Chapter 14
His hand changed first.
We were still frozen under the chandelier. My father's fingers were locked around my wrist where the mark had flared, and the whole ballroom had gone quiet except for the string quartet's last dying note. I could feel his grip shaking. Not from age. From holding something back.
Then his nails thickened.
I watched it happen inches from my face. The skin over his knuckles pulled taut and grayed, the nails curving out into dark, horned points. A faint sheen ran up his forearm, hair rising where there hadn't been hair before. He'd kept his suit buttoned so tight for so long I'd never seen it. My mother made a small sound behind me.
"Let her go," the young man in the brown coat said. He'd stepped between us without me seeing him move. His forearm was already bleeding from where he'd caught the edge of my father's first swipe, but he didn't back up.
My father didn't let go. He stared at my wrist, at the golden light still branching under my skin, and his lip curled off his teeth.
"You don't know what that costs," he said to me, voice low and ragged. "You think it's a gift."
He lashed out.
It wasn't a punch. It was a rake, claws open. He yanked me forward and cut across my left shoulder, right over the bandage. The white gauze split with a soft rip and heat shot down my arm so fast my knees buckled. I felt the blood come warm under the lace of my nightgown, the same place that had been clawed before. The smell of copper hit the air and someone in the crowd gasped.
I didn't scream. I couldn't get air.
He raised his hand again for a second strike, higher this time, aimed at my throat. Before it could fall, the young man slammed his shoulder into my father's chest and took the hit on his own forearm. I heard the cloth of his striped shirt tear. I heard him grunt through his teeth. Three red lines opened from his wrist to his elbow, beading instantly. He didn't fall. He locked his other hand around my father's wrist and held it.
"Get off her," he said, breathing hard. "You're done."
My mother was already moving. She'd backed toward the foyer table where the house phone sat beside the guest book. Her cream dress brushed the marble as she fumbled for it, emerald brooch flashing.
"Sheriff? Yes, Hawthorne County sheriff, this is the Whitmore residence on Ridge Road," she said, loud enough that the whole ballroom heard. Her voice shook but she didn't stop. "My husband is assaulting my daughter. There are fifty witnesses. Please send help now."
That broke the freeze. Phones came up everywhere. The charity gala crowd — women in long dresses, men in tuxedos who'd been holding champagne — lifted their phones and started recording. The crystal chandelier threw their light back in a hundred shaking squares across the ceiling. No one moved closer. No one had to. The cameras were enough.
My father saw them. He saw the red on his own claws and the blood on my shoulder and the blood on the young man's arm, and for a second his face twisted like he might still try to explain it away.
The pain in my shoulder was pulsing in time with the mark. The golden light had dimmed when he hit me, choked by shock, but now it throbbed harder each time my heart beat. I pressed my right hand over the bleeding bandage and felt the heat spike under my palm.
I remembered the dusk outside, his hands joined with mine, how the light had spread when we touched. It had needed contact. It had needed choice.
I grabbed the young man's bleeding forearm with my bleeding hand.
The contact was slick and hot. He flinched but didn't pull away. He curled his fingers around mine. The branching light that had been faint on my wrist suddenly shot up both our arms, bright gold, so bright the chandelier's glow washed out. People raised hands to shield their eyes. The light flooded the marble foyer, reflecting off the stone, off the glass, off the phones recording us. It wasn't warm anymore. It was blinding.
My father reared back, his clawed hand thrown over his eyes. The light caught the ridges on his nails, the gray cast on his skin, making it impossible to hide what he was. A woman near the front whispered, "Oh my God, his hands," and another phone moved closer.
The flare held for three long seconds while I squeezed the young man's arm and let the pain feed it. Then it snapped out, leaving afterimages.
My father stood exposed in the middle of the ballroom, chest heaving, one hand still half-clawed, my blood on his fingertips, the young man's blood on his other knuckles. The bandage on my shoulder hung loose, soaked through. The young man stayed in front of me, his forearm dripping onto the marble, his other arm keeping me upright. He was pale but standing.
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Outside, far down Ridge Road, I heard sirens.
My mother hadn't hung up the phone. She held it to her chest and looked at me, and I knew we weren't alone anymore.
