Mother grabbed a knife off the butcher block and swung it wildly, and she yelled something garbled about a red devil as she stared at me. Her expression was wild.
She’s lost it completely.
Her mind was poisoned.
I tripped over something solid on the floor as I dodged her swings, and landed on my butt.
She backed away from me.
Shards bit into my palms as a frozen object slapped against my leg, and I stilled in horror. I lunged forward and groped the space, grabbing onto an invisible body.
“I will protect you,” Nyx hissed.
Nyx had thrown herself through the window to save me. She was the reason I’d gotten away.
The panic in my chest tripled.No, she can’t get hurt. I groped blindly at my best friend, wrangling her icy scales with every ounce of strength I had.
“Stay beside me,” I whispered desperately. “We need to protect Charlie. Not me,” I gasped.
She hissed.
I hummed a frantic tune inside my head.
Evolutionists were wrong; humans hadn’t evolved from primates—we’ddevolvedfrom them.
With my hands tangled around Nyx’s icy scales, I dragged us both backward across the floor.
Grabbing at the bathroom handle for purchase, I started to haul us up. The door opened, and we fell inside.
He left the door unlocked for me.
I locked it behind me quickly.
Mother and Father shouted something about a devil as they yelled at each other.
Inside the cramped space, Charlie was curled up in a ball in the corner.
His emaciated body was wedged between the toilet and the wall. Overly large tear-stained eyes looked at me with horror, then he shook harder and ducked his head like he was trying to hide.
Nyx yanked in my hands. “Release me,” she hissed. “I need to kill those bastards for hurting you.”
Charlie didn’t react, and I wasn’t surprised. I’d long ago accepted that I was the only one who could hear Nyx.
Everyone just assumed I was a loser who talked to herself.
The loser part was still up for debate (it wasn’t; I authored Emmy Noether and Carl Gauss fanfiction in my free time).
I gasped shakily as the pain in my sternum intensified. “Let’s protect Charlie from here—let them hurt each other first.”
The symphony played faster.
She slithered up my body and wrapped herself loosely around my neck and shoulders like an invisible scarf.
Charlie sobbed harder in the corner.
I would have cried too, but I was too amped up on adrenaline.
Also, I had felt nothing in eleven years.
