“Ow, shit!” the intruder cursed as my clock struck his head. His voice was familiarly growly, which broke through my fight-or-flight haze.
“Priest?”
“Yes,fuck, who else would it be?”
I rolled my eyes, which he missed in my darkened room. “I don’t know, which is why I clocked you. Get it?Clocked you?”
In response to my fantastic pun, the asshole flipped on the overhead light, causing me to hiss in annoyance and squint my eyes.
“I heard screaming. You okay?” Priest asked tersely as he rubbed the knot forming on his forehead. We hadn’t seen much of each other since his branding, and the air between us felt awkward and heavy with words unsaid.
“Yeah,” I rasped, “just a bad dream. Sorry for waking you.”
Priest’s eyes roamed over me as he huffed out a breath and tucked his gun into the waistband at the small of his back. “I have some experience with bad dreams.”
A tight, crooked smile pulled at my lips but there was no mirth in it. Priest shifted his weight awkwardly. “I’ll, uhm, let you get back to sleep then.”
Priest turned and left my room, and I gave him a tiny wave goodbye as the door closed. It was kind of sweet that he made sure I wasn’t getting roasted alive by Pyro or something in the middle of the night even though things were so messed up between us. I didn’t tell him that there was zero possibility I’d go back to sleep now. The dream had been vivid enough that my nervous system was flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, so I was too buzzed on stress hormones to sleep. I counted to fifty to make sure Priest had time to make it back to his room before I approached my door.
Maybe I could rustle up a snack in the kitchen or find a new docu-drama to binge. Anything but rot in bed with my nightmares. Opening my door, I ran face-first into a warm, solid chest. I peeked up through my lashes to find a familiar face.
“Did you sleepwalk back to my room, Growly Gus?”
Priest took a big step back and ran his hand through his already sleep-mussed hair. He huffed out a breath and shifted his weight from one foot to the other like he wasn’t exactly sure why he was at the bedroom door.
I decided to give him an easy out. “Want me to close the door, and we can try again?”
“No. I, uhm, I was heading down to the kitchen. I figured since you were up maybe you’d like to come down with me. I have a recipe to cure nightmare hangovers, if you want to try it?” Priest, growly alphahole that he was, actually looked nervous as he waited for my response. A normal girl would probably tell him to go fuck himself with the giant red flag he was usually sporting, considering everything that had passed between us. Good thing I wasn’t normal, life would probably be pretty dang boring if I was.
“After you then.” I gestured toward the hallway. I wasn’t normal, but I also wasn’t stupid. I wouldn’t be giving Priest my back any time soon. We quietly made our way down to the kitchen. I sat in a chair at the worn kitchen table and pulled my knees up so I could hug them. Priest moved confidently around the kitchen, pouring milk into a heavy bottomed pot to warm and grabbing ingredients from the pantry. He spooned cocoa powder and sugar into the milk and stirred slowly. Priest added a handful of chocolate chips and a dash of vanilla extract while I watched, soothed by the scent of chocolate and the calm atmosphere of the quiet kitchen.
Once he poured the concoction into two mugs, he placed them on the table before me. I’d never had hot chocolate before, but I knew from TV what it looked like.
“Is this the cure for a nightmare hangover?”
“No, it’s hot chocolate,” Priest replied flatly. He rustled around in a small cabinet above the stove until he returned to the table with a bottle labeled Peppermint Schnapps. He poured a generous slug of schnapps into each mug. “Now it’s a nightmare hangover cure.”
Priest sat opposite me at the table with his mug, watching as I blew on it to cool my drink before taking an experimental sip and moaning in appreciation. “Oh my Bob, that’s so good!”
“I used to make it for Ellis when she had bad dreams,” he admitted softly.
“Oh?” This was the first time Priest had ever shared a personal story about his sister. I hoped he’d elaborate, but I didn’t want to ruin our moment of careful civility by bugging him with questions.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Ellis went through a Harry Potter phase. You know what that is?”
I shook my head and took another sip of my chocolate. I hadn’t had the chance to discover what Harry Potter actually was, but I’d heard the name before in passing.
“It’s a series of books for kids that they made into movies. There are wizards and magic and shit in it. Ellis loved it as a teen.”
I smiled and sipped at my chocolate. Warmth was slowly spreading through my system, thawing me out and helping me relax.
“In the stories,” Priest continued, “these nightmare creatures spread misery and despair and caused their victims to relive the worst moments of their lives. The cure to recovering from their presence wasn’t a magical artifact or a spell.” He raised his mug. “It was chocolate.”
Priest took a sip of his hot chocolate. “Ellis was convinced that chocolate was as close to magic as we could get in the muggle world.”
“Muggle?” I asked, confused.
“It’s what they call non-magical people in the books. Every time she had a bad dream or a horrible day, or she just felt like shit… her cure was chocolate.”
