The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [2]
“Maybe that is what happened to our mother,” Alexander said quietly. “Maybe I hurt her.”
“Alexander!” I gasped, horrified that my brother could think such a thing. “How can you blame yourself for Mother’s death? We were babies!”
“If I could lose control and hurt Lynette when I am seventeen, how much easier would it have been for me to lose control as a child?”
I did not remember my mother, though Papa sometimes spoke about her; she had died only a few days after Alexander and I were born. Her hair had been even fairer than my brother’s and mine, but our eyes were exactly the same color as hers had been. An exotic honey gold, our eyes were dangerous in their uniqueness. Had my family not been so well accepted in the community, our eyes might have singled us out for accusations of witchcraft.
“You are not even certain Lynette’s injuries are your fault,” I told Alexander. Lynette was my papa’s third child, born to his second wife; her mother had died only a year before of smallpox. “She was leaning too close to the fire, or maybe there was oil on the wood somehow. Even if you did cause it, it was not your fault.”
“Witchcraft, Rachel,” Alexander said softly. “How large a crime is that? I hurt someone, and I will not even go to the church to confess.”
“It was not your fault!” Why did he insist on blaming himself for something he could not have prevented?
I saw my brother as a saint — he could hardly stand to watch Papa slaughter chickens for supper. I knew, even more surely than he did, that he could never intentionally hurt someone. “You never asked for these powers, Alexander,” I told him quietly. “You never signed the Devil’s book. You are trying to be forgiven for doing nothing wrong.”
Papa returned home with Lynette late that evening. Her arms had been bandaged, but the doctor had said there would be no permanent damage. Alexander’s guilt was still so strong — he made sure she rested, not using her hands, even though he had to do most of her work. As he and I cooked supper, he would occasionally catch my gaze, the question in his eyes pleading: Am I damned?
CHAPTER 3
NOW
WHY AM I THINKING these things?
I find myself staring at the rose on my bed, so like one I was given nearly three hundred years ago. The aura around it is like a fingerprint: I can feel the strength and recognize the one who left it. I know him very well.
I have lived in this world for three hundred years, and yet I have broken one of its most basic rules. When I stopped last night to hunt after visiting Tora, I strayed into the territory of another.
My prey was clearly lost. Though not native to New York City, she had thought she knew where she was going.
The city at night is like a jungle. In the red glow of the unsleeping city the streets and alleys change and twist like shadows, just like all the human — and not so human — predators that inhabit it.
As the sun set, my prey had found herself alone in a dark area of town. The streetlights were broken, and there were more shadows than light. She was afraid. Lost. Alone. Weak. Easy prey.
She turned onto another street, searching for something familiar. This street was darker than the one before, but not in a way a human would recognize. It was one of the many streets in America that belong to my kind. These streets look almost normal, less dangerous, though perhaps a bit more deserted. Illusions can be so comforting. My prey was walking into a Venus flytrap. If I did not, someone was going to kill her as soon as she entered one of the bars or set foot in a café, which had probably never served anything she would wish to drink.
She seemed to relax slightly when she saw the Café Sangra. None of the windows was broken, no one was collapsed against the building, and the place was open. She started toward the café, and I followed silently.
I sensed another human presence to my left and reached out with my