“Try healing yourself,” Sam said as he held the thing up to the light.
It looked like glass—the most minuscule piece of glass, wild green coloring. “Did all of it look like this?” he asked Rolfe.
“Some,” Rolfe replied. “The rest I scraped out. Like sludge in her.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Sam said, shaking his head. He looked back down to Millie and watched as he held her hand over the wound, still struggling to heal.
“Can you shift?” he asked.
“Fuck, I’d better be able to,” she muttered.
His shadows evacuated from her, and she sat up. She ran her hands through her hair, neck cracking, and within a couple of seconds, his beautiful horned demon sat in front of him. Sam’s lips lifted.
“There’s my girl,” he said, giving her chin a playful nudge.
Millie’s tail flickered up and did the same to him as she hopped off the table, and with a shake of her entire body, she shifted back into her regular self.
“Thank fuck for that,” Millie said, obviously feeling better.
Sam placed the green glitter on his finger, and he watched as it disintegrated into his flesh, leaving behind a tiny red scar as the knife Ana used on him had. His lashes lifted to Millie.
“Call your witch,” he said before turning to go up the stairs. “What did you need me for?”
“Oh!” Millie snapped her fingers and clamored up the stairs after him. “Firemoor knows you have Ana.”
Sam stopped so abruptly that Millie ran into the back of him. “What?”
Millie stared at him as he rounded over her. “They know she’s in this realm.”
“How would anyone know that? The only people who know are—“ And he stopped speaking. Rage filled his chest and swelled his every muscle. “Get that fucking Council on the phone,” he growled. “We’ll deal with your witch after.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
HOME.
The word allayed in her mind as Sam disappeared through the door, locking it behind him. She didn’t blame him for that. She knew she would have done the same were the tables turned. She was honestly surprised he left her there.
As she pulled back on her clothes, her attention turned to the three unconscious men hanging upside down from the rafters. She stepped closer, the dried rose petals crunching beneath her feet. There was something familiar about the one on the left. The ropes and wood creaked with the involuntary turns of the bodies, and as Ana approached, she realized all three were Firemoor soldiers, and one—
The one on the left was the one that had tried to kill her.
She clacked into the sink as she straightened, stepping back too quickly and knocking over a bottle of soap, the garden shears. She grabbed the porcelain edge as the man stirred, and when she went to pick up the soap, she saw a shadow pass by the window.
Not Sam’s shadow. Not the kind of shadow that comforted her.
Something again moved outside, a flash of fire, and she squinted out the dirty windows. They were in the middle of a cemetery, so she wasn’t entirely sure she should be spooked, but something…
Ana crept to the door, grabbing the shearing scissors on her way there.
A soft wind billowed her hair as she creaked open the door. She’d known there was a garden on the property, but this… she hadn’t expected this.
In the soft light of the moon, the white roses seemed to glow back at her. Like they were soaking up moonlight in the place of sunlight and using it as their only nutrient. Beds upon beds, other flowers and bushes sprinkled in between. The garden was vast and jetted out far into the cemetery.
She held the shears tight as she crept through the winding rows, trying to keep her wits about her and not become too entranced by the flowers.
A limb snapped behind her, and Ana tensed. She took a step sideways, feeling the thorn of one of the roses jab into her arm, but she didn’t wince away. She held her breath as the watered petals brushed her skin, and she heard another person’s steady breaths not far away.
“I can hear you,” Ana said, her voice cutting through the whispering wind. “If you’re here for me, come on out. Let me kill you before the rain starts back.”
