Page 119 of Change
It had literally pained me to admit to Bianca that Damen was smarter than all of us, even though he usually lacked common sense and overlooked details. But it was true that, when Damen had his heart set on something, he was relentless.
It was for that reason Mu was attracted to Huo in the first place.
But unfortunately, I was his target right now.
“What is it that youwant, Damen?” I gritted through clenched teeth and glared at the door. Escape was no longer an option. “What is this suddenneedto know about corpses? Have you killed anyone lately? Are you looking for me to cover for you again?”
Damen’s smirk faded, and the lines of his face smoothed into professional serenity. “Your grandfather was there the day Bianca was born.” He spoke as if he knew what he was talking about, but that was obviously far from the truth. “Hehelpedthem with Bailey.”
“That’s ridiculous.” My laugh sounded strained even to my own ears, and my heartbeat quickened. There was no way I could believe this.
We were a close-knit family on my mother’s side.
Sure, Kayla might have lied to me for a decade, and Anthony only came to me if he needed help or wanted to annoy me. My motherdidhide Bianca right under my nose.
That was all very disappointing—and looked quite bad—but they weren’t my grandfather.
He would never betray me.
“Why in the world would you think that?” I asked, barely able to hear myself over my rising heartbeat.
“I considered that they might have used a changeling, but there’s no way that Bailey was a human child,” Damen continued, ignorant of my inner turmoil. His glasses reflected the Tiffany lamp on the table as he inclined his head—completely in lecture mode. “Titus and I got there shortly after Bianca was born, and she was already gone. They had no time to go to the human world and just snatch one. They knew we wouldn’t have believed it—the council wouldn’t either. So they had to come up with something real.”
He really thought he figured it out.
“You’ve told me this before.” I frowned at him. “You were five, you would have been fooled by a doll. There was enough time after that to trick the council.”
Damen’s brows furrowed. “No, I…” His words faded as his eyes narrowed. There was only a slight hesitation to his next words. “Here,” he said, holding his arm out to me as he offered the one and only way to fully convince me of his truth. “Go take a look for yourself.”
I stared at his limp wrist as my thoughts roared in my ears.
It would be so easy to go, to prove him wrong. This was my grandfather’s honor at stake.
Or I could just take the obnoxious fountain pen laying there so innocently on the table beside the onmyoji and end this once and for all. Unless we explored this further, he’d probably forget all about this in our next lives.
But that wouldn’t work either. Someone else had to have been talking to Damen, so the secret was already being exposed.
By God, though. I was not looking forward to this.
I loathed being in Huo’s head. He was dizzying and vain, and everything about him was blunt force and blinding destruction. The man didn’t have a subtle bone in his body. The nausea in the aftermath of one of these trips was reminiscent of the time I’d stupidly ridden a rollercoaster after eating a bad corndog.
Not a pleasant experience.
But he’d only ever asked if it was really, really important.
“Fine.” I sighed, dropping my books back onto my seat. “I guess I haveno choice.”
“You don’t need to sound so excited about it.” Damen’s eyebrow raised slowly as his attention wandered back to me.
“Believe me, I’m not,” I responded. “There is absolutelynothingexciting about this situation.”
“Oh!” Miles, of course, chose that exact moment to stroll past the library. He paused, poking his head through the door. “What’s exciting?”
Just great. Having Miles involved was exactly the last thing I wanted. Well, outside of this entire situation. But this was something else I’d been trying to avoid. Since he’d connected with Tu, his presence was becoming harder to ignore.
I scowled at him, throwing extra force behind my words. “I said it wasn’t exciting.”
So he could just leave.
