodded. “I could’ve killed someone. If I hadn’t met Samael, and then Selina, I probably would have some day when the spell failed. And it probably would’ve been someone I cared about. I can maybe understand suppressing my magic as a child. But to never tell me about it… to never give me a choice as an adult…”

“They stole that from you.”

“Yeah. And now I have all this power that I can barely control.”

We both went silent as Harriette’s footsteps on the wooden floorboards warned us she was entering the room. She held a small, mother-of-pearl box in her hands and she set it on the table in front of me.

“Your mom ran with little more than the clothes on her back. She asked me to keep a few things for you girls… in case she didn’t make it.”

Frustration roared up from deep within my soul. Mom had known there was a high chance she would die. Why had she left Durham? And why had she come back? What would make her risk returning to the same place she’d fled?

I ran one finger over the lid of the box, imagining my mother doing the same. “Evie should be here for this.”