He runs his hand over my hair. “Tell me what happened.”
I’m not sure I can find the words. I recounted the horror to the police, then again to the detectives. And twice to my therapist. I’ve tried to block it out ever since.
Not dealing is my way of not feeling. Bury the past and hope it doesn’t rise from the grave.
“I woke up in the middle of the night with this pain in my chest. It wasn’t physical pain, and I know how weird that sounds. I just knew something bad was going to happen. I thought it was going to happen to me. I was terrified. I remember lying in bed, too scared to even move, for what felt like hours.”
I open my eyes, afraid that if I keep them shut, visions will flash before them. Jacques continues to run his hand over my hair, and my heart starts to slow. If he wasn’t holding me, I’d come undone.
“The floor was wet. It was too dark for me to know I was stepping in blood. I still smell it like it’s here around me.”
“Smell what?”
“Sulfur.”
“Are you sure it was sulfur?” He pulls me onto his lap. Being close to him feels so right, like this is where I’m supposed to be. I don’t know if the feeling is real or because of the dreams, but right now, I don’t care. I need him.
“Yes.As soon as I smelled it from the vampires, I knew. But my parents weren’t…they weren’t killed by vampires.”
“Other demons can smell like sulfur. Not just vampires. Can you go on?”
“Yeah.” I swallow and go into survival mode, recounting the details without letting myself feel. “They were on the floor, bleeding from the head. It, uh, it…” My heart starts to race.
“Take your time,” Jacques soothes.
“They were hit. Their heads, I mean. Someone smashed them together hard enough to crack their skulls. But that’s not all. Their hearts were frozen from the inside out. No one knew what could have done it, and they were killed a few hours before I found them. I don’t remember anything before that, though. I didn’t hear anything at all. There was no sign of forced entry. Nothing was stolen. Even though I was young, I heard the rumors that it had to be something supernatural. But I knew it wasn’t. Because I was going to find the bastard who killed them and do the same to him.”
“And that’s why you became a detective.”
“One of the reasons,” I say with a wry smile, repeating his own words from earlier. “So…that’s what I thought about to get the fire to work. All it takes is a bad flashback and I’m good to go.”
“No,” he assures me. “We know your powers are triggered by your emotions, which is common. You’re using them defensively, and thinking about past tragedies makes you feel vulnerable.”
“It’s like I went back there all over again. I try not to think about it. And yes, I know how unhealthy not dealing is. But it got me this far and I’m doing just fine, right?”
“You are.”
“Can we do something else? Maybe try a spell from the book or something?”
“Of course. Let’s go over the newest translations about elements.”
I move out of Jacques’s embrace and get the book. We sit close together, flipping through pages as he explains to me what was written and elaborates on what he knows from his own experience.
“So,” I say, flipping through the book. “What kind of spell can I try? Something with immediate results would be best. I like instant gratification.”
Jacques chuckles. “Don’t we all.”
“I can’t wave a magic wand around and see sparks or anything like that so I know it’s working, right?”
“That would be too easy.” He takes the grimoire from me and flips through it, stopping on a page with smeared ink and some sort of yellow stain over the words.
“A glamour spell.” He runs his finger along the messy ink, reading whatever is written in Latin. “This is considered basic magic.”
“Sounds like a good starting point. What do I need?”
He gets up and goes outside, returning in a few minutes with a handful of light gray stones from the yard. He sets them on the coffee table and then goes into the kitchen, rummaging around in the cabinets until he finds what we need.
“What am I doing?”
