The Magick of Dark Root (Daughters of Dark Root) by April Aasheim

that we keep using him as an example of what not to be like?”  
    It was a lot to ask at once, but the comparison to a man I didn’t know was starting to weigh on me.  
    Mother took her cane and rapped me on the knee.  
    “Ouch!” I exclaimed. “What was that for?”
    “Armand was a powerful warlock, but he was always…crossing the line.” Her eyes settled on the oil painting of the man, the woman, and the horse. “When I first met him, he showed a lot of promise. You could see the energy around him sparkle, the way that water crackles on a river on a sunny day. He was practically blinding.”
    She half-closed her eyes, lost in her memories.
    I understood what she meant. Michael had that same sort of energy; I noticed it the first time I saw him. I leaned forward to hear more.
    “And charm. Boy, that man had charm. Could get any woman to do anything he wanted. Well,” she added wryly. “Almost any woman.
    “I came across him during one of my travels. He was younger than me, and a wilder, like you. Unable to control his powers. He was quick to anger and when he did, things happened. Machinery stopped or started. Floors rumbled. People clutched their chests, feeling like they’d had heart attacks…”
    “ The deathtouch, ” I thought, my eyes widening.
    “…He was dangerous out on his own, so I brought him to Dark Root where he could develop his abilities, to work on refining his powers, so to speak. He was one of the first to join The Council, and the only man.”
    Mother tapped her heels to the floor, the cushioning of her slippers thudding softly against the hardwood. “Dora warned me that having a warlock with such power around was dangerous. But if I didn't train him up, someone else would. We couldn’t risk someone darker using his powers for their own gain. There was no other choice.”
    Her heels stopped tapping as she looked at me. “With training, he saw what he was capable of. Healing, growing, helping…in some ways he was the best in The Council. I’ve seen him bring back people that were beyond my realm of help. And he didn’t even have a wand.” She pecked her head an inch forward. “Magdalene, remember this: warlocks do not need wands. They need a witch to syphon power from. And he had a handful of them at his disposal.
    “But it wasn’t enough for him. His ego was strong and he grew restless, wanting something more. Something beyond Dark Root.”
    I felt empathy for my father as I recalled how desperately I, too, had wanted to leave Dark Root, but I kept my face expressionless.
    “During that time,” she continued. “We began to hear the prophecies: Nostradamus, Cayce, and your Aunt Dora. All powerful prophets predicting a cataclysmic end to things. There was a range of years, of course. Over a century, maybe longer if we were lucky. But a century, during the course of history, is but a moment. We abandoned our old lives and worked together to fight back the dark as best we could. If we could delay it, we reasoned, maybe we could change it.”
    Mother shook her head and slumped her shoulders. “But Armand had other plans. He had grown in power, siphoning magic off the women, and wanted to embrace the darkness to come. There was no stopping it, he’d argued, so why not ally with it? And when he insisted that we use our collective powers to…”
    She stopped talking, her voice choking up.
    “Summon demons,” I said. I’d heard that story before. “He wanted to summon demons so that when the time came, they would be on his side, and not against him.”
    Mother inhaled deeply, her thin ribs expanding and collapsing. “Luckily he wasn't able to, at least while he was with us. But we had to make him leave, Magdalene. Him and all his followers, before they poisoned everyone. We cast a spells to keep them out, and others like them who wanted to abuse the magick of Dark Root.”
    “Couldn't he just practice elsewhere?”
    “It’s no secret that Juliana purposely chose Dark