“I’m so sorry, Silas. For your dad, and for the things I said the other night. I was out of line.”
“Don’t apologize. You were right.”
“Can I get that in writing?” she said, a stilted attempt at a joke. Silas gave her a half-hearted smile, then turned his eyes back to the line of skin he’d been picking at along his thumb.
“Please don’t do that,” she said.
He pulled his hands apart and looked up at her.
“Not the finger thing. The closing-yourself-off-to-me thing. Just tell me what’s going on.”
Silas let out a bitter laugh. “You don’t want to know.”
Anika stood and then knelt in front of him. Her hand raised, and Silas expected it to rest on his leg or his shoulder, a gesture of comfort.
Instead, she slapped him across the face.
Not hard, but hard enough.
“Anika, what the fuck?”
“Snap out of the brooding weirdo thing and talk to me like a normal person.”
A laugh bubbled out of him—a real one, this time. Once the sound was free, it wouldn’t stop, cackles racking his body. He didn’t stop until there was nothing left in him, until he was so exhausted that he fell backward onto the bed, running his hands over his face as he gathered his breath back. The bed shifted as Anika lay down next to him, and they both stared for a few silent moments at the high ceiling above them.
“I killed him.” His words were quiet, pings of sound in the empty air.
He felt her head shift toward him, but he didn’t look. Didn’t turn his eyes away from the ceiling as he told her everything. The agony of the unsettled magic as it burned through his veins, shattering all his inhibitions until he was only raw emotion. The devastation of seeing his father’s broken body on the floor. The realization of how that murderous power had found its way to him. The betrayal as he pieced together all the ways his good intentions had been twisted against him. Anika was quiet through most of it, letting him talk.
And by the time he was done, the static was gone.
The world wasn’t gray anymore.
The world was red.
And he was really, really fucking angry.
Silas shot off the bed, pulling his phone out of his pocket. Anika stood, grabbing his arm. “Dude, what are you doing?”
“I need to go to LA.”
It took only a few seconds for him to book a ticket on a flight thatleft in an hour out of LaGuardia. He shot a text to his family’s driver to get the car ready. He didn’t plan on being in LA long enough to need anything, but he stuffed some clothes and a phone charger in a bag anyway, then moved for the door, only to find Anika blocking his path.
“Silas, this isn’t a good idea.”
She reached for his arm, but he stepped to the side, aiming for the door. She moved with him, stepping in his path again.
“You don’t want to do this. Anger isn’t a healthy thing for you right now.”
He looked down at her, his nails digging into the raw, picked-off skin of his thumb. “Anger is the only thing I have left.”
“It’s not.” Anika pointed at her own heart. “You have me. You have your mom. You have your coven. We all need you right now.”
“No one needs me for anything.”
“You know that’s not true.”
Silas ignored her as he pushed for the door, but Anika stayed firmly in his path.
