Worry continued to gnaw at me. “Did I completely fuck up? Does anything else know my family lives here now?”
“No, love, but I’ll ask some of the pixies to keep watch for a few weeks to be sure.”
I nodded, sniffing. “How am I supposed to alter their memories?”
He pulled back to look at me. “Your power is stronger than mine, so all you have to do is tell them what they should remember.”
Jax meowed loudly, and Thaddeus rolled his eyes.
“I’m bringing Jax home with us.”
“He hates me,” he replied dryly but didn’t object as Jax puffed his little chest out.
“I wish you were wrong,” I told him, staring at the picture frame on the wall of all of us smiling at my college graduation. “I wish I could still be a part of their lives.”
He gave me a grim stare and nodded. “I wish you could too.”
Pivoting on my heel, I made my way back toward the living room to face the music.
Corbin’s body was gone, but the blood was still there. Kai was cleaning everything he could with a spare bucket, bleach, and rags while Blaise was getting cussed out by Hunter.
“What the hell did you do to my sister?” Dean asked in a sharp tone.
“I’d actually like to talk to each of you privately.”
“Privately? What the fuck do you mean privately? Corbin just-he just fucking—” Hunter sobbed, his anger fading and being interchanged with grief.
My heart twisted as Hunter broke down, dropping onto the couch beside Dean, who hadn’t stopped staring at all the blood since he’d woken back up.
Mom stepped forward with a hesitant look in her eyes. “Let’s go chat, yeah?”
“Yes, please.”
She wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and we went into the kitchen where Thaddeus and I had just been.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but I used to see this kind of thing with your father. I never thought I’d see anything like it again, though.”
A shudder wracked through me. “What do you mean? What did you see with him?”
She reached out and grabbed me, fingers digging into my forearm as a glazed look came over her eyes. “I’m not sure, actually.”
“Well what did it look like? What you saw with him.”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you see it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean? Why did you say that then?”
She blinked a few times before hesitating. “I’m not sure, Lilith. I could’ve sworn I’d seen something like that before, but I don’t remember anything about it.”
Now that I thought about it, Mom didn’t seem particularly freaked out by me being a vampire or killing a vampire or the abandoned that broke into the house. She was the type to squeal and find high ground when a mouse showed itself.
I shook away the eerie feeling that came over me and focused. “I want you to listen to me carefully, okay?”
“Of course.” She maintained intense eye contact with me. “What do you need to tell me?”
