“Talk to you?” My words come out as a breath. “Am I going to talk toyou?”
“Yes. That’s why I’m here. So we can talk.”
I’m suddenly angry. No. Anger is not a strong enough word to describe my feelings towards Jane. I’m enraged. I feel a lot of hate for this woman.
It’s unreasonable and probably related to the guilt about the blood magic I just did on myself and my girlfriend, but I don’t care. I don’t even try to subdue the fury inside me. I send all that rage out towards the woman who used to be my wife.
“So we cantalk?” I am spitting words at her.
She smiles at me. That same angelic smile I remember from when she was my wife. “I know you’re angry.”
I stand up, walk to the end of the bed, loom over her, and growl right down into her face. “You have no idea what anger even is.”
She stares up at me with those innocent eyes of hers. So wide. So calm. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Well, you should be.” I sound evil. And if I wasn’t shaking with hostility, I would think a little harder about this new me. But I don’t have room for self-reflection right now. “Why are you here?”
Something has changed in the way I speak. My mouth has changed. And this is when I realize that I havefangs. Not the sharp and dainty points that were there when I woke up in Syrsee’s truck. But fucking fangs. Like I now possess the mouth of a lion, or a bear, or a… a fuckingvampire.
That’s not the only change, either. I can feel the new heaviness of the wings. I want to look—I want this bitch to go away so I can figure out what the fuck just happened to me—but I don’t look. I stare straight down into her stupid, innocent eyes.
“I want to tell you,” she says, “that I loved you.”
“Loved?” I scoff. Not because I think she’s lying. I know she loved me. And I loved her too. I scoff because it’s past tense. She gave up on me. And all that time, when I didn’t remember—when Paul was hiding the memories from me—Inevergave up on her. I always knew she was there, in my past, and I never stopped trying to find her in my head and I certainly never stopped loving her.
“You didn’t know, so I can’t blame you?—”
“Blame me?” Is this bitch for real? “Blame. Me?”
The world around me changes and suddenly I’m in our kitchen. And my kids—Charlie, Nancy, and Susan—are all sitting at the dinner table. I’m holding Jane in my arms and she’s leaning back, her face pointed at the ceiling, happy and laughing.
I close my eyes and shake my head, forcing the memory to go away. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to see what I lost.
“I don’t blame you, Ryet.”
“That’s not even my name. You know that’s not my name! Stop fucking calling me that!”
“We’re OK. That’s all I came to say. The children, theyweresaved.”
I shake my head and laugh. Looking up at the ceiling. Looking all around me. Looking at anything but this ghost in front of me. “Paul. This is you, isn’t you? You sick freak! You sick fuck! Come out—show yourself!”
“Goodbye, Ryet.”
I look back at Jane. “Go, then. Get the fuck away from me.”
“We’ll meet again one day.”
“I doubt that very much. Unless you’re planning a vacation to Hell.”
She smiles at me. But it’s a sad smile, something that conveys pity. “You’re not going to Hell, Ryet. You’ll be forgiven in the end because this isn’t about evil. But I guess you’ll have to figure that out for yourself.”
And then she’s gone.
And I’m not standing at the end of the bed. I’m not in the cabin.
I’m not anywhere.
But everything around me is gold.
