“I’m going to make it all go away,” I promised her, taking her delicate hand in mine. Dark circles embroidered her vacant blue eyes. “You will not suffer another night.”
We looked at each other for a long moment, a knowing passing between us. Tears begged to burst from my eyes, but I didn’t blink. Not once. I looked at her, eyes unblinking, strong. Despite it, my fingers still shook as I reached for my box cutter. I couldn’t stop trembling as I cut into her flesh. A deep, jagged gash down the middle of her forearm to her wrist. Lena’s face contorted, her eyes wide and anguish consuming her.
“Once upon a time,” I whispered, “a waitress worked at Portside Pearl. It was late, everyone else had left, and she was stuck cleaning up for the night.” Lena whimpered, but I continued, “That’s when Jeremy walked through those double doors on his eighteenth birthday.”
I repeated the same slash along her other arm.
Lena let out a cry. It ripped through my chest and penetrated my heart, but I continued the story, taking her back to when she could’ve been the happiest. “He said he wanted a celebratory shot. The bar was already closed, but he stayed anyway.” I tried to force a smile. “I have to know you, were his words, never caring about how late it was, or how sober he was.”
The box cutterclankedon the ground when it fell from my shaking hands, and that was where I left it.
“Because he never went there for a shot, did he?”
Blood pumped from her arms.
It flowed like currents in the ground’s cracks between us.
“And it wasn’t even his birthday.”
Her cry turned soft.
“He just wanted to be with you.”
I held her close while nightshade sizzled our skin.
I couldn’t let her go. Not yet.
“I’m here,” I whispered, kissing the backs of her hands, staying with her long enough to watch the last bit of life drain from her eyes. “I’m right here.”
I wipedmy face once my feet touched the ground at Town Square. Her sticky blood was drying on my lips, and I rubbed them raw until crumbles fell along the pathway back to the cottage.
I could already feel the change inside me.
I wasn’t the same girl I was before the tunnels.
No, I was changed by my killing.
I’d always imagined Kane Pruitt being my first since he was my first for everything else. I never imagined it to be a dear friend from my coven.
I always believed that evil was always rooted in me, wicked weeds wrapping my bones and fatal-black thorns choking my soul. Some would think I did this for her, but it wasn’t all true. Some part of me, some sick and small twisted piece lingering like an unwanted spirit waiting to burst from the entrapment of my sweet soul, wanted to know what it would be like. And this visitor had been waiting for a while to awaken.
My stomach flipped, and I stopped halfway to the cottage to vomit in neighboring bushes. As if the other part of me detested what I’d done. How could I go on like this?
When I returned home, Fable, Ivy, and Dad were already upstairs, preparing for the night. The old floorboards groaned beneath my feet as I pushed through the kitchen’s swinging door.
Leftover hot embers glowed from the fireplace carved into the wall, offering me weak lighting. I looked around the kitchen for the tea pitcher, but something caught my attention. I stopped mid-stride.
Mom’s book screamed at me from the kitchen island, searing the place it had been abandoned. Except, it wasn’t me who had left it there. And I vividly recalled leaving the book in my bedroom. Inside the wall.
No one else was in the kitchen. I was all alone.
I picked up the book and held it close to my chest.
The house fell into utter silence as I crept up the stairs.
“There you are,” Ivy said, yawning after I reached the attic. I paused, wondering if she saw the change in me too. Was Lena’s death tattooed on my skin? Did crimson color my eyes? Could she finally see I was a killer and not the kind-hearted sister I was always supposed to be before evil crawled in and shaped me with its sharp claws? “I was worried about you. Five more minutes, and I would have left to look for you.”
The other two were already half asleep.
