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They’d moved to the living room after clearing up and she sat on Matt’s lap while they chatted about football. Watching paint dry was more interesting than football, so she snuggled into Matt and zoned out.
She was drifting when she realised she hadn’t told them what happened with Drew. She sat up, resting her hand on Matt’s shoulder to balance herself. “I forgot, there’s something I wanted to talk to you all about.”
“Go for it,” Jake said.
“After you left last night, from the pub, I went to Drew’s.”
“Why?” Nate demanded, pushing his glasses up his nose.
That wasn’t what she wanted to tell them, so she ignored the question. “He knew that I didn’t know whether to trust him or Jonas.”
“You told him his name?” Nate’s glasses came off.
“No. Of course I didn’t. We call Jonas Subject B.”
“What?” Jake squinted at her and pulled a face at Josh.
“I’m Subject X, Jonas is Subject B and Drew is Subject D when we talk about it now.”
“Why?” Matt looked as confused at the others.
“It doesn’t get confusing then.” She bounced on his lap “Guys, please, that’s not the issue right now.”
“Okay, okay.” Nate slid his glasses on. “What is then?”
“Well, there’s several things really. I asked him if he was lying. He said he wasn’t.”
“That’s pretty much what we’d expect,” Jake pointed out.
“What do you know about Blood Magic?”
“You can do quite a lot with it,” Jake said.
“He told me we were linked because we share blood. He had a book on Blood Magic. It showed how to do this spell.
“You don’t need to be bound to use Blood Magic,” Matt said.
“No. So, anyway, we did it.”
“Did what?” Josh demanded.
“The magic. We set up candles, so he could prove it wasn’t a trick. He lied and showed me what happened, and then he told the truth and the blood didn’t react. He tried it on me and the candle always knew if I was telling the truth.”
“It was the blood that knew if you were telling the truth,” Matt said.
“What did you ask him?” Jake asked.
“If I could trust him, he said yes, and nothing happened.”
“He’s tricky, it’s possible to not tell the truth without lying,” Josh pointed out.
“He said that before we started. That I had to be very careful how I worded things. He got me to rethink my first few questions because he said he could get around them without lying. I got it in the end, and I believe him when he said he’s never lied to me. I can trust him, I know I can.”
“All right, what else did you ask him?” Nate didn’t seem convinced, and it irritated her.
“If he’d been kept from seeing me, and if the Council still exists.”
“What did he say?” Matt prompted her, his hand on her lower back.
“He said he was kept from me, and the Council does exist, that it will always exist in one form or another.” She watched them looked between each other. “There’s something else. He doesn’t think Jonas is dangerous, but he is lying to you.”
“No.” Nate shook his head. “You heard him yourself. Jonas has us protected and just forgot to tell us.”
“You may have asked it in such a way that he was able to word it without making the blood react,” Matt said.
“Why?” She threw her hands up. “For what reason?”
“How about to make you trust him and not us?” Jake suggested, arching an eyebrow at her.
“I trust you, I told him that. It’s him and Jonas I didn’t trust. But now I know that I can trust Drew. He also said Jonas tried to warn me away from you by the tiles on the Scrabble board.”
“No, that’s just ridiculous. You did it, you arranged the tiles subconsciously,” Nate insisted.
“Why would he warn you away from us?” Jake demanded.
“Because he thought I was a threat to you, that I’d break his cover over you and expose you. But it’s okay, you can tell Jonas that Drew’s put his cloaking device over me. If the Council come here they’d only see me as his daughter, with his bloodline of magic and nothing more. And they wouldn’t detect you at all.”
“What the—look, Jonas said the Council is no more, we have no reason to disbelieve him. Drew on the other hand...” Matt left it hanging but she knew what he meant.
“He hates the Council, he told me why. He worked for them. They told him who to kill, the ones the witch-hunters couldn’t touch.” Frustration joined irritation; they wouldn’t even consider it.
“Why would Jonas lie to us? He had the perfect chance to tell us. You were there! He wasn’t vague about anything, he answered our questions without hesitation.” Nate was getting just as irritated.
“Maybe...” She hesitated and then ploughed on. “Maybe he’s lying about it all because it has something to do with why he’s here.”
“What? Why? That makes no sense.” Nate’s voice rose, and she could feel how tense Matt was.
“Get him to do the blood magic with you,” she suggested.
“We don’t need to do that.” Josh slung his arm around Jake’s shoulder. “We don’t see why he’d have spent so long keeping us in the dark if we were in danger.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. You’d need to ask him.”
Nate folded his arms, his body language telling her he’d stopped listening to her. He wasn’t going to even think about what she was saying. She wanted to tell them about what she’d done, how she’d lost control and hurt Drew, but she knew if she told them he’d frightened her they’d use it against him.
“Did you ask about the Alchemy?” Matt asked her.
“No, I forgot about it.” She saw the look that passed between the twins, and she knew they’d never believe him over Jonas.
“Maybe it’s a misunderstanding.” Matt shrugged. “Maybe there’s two Councils and it’s all just a case of confusion.”
She didn’t need to look at Nate to know what he thought, the loud snort was enough.
“Let’s drop it,” Josh suggested. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter.”
“Of course, it matters,” Nate snapped. “We don’t know the real reason Drew is here. Did you ask him that?”
“He’s here because he wants to be my dad? Is that so hard to believe? That he’d want to be my dad?” Anger and hurt washed over her as she struggled to get up from Matt’s lap.
He caught her waist and hoisted her back. “No. That’s not what we’re saying. We just meant that there’s more to just his wanting to see you.”
“How can you possible know that?” she demanded.
No one spoke, and she huffed her breath out. “Look, at first you thought he was hitting on me, didn’t you?”
“It looked like it, and I still stand by that,” Nate answered her.
“He did look as if he was hitting on you,” Matt agreed.
“We didn’t see, so we’re out of this equation,” Jake said, and they sank back into the opposite sofa, glued together.
“Well, maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. I didn’t get weird vibes from it—”
“Yes, you did. You said his eyes were lifeless, soulless,” Nate corrected her.
“He probably got a shock bumping into me,” she said. “He did look blank, but what I’m saying is, I didn’t get any creepy guy vibes.”
“Creepy guy vibes?” Jake pulled a face in confusion.
“Yeah, y’know, when a guy hits on you and you can sense there’s something creepy.”
“Can’t say we’ve ever been hit on by a guy.” Jake smirked at her.
“What I’m trying to say is that maybe your suspicions of Drew stem from that. And my suspicions of Jonas stem from him nearly killing me.”
“He didn’t nearly kill you,” Nate scoffed.
“Tell that to my brain cells that withered and died in excruciating pain,” she retorted.
Nate drew a breath to speak but Matt spoke first, “I think the twins are right. Maybe we should forget the whole thing and concentrate on us as a family.”
Nate looked at him in surprise and then slumped, pulling a face. “Agreed,” he grunted.
“Yeah, sounds good to us,” Jake said.
Matt shook his head at Nate, and she knew they weren’t going to push it with Jonas. They were at a stalemate.
“Fine.” If they didn’t want to discuss it, she wouldn’t discuss it.
“Let’s watch a film,” Josh said, and picked up the remote.
The twins had one thing right though, she needed to concentrate on them as a family. It wasn’t just Jonas and Drew who were causing problems either.
“Are you okay? Y’know, with your dad and that,” she asked Matt, turning to see him better.
He put a hand on the back of her neck and kissed her forehead. “I’m fine, more than fine,” he said against her skin. “It’s going to be okay, Lily Flower. As long as I’ve got you.”
“You’ll always have me and them.”
Nate and the twins argued over which film to watch. Matt snuggled down, and she relaxed into him.
She couldn’t convince them about Jonas, but that wasn’t going to stop her from digging to find out what he was hiding. She’d get Drew to teach her everything he knew, every secret spell, every dark magic. And if anything, or anyone, did come for her boys she’d be ready to protect them.
