❝just ourselves and immortality.❞
Daisy Mercer has been told her whole life that vampires are the enemy. Witches are trustworthy. Daemons, well, daemons aren't even worth remarking on. And vampires would kill you without a second thought. But when...
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☾ ☽
DAISY'S ENTIRE BODY ACHED. Well, being knocked down by witchwind (a force that hadn't been summoned in centuries, once believed to be a myth by her until seeing it with her own eyes) would do that to you, and yet compared to the other witches, the ones that had been on the ground floor where most of the wind was concentrated, she got lucky. At least she'd only been knocked down. Peter Knox had literally gone flying when Diana Bishop summoned the witchwind.
Still, the knowledge that she had made it out relatively unscathed, with only a bruise or two forming on her, didn't exactly make the pain go away. To help with that, she'd drawn up a bath when she got home and soaked for a while to soothe the aching, as well as rubbing some lotion over the bruises and putting together an ice pack to keep on them. If she felt like hell now, tomorrow would be even worse, and she didn't want to do anything but sit there on her sofa with a book—one of Diana's, actually—and read until she fell asleep, even if it was there on the sofa rather than in her nice, warm, comfortable bed. The sofa would do. But those were her plans, and she intended to follow through with them.
And then there was a knock at the door.
Daisy glanced that way. No, she was far too tired to deal with anyone—be it Gillian or Peter Knox or literally anyone else. They were all there in the library with the witchwind, there wasn't any point in talking about it while they all still felt like they'd been swept up into a hurricane and spat out of the eye. So she ignored it, turning back to her book. Diana's writing was as engaging as her lectures, she was finding, but the book wasn't necessarily written for beginners. If she wanted to truly understand half of this, she'd have to do her own research. Not tonight. Tonight, she'd just read.
The knocking kept on. First just two more raps on the wood, slightly louder than before as if whoever was on the other side thought Daisy merely hadn't heard them the first time (as opposed to the truth, which was that she was ignoring them), and then there was a series of loud bangs, now actively trying to get her attention. Oh, fine! If they wouldn't just get the hint and go away—
Daisy set her book face down on the coffee table, the spine cracked, and stood. A jolt of pain shot through her leg, where one of the more prominent bruises was, and she winced, staying still for a second until it disappeared. Then she went over to the door and looked out the peephole. Oh. Wonderful. Her mother was on the other side. Exactly the person she didn't want to see right now.
"Mother," Daisy greeted stiffly after opening the door. Her mother raised her brows at her, her hands clasped neatly in front of her. "What a surprise."
"It shouldn't be," Alice said simply, and looked over her as she stepped around her and into the flat without an invitation.
Daisy was still holding onto the door. She muttered, "Yes, please do come in without me inviting you."
