Page 61 of Illusory

A part of me knew I was just procrastinating to avoid facing Dominic after one of the most humiliating nights of my life, but I chose to focus on making my hair look pretty instead.

Everyone (who wasn’t in the throes of bloodlust) was already in the kitchen by the time I finally made it downstairs forty-five minutes later. The sight of their fresh faces gathered around the breakfast table, casually discussing the increaseddemon presence in Hollow Hills turned my already bad mood into an entire bushel of sour grapes. I was just about to turn around and leave when Gabriel spotted me at the doorway and foiled my plan.

“Ah. There she is,” he announced cheerfully, drawing everyone’s attention to me as though they had been waiting on pins and needles for my arrival.

“Finally. Pull up a chair. Isa just made homemade waffles,” informed Tessa and then shoveled a fork-full of waffles into her mouth before turning to Jackie and marveling, “They’re so much better than the frozen ones I usually eat. It’s too bad you can’t have any.”

“I’ve had waffles before,” answered Jaqueline in a tone that said she didn’t really miss them anyway.

“But you haven’t hadIsa’swaffles,” countered Tessa, apparently unwilling to let the damn thing go.

Despite my best effort, my gaze slid to Dominic and my heart instantly sped up at the sight of him. He was sitting at the far end of the table, immaculately dressed, with a glass in one hand and a grimace on his face that appeared to be aimed at the clear liquid swirling around in his glass. A liquid that definitely wasn’t water.

“Good morning, Miss Blackburn,” sang Isa, momentarily stealing my attention as she busied herself working her magic at the stove. “I’ll have a plate ready for you in just a sec,” she informed, beaming as she turned over the breakfast sausages in the frying pan.

Maple-glazed breakfast sausages…

Dammit. “No thank you, Isa. I’m not hungry,” I lied, glaring over at Dominic again.

Even though the food smelled delicious and made my tummy rumble at the sight of it, I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing me indulge in the fruits of his hiredchef’s labor.

At that, he finally turned to meet my eyes, and I doubled down on my glare.

“Well, sit down anyway,” said Tessa, oblivious to the icy exchange going on behind her head as she continued to stuff her mouth with waffles like they were going out of business. “We should talk about what happened yesterday,” she pressed, her words garbled around the food she was still chewing.

“What’s there to talk about?” I crossed my arms and leaned my shoulder against the wall but didn’t enter the kitchen any more than that. “I’m not interested in sitting around and rehashing the same story over and over again. It’s not going to change from yesterday to today.” And that included the key details I’d very purposely left out of the conversation last night.

Initially, I’d omitted the fact that I’d almost been killed because it was embarrassing and scary and I really didn’t want to give them another reason to keep breathing down my neck. But also, because I hadn’t even been sure exactlyhowI’d walked out of there in one piece in the first place. Not until I’d spoken to Dominic.

And frankly, after what he’d theorized last night—that I had some kind of power over the bloodhounds—I wanted to talk about it even less today than I did yesterday. At least not until I figured out exactly why the Hellhounds protected me and what precisely that meant about me.

“Actually, I was thinking we should discuss what we’re going to do about it,” she answered as she stabbed at the last piece of waffle on her plate before hoovering that one too. “I think it’s safe to assume the Roderick sisters already got to Nikki, but we need to know for sure. And we need to get some eyes on them so we can figure out their next move.”

“How do you propose we do that?” asked Gabriel, his face already twisted into a frown as though he anticipated it was going to be putting one or more of us in some unnecessary danger.

“Well, I haven’t actually gotten that far which is why we need to put our heads together and come up with some kind of plan here. Don’t you think?” she added, turning to Jaqueline for agreement.

Jackie nodded but didn’t say much else.

“We can try a locator spell,” I suggested, remembering the time we’d done one for our mother when the Roderick sisters had taken her way back when. That was the night they destroyed everything—the night they used Trace’s body as Lucifer’s vessel. “I can ask Caleb to swing by at lunch.”

“Wait. Don’t we need something personal of Nikki’s for that kind of spell to work?” asked Tessa, like she was brand-new to all of this and didn’t know how any of it worked.

“Yeah,” I answered, dragging the word out, waiting for her brain to catchup.

“So then…how are we going to do the spell?”

Seriously, Tessa?“We have an entire house of her crap at our disposal,” I reminded her since she obviously wasn’t going to catch up on her own. “I’m sure Caleb can grab whatever he needs on the way over here.”

“Oh. Right.” She jabbed her index finger in my direction. “Good thinking.”

“Yeah.Groundbreaking,” I said and resisted the urge to roll my eyes at her. What the heck had gotten into her? She seemed so off her game.

Maybe it was all the carbs she kept pigging out on?

“Where are we on the Sang Noir front?” asked Jaqueline, drawing my attention over to her. She was seated beside Tessa with Elspeth’s old grimoire in front of her and an open journalbeside it. She’d been jotting down her translations in the journal for days, but judging from the lack of used pages, she hadn’t gotten all that far. “Have you made any progress with the Macarthur family grimoires?”

“Well, not exactly,” I answered, trying not to sound too dejected even though I felt that way inside. “The good news is they’re written in English. The bad news is I still can’t make heads or tails out of them. I guess you were right after all,” I said, eyeing my mother for any signs of gloating. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to learn how to port on my own. At least not any time soon.”

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