But then another explanation occurred to me. In the weeks I’d raved in the shadows while my friends sat watching me, someone had decided it would be a good idea to remove all trace of Liam from the house. So they had emptied the study. They probably told themselves that they were sparing poor hapless Callie any further heartache.

I felt so overcome with rage that my vision blurred and I thought I might faint. I clenched the doorframe to steady myself and noticed that my arm was glowing. Spirals and knots moved beneath my skin like a nest of angry snakes. My bonds, but also my protection. They were made out of my own power. I could let them control me or I could control them.

I straightened myself up and stepped back into the hall. I held up both arms and splayed my fingers, willing the energy inside me – all the hurt and anger, the disappointment and fear – out. Sparks sizzled off my fingertips; gold rays shot out of my hands. The spirals and knots inside me uncoiled. I felt them stretching out within the boundaries of the house, from attic to basement. No one would ever take something from my home again, I swore. I closed my eyes and pulled the spirals back inside. Or from me again. The wards snapped back through my fingertips like a rubber band and coiled up inside me, hotter and more powerful for their walk on the outside. I felt like I’d swallowed the universe. It felt good.

Chapter Nineteen

CHAPTER NINETEEN

TEN MINUTES LATER I left my house, dressed in tight black jeans, snug white t-shirt and motorcycle boots, the Aelvestone tucked into my jeans pocket. I was going to rock that spell circle and bring back Brock. Then I was going to tell the Grove to go to hell. I was the doorkeeper. They weren’t going to close my door. I was ready to take names and kick ass …

“Cal … leack?”

A voice from above calling my name stopped me short halfway across my lawn. I whirled around, prepared to face an avenging god ready to smite me for my hubris, but it was just Bill sitting on the edge of my roof. Of course, I chided myself, an avenging God would have known how to pronounce my name. I shaded my eyes with my hand to look up at him. He sat with the sun at his back, his face under the brim of his cap in shadow so I couldn’t see his expression, but his voice had sounded concerned.

“Yes, Bill, is something wrong?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing. There was a lot of banging coming from inside.”

I’d forgotten about Bill up on the roof while I was throwing around my wards. Thank God he hadn’t gotten knocked off.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I was just … um … rearranging some old furniture.”