Icouldn’t recall how I got home last night, but thankfully, I woke in my own bed.
A pounding pressure built in my head. I couldn’t remember the last time I was this hungover.
I yawned and stretched for my phone, but my hand knocked a glass of water, sending it toppling with a loud crash to the floor. “Dammit!” I cursed under my breath, quickly grabbing a wrinkled shirt from my bed and tossing it over the spill before it soaked into the hardwood.
The blaring light from my phone screen forced me to squint as I mindlessly scrolled through the few unimportant text messages. I needed a little more time to pretend like last night hadn’t happened before getting up and facing the consequences. Normally after a night of drinking, all I’d have to worry about was a handful of embarrassing drunk texts. Not whether or not I had unleashed a serial killer into my small town. Or maybe something far worse. The thought alone made my skin crawl.
The room spun as I sat up. I wasn’t sure how long it took, but finally, I mustered up the strength to walk to the bathroom. Remnants of last night plagued my vision as my legs threatened to give out from under me. The walls of the church no longercontained the spirits. And Grey was a whole other topic. Why had he been trapped in the Whitethorn’s basement? What had I freed? I had way too many questions and zero answers.
I peeled Eli’s sweatshirt off, revealing the white dress now tie-dyed red with blood. The ruined dress pooled at my feet as I stepped out of it and into the scalding hot water. I didn’t wait to get acclimated before fully submerging myself, desperate to wash away the blood.
Water cascaded down my back, turning from red to light pink the longer I stood there lathering shampoo into my matted hair. There was so much blood. High school anatomy class taught me the typical adult male had roughly between ten to twelve pints of blood. But how much was that really? I tried picturing twelve pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, but that didn’t help at all. It only momentarily distracted my thoughts from Grey, and wondering if anyone could survive losing that much blood.
I meticulously scrubbed every surface of my skin until it was raw, making sure no trace remained of last night. I lost track of how long I’d been in the shower by the time the water had run cold. Steam filled the room as water dripped to the tile beneath my feet. A trail of wet footprints followed me as I stepped from the bathroom.
My bedroom was still a mess from the night before, clothes covering every surface. I managed to dig out an oversized sweatshirt, leggings, and a pair of fuzzy socks from the clean pile of clothes I’d dumped straight from the dryer onto my desk.
The perfect outfit to rot on the couch all day.
I headed downstairs to the living room, only to find it empty. After a successful search-and-rescue mission through the couch cushions, I found the TV remote. I mindlessly scrolled through the countless options of shows, unable to commit to one to binge-watch.
“Oh, good. You’re alive,” Emory squealed a little too loudly for the ungodly hour, even if it was technically already midday. My attention snapped to the coffee cups and brown paper bag dangling from her hand. She hadn’t even had a chance to set the drinks on the coffee table before I snatched one.
“Barely. Last night was rough.” I said in between sips of my coffee. My headache still hadn’t subsided, and at this point, I’d accepted it might never go away.
“Yeah, Cal had to carry you up to your room.”
It was worse than I thought. I was never drinking again.
“That bad? Hopefully, I didn’t puke.” I winced at the thought. Cal would never let me live it down.
“No,” she confirmed. “You held it together pretty well. I’m actually impressed. You just had problems walking and talking.”
I buried my face in the couch cushions, wishing they’d swallow me whole. Emory’s laugh filled the living room, and I chucked a fluffy black throw pillow at her. The pillow found its mark, striking her square in the face.
“Wait…why do you look cute? I figured we’d watch TV all day.” Emory was wearing real clothes. And was that a full face of makeup?
“I’m getting lunch with Cal.” I raised an eyebrow in question, but she didn’t elaborate, and my head hurt too bad to push. “But I brought you coffee and carbs to fight off the hangover.”
“Thanks.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose to keep the pressure from building. The events of last night came rushing back—the wraith, the guy in the basement, and his mysterious disappearance.
“Well,” she said awkwardly. “I’m about to head out. You can join if you want.”
“Hard pass.”
“Okay, I’ll be back in a few hours. Text me if you need anything, and drink lots of water, not just coffee.”
I couldn’t help but notice the way her lips curved into a smile as she read an incoming text, probably from Cal. I bit my tongue, holding back the urge to comment. That was a conversation for another day. A day when my head didn’t feel like it was about to explode.
The front door slammed shut, and I tried to turn my thoughts elsewhere by watching episode after episode of some mind-melting reality TV show. But the sinking feeling in my gut became too overwhelming to ignore any longer.
I opened a notes app on my phone and typed every detail I could remember about Grey. Dark hair, muscular forearms, striking eyes...Get a grip.This wasn’t the time to swoon. Even if he was the hottest guy I’d ever laid eyes on.Think objectively. A tattoo of a snake wrapped around his forearm. The thin black collar cut into his neck, tight and unforgiving, like a garrote. A jawline that could cut glass. Okay, the last one wasn’t going to help identify him, but it was a fact.
I wandered into the kitchen and reluctantly took Emory’s advice to drink some water. As the cold liquid settled in my stomach, I dug through the junk drawer below the coffee maker, searching for a notepad and pen, as I brewed a second mug of coffee.
I tried to sketch the sigils I’d seen on the basement ceiling, but the drawings weren’t even close. Still, the longer I stared at them, the more familiar they became. I’d seen something like these in our family’s Book of Shadows.
