I shrugged. “I’ll make it exist.”
She snorted. “Of course, you’d say that. Anyway, I don’t think that will help with what’s happening now. I don’t know if it’s because the suppression magic is messing with things, but I don’t have the full control of my realm magic I had before muting. Portals keep opening up on their own around me without my control. Mostly, they’ve been easy to close, but it’s still scary to have it just open. It’s like walking downstairs and finding your front door open. I worry that something or someone got through when I wasn’t paying attention. I went to get the suppression fully dropped, but the best that can happen is to speed up the process. I was told the muting should be fully gone in a few days. However, I don’t think that’s going to help the bigger issue.”
She turned away, wrapping her arms around herself as if chilly. “I think my fear that something got through actually did happen.”
I frowned. “You’ve seen that thing before?” I didn’t like that. In fact, I was pissed off. How long had she been facing an entity like that on her own?
She looked back at me, quickly shaking her head. “No. At least not until yesterday. It was just the random open portals. At least I thought they were portals. It’s hard to know what every type of supernatural being looks like, especially from other realms. I could have mistaken a portal for a spirit mass. From a distance, they can appear the same. Last night I saw something human-shaped like what we just saw, except it wasn’t as fully formed. It tried to grab me, but I took care of it. I was doing some research earlier on what it could be. I thought maybe a poltergeist.”
“Is this what got you worried last night? Did you really stub your toe?”
She sighed and shook her head. “I didn’t want to worry you with something else that seemed out of our control. Especially if it was just bothering me and didn’t seem too harmful. I was going to tell you eventually.”
I ran a hand through my hair, irritation growing in me. I didn’t like not knowing things. I couldn’t ensure trouble didn’t bite us in the ass if people around me were keeping secrets. “And you were mad at me for not telling you things. Is this payback? Don’t play petty games with your safety, Camilla.”
“I wasn’t doing this as some stupid revenge. I really thought I could handle it as my magic came fully back. We have a death curse on us, and I couldn’t imagine adding another thing to your plate. I also brought this on myself for muting my magic, and I felt silly.”
I placed a hand on her cheek, my anger dulling. “Don’t feel silly for doing what you did. It’s understandable. And there isnothing that is ever too much when it comes to you. Give me all your troubles, and we can fix them. Got it?”
She nodded, and I kissed her forehead, satisfied for the moment. “And that was no damn ghost. Baby, that thing fucking talked, and I’m pretty sure that fire scared it. Also, if you’re telling me it’s starting to change shape, I think it’s safe to say it’s growing in strength.”
Her face seemed to go ashen before my eyes. “It talked?”
“Yeah, it told me to die. I take it, it’s never talked to you before.”
“No.” She closed her eyes and clasped her hands, holding them under her chin as if in prayerful thought. “Okay, I was thinking it was a ghost because they can grow in strength, especially a poltergeist. I could have opened the door to an in-between world of the living and the dead. But you’re saying it’s not, and now I have no clue what it is or what it wants.”
I walked closer to her and rubbed her arms, not sure if she was actually cold, but I was hoping the contact was a little soothing. Hell, it was helping me. This was not my usual expertise. “Ghosts don’t catch fire, baby, and you were able to banish it. You don’t have power over the dead like that. But you can send something back through a realm if it’s weak enough. I remember that.”
She looked up at me with haunted eyes, and it made my heart crumble because I couldn’t figure out the right words to comfort her or the right actions to help her. “Harris, what the hell kind of being did I let loose? This is all my fault. I could have just ignored my magic without needing a suppression spell. You said it told you to die, what if it’s behind this curse as well?”
That was the first thing that popped into my head. I didn’t live this long by ignoring coincidences. However, I needed her to know it wasn’t her fault. “Camilla, this could still be tied to me. My family has had many inventive assassins come for us over the decades. Including beings from other realms. It could simplybe a coincidence that this thing shows up with you near me. You said you hadn’t seen a human form entity until last night. It told me to die, not you. I don’t believe in coincidences. This is my fault, and I’m going to keep you safe.”
She gently patted my cheek. “I need to call my dad. He might know what kind of being this is. He’s still mentally healing, but who knows what he can remember. I won’t tell them about the death curse thing.”
“They can’t come here, Princess. If they think you’re in danger, they’ll want you with them, and that’s no good for them either.”
“I can tell them I’m asking for a friend. I’ll text my mom. It’s easier to lie that way.”
I smiled despite the serious situation. Instant memories of us sneaking out to parties she wasn’t supposed to go to while we were in school entered my mind. She’d always been a crap liar, so most of the time I did the talking. Her parents trusted me, sometimes too much.
She squinted her eyes at me with suspicion. “Why are you smiling?”
“I can call your parents and ask. It wouldn’t be suspicious coming from me. They expect me to have stuff like this happen.”
“You don’t have to keep protecting me, Harris.”
I grinned at her, already dialing her mother. “I don’t know how not to, baby.”
She sucked her teeth. “You did when we stopped talking to each other all these years.”
I cocked a brow, putting the phone to my ear. “Did I?”
She opened her mouth to say something, but her mother answered the phone quickly, and I went into action with my pleasantries. Once that was done, I asked for her father and chatted him up on any knowledge he would have on such a creature, explaining that someone who worked for me was being stalked by one. He seemed to be familiar with the entity thatI described, but was unable to say much more, apologizing for his hazy memory. He assumed, and it seemed plausible, that he’d seen it during those missing years. However, that was where his memories were the foggiest. We ended the call with him apologizing but stating that he would reach out if he remembered anything more.
I began to text away on my phone, sending out orders to my people, ignoring her curious eyes. “I’ll have our ward strengthened. The best I can get right now will also block out ghosts, but it might work since they’re from the outer realm as well. I don’t think there’s a proper ward against realm magic out just yet.”
She poked a finger in the center of my chest. “When my realm magic comes back in a day or two, I’ll be more help there, but let’s get back to what I said earlier. You didn’t protect me all the years we stopped talking. Unless you’re saying just keeping your distance was protection?”
