Blood and vomit stained her chin, the front of her dress, the floor, even me. I staggered backward, hugging her awkwardly.
She looked, for the first time, like any old lady who’d lost her balance, as light and insubstantial as dried leaves. Her left hand bled, and her wrist looked dislocated. I reached down and popped it into place again, shocked at my calm efficiency. How did I?—?
It didn’t matter. Iris swung her gaze to meet mine, eyes wide and confused. The old woman appeared unharmed.
The stench and the bugs were completely gone.
Mrs. Klein rushed up. I couldn’t understand her words as she gathered her sister close, helping Iris to the bed. Her grief billowed out from her in waves, like stiff laundry in a hot breeze, but she’d been happy, too, once. Satisfied.
I had to get out of this room.
I stumbled into the hallway, aiming for the front door. Desperate for the ringing in my brain to stop, I lurched down the too-long hallway, not seeming to gain any ground until—finally—I reached the doily-covered living room. I shivered, unfathomably cold, and glanced at the grandfather clock.
Then blinked.
Only thirty minutes had passed?
Impossible.
Mordechai’s exorcisms typically lasted hours, sometimes days. I was used to that. Did I really think I had been able to, ah,expela demon alone in just a few minutes?
Behind me, Mrs. Klein called out something, and I jumped. I was doing this all wrong! Mordechai would have stayed back in that room to comfort the sisters. He would’ve helped them understand what had happened. He would’ve prayed with them, spoken more psalms, and blessed their house, then left with words of reassurance. Hope. Forgiveness, if that was what they needed, which many seemed to. Words, words, and more words would flow from him to fill all the empty spaces completely, clearing away the darkness, making everything fresh and new. And safe. Above all, safe.
Nothing is ever safe.
As I blinked around Mrs. Klein’s living room, clarity hit me like a thunderclap.
What was I evendoinghere?
Panic surged, clawing up my throat. Today was Thursday, not Friday. I wasn’t supposed to meet Mordechai until tomorrow. Tomorrow!
I knew the truth, of course, knew it as much as I knew that my shirt was flecked with vomit and blood, my hands wet with another woman’s tears.
I’d come here by myself intentionally. Deliberately.
I hadknownMordechai wouldn’t be here. Yet still I’d come. I’d done the one thing he’d instructed me never, ever to do. I’d confronted darkness without him.
What had I been thinking?
Somehow, I made it to the other side of the living room. I stumbled into the front door, then stepped back, jerking my glance to the side as I tracked a sudden movement there. A decorative mirror hung on the wall, and my gaze raked across it for barely a second.
Only a second.
But a second was all I’d ever needed.
My breath stopped as something else looked back at me from the glass. Not my reflection—though that was there too, pale and shaken. But behind it. Through it. Like there was another face superimposed over mine...
A face of knife-twisting beauty.
Dark eyes gleamed beneath a lush fall of hair that seemed to move with a life of its own, catching light that shouldn’t exist in the dim hallway. Winged brows arched in something between amusement and assessment. A smirk both brutal and sly curved lips that promised torment...
And rapture.
And death.
The face was masculine—distinctly, devastatingly so—but not quite human. Too perfect. Too sharp. Like an artist had sculpted the ideal of male beauty and then added just enough wrongness to make it dangerous.
As I stared, the eyes narrowed. They weren’t cruel, exactly. But they weren’t kind, either. They were interested. Curious. Asif I were a puzzle it had been working on for a very long time, and it had finally figured out the solution.
