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"It wasn’t working"

I closed , but these were the first words Evan Trueblood had spoken in et in the way

"I thought I had all the math in my head I can do math around ten other witches, I can see it in the air around a working I thought I had it But Iat his hands now too, not sure where this was going, but it sounded perilously close to an apology

"If you hadn’t been there, the fangheads would have gotten totally free of the te and attacked me, and I’d have been part of the circle And they would have finished the working All of the witches would have died Molly would have killedme He turned his hands over and stared at the empty palms "In the past hundred years, the witch population in the Southeast dropped by seventy percent" He turned his head to takethere into keep my face unemotional, nonreactive "Vamps are responsible We knew it, but we couldn’t prove it The European council of Mithrans wasn’t interested in anything we said, though we petitioned theheads call their gathering of the chief bloodsuckers

"Because of you," he nearly snarled the word, "because of the investigation you did into the Damours, the holder of the blood diamond, Leo Pellissier had to ads, the murders, the whole nine yards He had to report it to the European va sourly, looked out into the day "The Witch Council had been trying to get the MOC involved in the investigation for decades and he wasn’t interested Not till you got involved and discovered the answer to so for more than twenty years And you did it all in amy children killed"

"Nearly"

"Shut up I’m not done"

I sat back and shut up

"You saved er in the first place, but I knoife, and she was right in the middle of the trouble anyway Then you killed one of us who had been caught up in the darkness of de You saw it and you dealt with it, and I didn’t see it and I did nothing You saved us all And I have treated you like shit And, yeah, I kno you feel about that word, but that’s what I treated you like"

Evan laughed again, this one through his nose and almost real "You can talk now"

"Wow That’s a lot of self-flagellating hooey"

"I a his hands--"dang polite, it’s sometimes hard to reme" He looked froo ahead Talk I’lared at ed "Seriously Thank you I love Molly I love your children I even love you, though that shocks the heck outta me And I have missed you all so much I want back the faain let ing that in any way"

"I knoasn’t sensible to have been so angry at you for everything that happened," he said "Evangelina was out of control, so steeped in deic that the entire Witch Council working togetherher down You did us all a huge favor taking her on You put your life on the line"

I shuddered, reave to the pointed blade The feel of her blood, hot and thick, as it erupted over my hand "I would take it back, if I could," I whispered

Evan sighed "I knew all along that et over it I knew that Butthere’s stuff you don’t know About me and my history And it makes it hard to let people in, close to my family"

He took a breath that sounded relieved and shaky and determined all at once, which was a lot for most people, but probably not for an air witch like Evan Trueblood "I’ll let you talk to Angelina And I won’t say anything when Molly is finally ready to call you She forgives you, by the way For killing her sister"

Joy swept through me at the words I nodded and wiped away a stray tear that had escaped down my cheek