Ilona Andrews

“When I’m with him, I can feel myself getting better. It’s like he’s picking up broken pieces of me and putting me back together, and I don’t even know how he’s doing it. We never talk about it. We don’t go to therapy. He just loves me and that’s enough.”

“He said he’s coming with us. I thought that was your idea.”

“What?”

“He said it was decided.”

“It is.” Doolittle came up the ladder. “I decided it.”

“He killed a man,” Mom said.

“He was framed,” Grandma Frida said.

“You don’t even know the story,” Mom said.

Grandma shrugged. “Framed. A man that pretty can’t be a murderer.”

Mother stared at her.

“Penelope, I’m seventy-two years old. You let me enjoy my fantasy.”

“Go Grandma.” Arabella pumped her fist in the air.

“Dear God, Connor, that was a ten-million-dollar house.”

He shrugged. “I found it cathartic. Would you like some coffee

Establish a common ground. Remind him who you are. “Where is the swing?” she asked. It had been the favorite hangout of the Rogan kids. That’s where they’d gone when he’d had to ask her advice, back when he was twelve and she’d been the cool older cousin Kelly, twenty and wise in all things teenager.

“It’s still there. The oaks grew and you can’t see it from the balcony.” Connor turned, set her cup in front of her, and sat down

If Connor decided he wanted her dead, her magic, what little of it there was, wouldn’t be enough to stop him.

Connor was the culmination of three generations of careful marriages aimed at bolstering the family’s magic and connections. He was supposed to have been a worthy successor to the fortune of House Rogan. Much like her, he hadn’t turned out the way his parents had planned

The security camera footage identified two arsonists: Adam Pierce and Gavin Waller.”

He waited.

“Gavin Waller is my son,” she said. The words sounded hollow. “My son is a murderer.”

“I know.”

“I love my son. I love Gavin with all my heart. If it was my life against his, I would die for him in an instant. He isn’t an evil person. He’s a sixteen-year-old child. He was trying to find himself, but he found Adam Pierce instead. You have to understand, kids idealize Pierce. He is their antihero—the man who walked away from his family and started a motorcycle gang. The bad boy charismatic rebel.”

The name is Mad Rogan. They also call me the Butcher and the Scourge, but Mad is the most frequently used moniker.”

as about to give me wouldn’t hurt. It was the first time my young brain connected the unsettling feeling of my magic talent detecting a lie to the actions of other people

John Rutger lied because he was a scumbag