There was no one else here today. I would have sensed them.
Who is John Beck? My jaw ticks.
A wave of infuriating emotions hits me. Alarmed, I’m unsure whether to seek out this John and destroy him or stay by Summer’s side. Digging my claws into my palms, I swallow my anger.
Summer is mine!
Not Adrial’s, not this John’s. It’s my handprints on her body.
“Yes, he’ll pick me up and we’ll walk there together. He’s more spooked than I am… Yes, I have a guy scheduled to come in and check the leak.”
She sighs, half-responding to her dad, focusing on the text on her lap.
“I’ll message you.” She hangs up the phone and groans.
“Who is John?” I growl.
She jumps, twisting around as I stride down the steps, my claws clicking on their surface. Her eyes are wide, lips parted. She gasps, her hand thudding against her chest.
“You startled me.”
“Who is John?”
She shakes her head, blinking several times as I capture her chin. “He’s… It was a lie. I had to tell my dad something so he’d leave me alone for a while longer.”
I search her face. “So there is no John?”
She swats my hand off her chin, standing up to peer at me uneasily. “There is a John, but I’m not meeting him. He’s just a friend of the family, and his dad’s in the hospital from the fire a few days ago.” Her lips purse. “Is it night already?”
Unclenching my jaw, I glower over the parchment that has captivated her attention. “The sun set five minutes ago.”
“Oh. I lost track of time.”
“How?”
The scroll on the floor discusses the nature of demons, archaic in its impression.
She points to a pictograph in the text, illustrating the tail and horns humans identify with demons. Her gaze flicks from the glyph to me. “I was reviewing the library to see what I could find on demons and gargoyles, or something that could help me—us.”
Us.I hold her gaze as she crosses her arms. She looks away first, waving her hand over the rest of the texts, disgruntled.
“But there’s so much, and most of it hasn’t been useful. Only when I read all of this…” She trails off, shaking her head.
“What?”
“If half of what I’ve read is even partially true, the world is a scarier place than I thought.”
She appears so small, her gaze wandering across the countless texts, her demeanor at once stiff with tension and lax with uncertainty.
“I don’t want to die,” she whispers. “The demon… He’s in my head. I-I need him out. What if… what if he gets inside of me, the rest of me? He’ll take your name.”
She believes me.
Any anger I had at this John slips away, and I crouch at her side, ensconcing her with my wings. “I will never let that happen. He is gone for now. Let the memories fade.”
“I’m alone during the day. How can I stay safe when you’re not around? When you’re far away? I can’t always rely on you. I created light with my hands—it came out of my chest. I’m empty and cold when earlier I was feverish and frightened. Now… now I’m just frightened,” she trails off and begins to shake. “I had a dream about you earlier—and not a nice one. I was stuck in the darkness for hundreds of years. After a time, I found you, but we never spoke, never interacted.”
Her trembling worries me, and I need to know more without alarming her. “It sounds like you were within my mind.”
