feels mantle

“Your breath smells like celery,” I replied. “Molly, how are those spells coming along?”
“I think there’s some kind of counterspell hiding them,” she said. “It’s tricky, so stop bumping my elbow. I’m concentrating over here.”
I let out an impatient breath and fought against a surge of anger. She was the apprentice and I was the wizard. There were wizards who would have beaten unconscious any apprentice who spoke to them like that. I’d always been kind to her—maybe too kind—and this disrespect was what I got in return? I should educate her to respect her betters.
I made a low growling sound in my chest and clenched my fists. That impulse wasn’t mine. It was Winter’s. Molly and I had a relationship built on structure, trust, and respect—not fear. We had always bantered back and forth like that.
But something in me wanted to . . . I don’t know. Put her in her place. Take out my frustrations on her. Show her which of us was the strongest. And it had a really primitive idea of how to make that happen.
But that was unthinkable. That was the mantle talking. Loudly.
Hell’s bells. As if I didn’t have enough trouble thinking my way past the influence of my own glands already.
I heard a slight sound behind me and turned in time to see Sarissa vanish into the bathroom, moving in absolute silence. The rabbit had given up the statue routine and bolted.
Sarissa had good instincts when it came to predators.
I turned back to Molly to find her looking at me, her eyes wide. Molly was a psychic sensitive. She could feel emotions the way most of us can feel the temperature of a room. Sometimes she could even pluck someone’s thoughts out of the air.
She knew exactly what I was feeling. She had all along.
And she hadn’t run.
“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.
“It’s nothing,” I said. I forced myself to think my way past the mantle’s influence. “Find a steel needle to use as the focus,” I said. “Should give you an edge against whatever magic the Sidhe are using.”

Cold Days Chapter 36, Page 355-356


“I feel it, you know,” she said. “The pressure inside you.”
“I’ve got it buttoned down,” I said, and started driving. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to let it make me . . . take anything away from you.”
Molly folded her hands in her lap, looked down at them, and said in a small voice, “If it’s given, freely offered, you can’t really take it away. All you’re doing is accepting a gift.”
Part of me felt like something had torn in my chest, so deep was the ache I felt at the hope, the uncertainty in the grasshopper’s voice.
And another part of me wanted to howl and attack her. Take her. Now. It didn’t even want to wait to stop the car. If I went purely by the numbers, there was no reason at all not to give in to that urge—except for the car crashing, I mean. Molly was an adult woman now. She was exceptionally attractive. I’d seen her naked once, and she was really good at it. She was willing—eager, even. And I trusted her. I’d taught her a lot over the years, and some of that had been extremely intimate. Master-apprentice relationships were hardly unheard-of in wizarding circles. Some wizards even favored that situation, because on the spooky side, sex can be a whole hell of a lot more dangerous than recreational. They regarded the teaching of physical intimacy as something as inextricably intertwined with magic as it is with life.
It’s possible that, from a standpoint of pure, unadulterated reason, they might even have a point.
But there was more to it than reason. I’d known Molly when she was wearing a training bra. I’d hung out in her tree house with her after she’d come home from high school. She was the daughter of the man I respected most in this world and the woman whom I least wanted to cross. I believed that people in positions of authority and influence, especially those in the role of mentor and teacher, had a mountainous level of responsibility to maintain in order to balance out that influence over less experienced individuals.
But mostly, I couldn’t do it because Molly had been crushing on me since she was about fourteen years old. She was in love with me, or at least thought she was—and I didn’t feel it back. It wouldn’t be fair to her to rip her heart out that way. And I would never, ever forgive myself for hurting her.
“It’s okay,” she almost-whispered. “Really.”
There wasn’t anything much to say. So I reached over, took her hand, and squeezed gently. After a while, I said, “Molly, I don’t think it’s ever going to happen. But if it ever does, the first time damned well isn’t going to be like that. You deserve better. So do I.”

Cold Days Chapter 36, Page 359-360