Then her body tenses, her eyes darting beneath her purple lids. Words form through her parted lips.
Red… red hands… bloody hands…
She’s having another nightmare. I have no idea what those words mean, but I can tell she’s scared. I hold her to me, shushing her, speaking her name.
“Seraphina. Seraphina!”
Finally, her eyes flutter open and she stares at me in bewilderment.
“You were having another nightmare,” I murmur. “Bloody hands. What’s that all about?”
Her already pale face turns a ghostly shade of white.
“Nothing.”
I look at her quizzically, but her expression betrays nothing.
“Alright,” I say at last. “I’ll stay with you tonight until you fall asleep.”
My heart twists with a pang of remorse when I see how happy those words make her.
21
Seraphina
“What the fuck, bitch?”
I turn toward Mama’s broken body, her eyes open in shock, her mouth twisted into a grotesque shape.
It’s her. Only it isn’t. Nothing is right. It’s like some bad fucking modernist rendition of her. All lines and shapes and colors. But it’s not her.
I’ve always hated Modern Art.
Then I turn back to him. He’s staring at me, and I watch passively as his dark grey eyes flash with fury before growing cold with terrified understanding. And then, only then, do they glaze over. He crashes to the ground, his eyes turning up to the ceiling, to the polar bear. Only it’s just a spot of humidity now.
Red. Blood. Bloody hands.
I stare down at them numbly, then back at him. Pink-tingedfoam is bubbling at his lips. His eyes are unseeing.
Blood everywhere. On my hands. Bloody hands.
Oh, no. What have I done?
I wake up screaming. An arm pins me at once to something hard and warm. I breathe in the dark, musky, cedar-scented cologne, and it soothes me at once. Damien.
I open my eyes in confusion. What’s he doing here?
I try to look at him, but his arms are crushing me to his chest. I bury my face in him.
“You’re here.”
“You were having a nightmare, my pet,” he murmurs in his deep, smooth voice.
“You stayed.”
“Close your eyes,” he orders. “Go back to sleep.”
He pulls me back so my head is resting on his chest. His hand finds its way to my hair and strokes it. I shut my eyes and soon, wrapped in his warm embrace, I’m drifting off to sleep again.
