A Darker Past (The Darker Agency #2)(54)

Mom nodded. She looked as proud of Kendra as I felt. To Lukas and Dad, she said, “Best to stay here. Overwhelming Cassidy isn’t the way to do this.” To Kendra and me, she said, “Let’s go.”

One by one, we marched to the Belfair doorstep like prisoners walking to their last supper. Kendra led us into the house, and we got about five steps in before Cassidy came running.

“Did our conversation the other day go in one ear and out the other?” she bellowed. “Get them out of this house. Now.”

“Mom, I—”

“Now!” Cassidy curled her fist tight, and began to glow. Even if what Lorna said was true, and the Belfair magic had in fact been weakened, I still didn’t wanna stick around for whatever was left.

I threw my hands up and stepped back, pulling Mom with me. “Okay, okay. We’ll go.”

Mom sighed. She wasn’t the least bit affected by the show. With a level gaze, she said, “You will never learn, will you? We’re trying to help. Ourselves and you. Your entire coven—your daughter—is in terrible danger, yet all you can do is scream and flail like a child. I pity you, Cass. You’re about to lose everything, and you can’t even see it.”

Cassidy looked ready to spit fire. She nodded to the entryway. “I trust you can find the door. Don’t let it hit you in the self-righteous ass on the way out.”

“I’m sorry, Kendra,” Mom said as she herded me out the door and onto the porch. When we got outside, I tried to turn back, but she held tight to my arm and steered me toward the car.

“So we’re running out of time,” I said once we’d made it to the end of the driveway. Dad and Lukas met us halfway to the car. There was a smell in the air. Like overripe bananas. It was similar to the smell at school when Kendra camouflaged the note from Mr. Fritz, as well as when the mirror broke, seconds before Gressil appeared. I inhaled. “Okay. What is that smell?”

“Magic,” Dad said. “You said the dead witch told you Belfairs had no magic, but it appears Cassidy has some juice left.”

I glanced back toward the house. It looked the same as it always did. “Magic…smells?”

Mom’s eyebrows shot up. She glanced from me to Dad for confirmation.

He threw his arm around her shoulders. “It’s rare, but some demons can smell magic. I have the ability, so it’s likely Jessie inherited it.”

The look on her face was hard to read, which bothered me. Ouch… “Too creepy?”

She smiled and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Nothing about you is creepy, Jessie. Except maybe your inability to put clothes in the hamper and wash the dishes.” She glanced over at Dad. He nodded. “I’m still adjusting to the change. Now, you were saying, smell?”

There were definitely worse things to inherit. Like a foot fetish or stink breath. “I’ve noticed it more and more lately. I can smell when Kendra does a spell. It’s got a funky kind of sweet scent. I smell it now, meaning Dad is right. Cassidy does have magic.”

“Lorna told us it’d been weakened,” Lukas said. “That wouldn’t mean it was gone entirely.”

“Either way, she did say it wasn’t enough to put the demon away, and that puts us back at square one.” I waited for a lecture on negativity, but Mom wasn’t paying attention to me anymore. She was looking over my shoulder, at the house.

A second later, Dad and Lukas flew into motion, making a direct path to Kendra’s front door. When I turned, I understood why. On the porch, seeping into the house from outside the front door, was a cloud of purple smoke.

“No!”

I took off after them, Mom bringing up the rear. Dad slammed into the door, crashing to a jarring stop.

“Dad,” I yelled. What the heck was he waiting for? “Open the door.”

He gripped the handle and pulled. Nothing happened. “Can’t. The wards.” He closed his eyes and stepped to the side, into a patch of shadow. After a moment, he opened them and frowned. “Can’t shadow in, either.”

“How could the demon get in?”

Dad surged forward and kicked angrily at the door. “Far more powerful than me. A simple witch ward would be like plastic wrap for him.”

A sound sliced through the air around us. A scream. Kendra. The sound tore through me like a blade, slicing off chunks of my soul and turning the blood in my veins to ice. Something inside the house shattered, and another scream—this one from Cassidy.

“No, no, no,” I whispered, shoving past Dad. I pounded hard on the door. “Cassidy! Drop the wards.”

The noise inside the house was horrible. Breaking glass and muffled screams. My imagination kicked into overdrive, the pictures in my head painted in horrifying shades of the reddest red.

Dad threw himself at the door, twisting and yanking on the handle. It broke in his hand, falling to the porch with a clatter, but still the door didn’t budge. He growled. “Unless she lifts—”

The smell in the air changed, and I could actually feel the wards slip loose. Dad must have felt it, too, because he whirled around and broke through the door as easily as bursting through paper. It splintered in half, falling to the floor as we all charged inside.

The place was in shambles. The couch was turned on its side and the end tables—antiques from Kendra’s grandmother’s old house—were in pieces, strewn around the room like junk. There was no sign of Cassidy or Kendra.