Dominion 4 - Ascendance Read Online Free PDF Page B

to ever become Pillar. You come from a long line of very powerful male witches. Not everyone likes that, and some like it too much. Be careful.”
“Okay.” Sounded like life as usual to me.
    Timothy left, throwing occasional glances back my way as he crept through the gate and got into the car. I closed and locked the door and had turned to return the kitchen when a tile snapped beneath my feet. To save my ankle from more damage and pain, I let myself fall, taking the brunt of my weight with my other knee. The lingering sting left my ankle as a deep, hot pain sprung up in my knee.
    I sprawled back, landing on my butt with my back to the tree, sitting in the ring of earth and roots. The broken tile hadn’t sprained my ankle, thankfully, but the three-inch gash that went through my jeans and into my flesh oozed blood. It hurt too. I clapped my hands over it, wondering if I would need to call for help and get it stitched, or if I could just put a Band-Aid on it.
    Taking a clean rag out of my hoodie pocket, I blotted at the wound. Just a bleeder, nothing serious. I pushed myself up, using the trunk of the tree, and limped to the kitchen to find the first aid kit I’d bought at the grocery store. Later I’d have to go back and clean up any remaining blood in the foyer, but resting until the sting went away wouldn’t hurt anything.

Chapter 5
    A
FTER I finished cleaning the kitchen, my phone beeped that the charge was complete, so I turned it on and listened to my messages. Only two, one from Gabe, one from Jamie. Both fairly calm, which surprised me. My only text was from Kelly, replying to my earlier text with a simple “Glad you’re okay.”
    A ladybug, or maybe an Asian beetle, kept showing up in the kitchen, same coloring as the one in the bedroom: red with cinnamon spots. I finally left the window open, hoping it would find its way out.
    I’d cleaned the entire kitchen and was sweeping the leaves in the foyer into piles to bag up when something buzzed. After a few moments of silence I continued sweeping, then the buzz came again, from a box near the door. It looked like the call box our building had back home. I pushed the button and said, “Hello?”
“Hey, is this Mr. Rou? I’m Caleb, a friend of Tim’s. He said you needed yard work done.”
    Oh. That was fast. I put the broom aside and opened the door to head to the gate. I could have buzzed it from the inside of the house, but wanted to look at the guy from a safe distance first.
    My first thought was “wow.”
Caleb wore jeans like a man should wear jeans: tight, dirty, torn, but clinging in all the right places. His shirt, a button-up plaid, short-sleeved with a pocket, stretched across his chest and broad shoulders the way they did in cowboy movies. He wore a genuine cowboy hat over what looked like short blond hair, and squinted behind darktinted sunglasses. Fuzzy blond hair peeked out from the top of his neckline, and his tanned arms were covered in the fluff. He even wore some sort of snakeskin-looking boots. Had I flown to California or Texas? Wow, cowboy, wow.
“Mr. Rou?” he asked.
    I blinked a few more times at him before looking behind him to a truck parked in front of the house with a trailer full of yard equipment loaded on it. “Yeah. Sorry.” After unlocking the gate, I pulled it open as far as it would go, which wasn’t far. He stepped inside.
    “I see the problem.” He smiled, head swiveling while he surveyed the work to be done. Up close I could see the scratchiness of a day’s worth of growth covering his cheeks, and wondered how good that would feel against my skin. I had to shake it off and remind myself that Gabe and I were still a couple, even if he wasn’t here, even if he had been ignoring me the past few weeks. Maybe he’d be willing to wear some cowboy-like clothes for a little evening adventure, if I could get rid of Sam for a while. Sigh.
    “I don’t want to lose any trees or anything. Just cut the grass to a