Maybe my only chance to find her again.
7
Seren
All night long, I dream of the demon.
Well,all nightmight be a stretch considering I barely get two hours of sleep before I’m wide awake again, staring at the canopied top of my childhood bed.
Jerking awake, I’m still half-lost in those dreams.
Crimson eyes and arching black wings. The gleam of a fang and the impatient whip of a tail. A harsh, graveled plea, asking me to stay.
I blink against the weak light of dawn, check my phone, and roll out from under the covers.
Goddess, I hate staying here.
Or, maybe more accurately, I hatehavingto stay here. I hate knowing I’m twenty-seven years old and still don’t have a place to call my own. Couch surfing and subletting and house-sitting absolutely don’t count, and for the millionth time since I left the Crescent Coven Hall, I vow this year will be the year I get my act together.
This year will be the year I come up with a more reliable way of making money than taking any odd job that comes my way.
Maybe Joan needs an extra set of hands in her tea shop. Or maybe Seraphina—another ex-Crescent witch who owns a metaphysical shop whose trinkets are especially popular withthe mundanes who frequent it—could use a full-time procurist and another witch around to charm the products she sells, the ones her clientele claim workjust like magick.Or maybe I could find a nice, boring, mundane job like a barista or a receptionist or something.
Or maybe….
Maybe.
Maybe.
None of thosemaybessound appealing at all when I actually stop to consider them.
Not when it means having to slow down, having to stay somewhere, having to learn how to tamp down this unbearable instinct to move, to run, to go.
Go where?
Anywhere.
It doesn’t really matter.
It’s never really mattered.
I pull out some clean clothes from the dresser and shove my stuff back into my satchel, which I charmed to expand and keep expanding so I never have to travel light.
All the while, I try not to dwell on my dreams or the demon who inspired them. I try not to think about anything at all other than getting back on the road and going…
Somewhere.
But, as long as I’m here and as long as it doesn’t seem like anyone else is awake…
Breakfast.
Yeah, breakfast sounds like a good idea.
Down the spiral stairs, past the second floor where my parents sleep, and then back to the first floor landing, I wipe the remaining exhaustion from my eyes and try to be quiet enough not to wake anyone up.
As soon as I make it to the kitchen, I know I’ve miscalculated.
Breakfast was not, in fact, a good idea.
