“But the dark keeps bad places safe for me,” she finishes in a desperate whisper.
I hold her a little tighter and try to ignore the press of her body against mine.
Holding her wrist, sliding that blade through her flesh—everything leading up to this point—is doing strange things to my mind and body.
But all it takes is a soft growl in the back of my head for the judgment to pass.
Is that the bad wolf?
I snuggle closer to Billy, nuzzling the side of her neck until all I can smell is lavender and blood andher.
“I love you, Bash.”
“I know,” I murmur.
But it’s not enough. Iknowit’s not enough, not just from the way she tenses against me. There’s a sickening weight in my stomach.
“I…” I force a hard swallow and croak out, “I love you too.”
A shadow flickers over us.
For a perversely surreal moment, I’m convinced it’s Billy’s soul leaving her body.
Especially when Billy murmurs, “Oh!” like her life is starting to flash before her eyes.
But then I hear the faint flutter, and I look up to see a moth circling the bathroom light. It must have come in through the bathroom window that we always leave open, despite the weather. It’s supposed to help with the mildew and mold, but at the rate those black spots are advancing on the ceiling, we’d need a nuke.
It flutters around the room before heading back toward the light. It ventures close enough for me to capture it.
I cup it gently in my hands as it flutters against my palms, and I bring it down to rest on the back of Billy’s bloody wrist.
The moth walks across her hand, its wings catching the light. Brown and gray, nothing special, but Sybil watches it like it’s the most precious thing in the world.
Her head lolls against my shoulder.
“Bash?”
“Yeah, Billy?”
“Will you stay with me? Just until?—”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Promise you’llstay?”
“I promise.”
“No…promise me you won’t follow me.”
I open my mouth and then close it again.
“Promise you’ll stay, Bash. Promise me your life will be full of love and joy.”
She’s delusional from loss of blood, of course. Nothing about my life will ever be joyful. Love is merely an illusion. A fiction told in fairy tales and romance books. And even if it was real, I’d have to leave the safety of the shadows to find it.
We’re creatures of the dark, Billy and I. That’s The Witch’s curse.
But I shove all those thoughts away and say, “I promise,” because Billy doesn’t need to hide in the shadows anymore.
