“Well,” Dad says, dusting off his hands. “That was way easier than I expected.”
“Easy for you to say. You weren’t on fire,” Vaughn snorts.
“You weren’t on fire,” Diego says, rolling his eyes at Vaughn’s theatrics.
“I was emotionally on fire.”
“Fucking idiot,” Laurent laughs.
I glance down at the box in my hands. It doesn’t look special. It doesn’t look powerful. It certainly doesn’t look like something capable of holding a soul for eternity. It just looks like an old wooden box. Still, I can feel Julie inside it. Faint. Furious. Trapped.
“What do we do with her?” I ask.
Dad glances down at Julie’s body before looking back at me. “I know a guy.”
The room falls silent for a moment. “You know a guy?” Caine asks slowly.
“I know lots of guys.”
“That answer somehow made me less comfortable,” I laugh.
Dad shrugs like he’s discussing the weather. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “I’ve got this part handled.”
“Alright,” Soren sighs. “Let’s go home then.”
The drive is strangely peaceful. No celebrating or mourning. We are exhausted, so we sit in silence. The adrenaline is fading from all of this, and reality is finally settling back into place. Henry is dead. His ring is dismantled. Julie is trapped. Micah? Well, he’s just fucking pathetic. He can be handled a different day when I care enough to go hunt his pitiful ass down. For the first time in what feels like forever, there isn’t an immediate catastrophe waiting around the corner.
I end up curled into Soren as the others debate dinner options. Diego is insisting that we should order pizza, but Laurent is sick of pizza. Caine sides with Diego because we did spend a large chunk of the day hunting down a witch. Vaughn agrees, and Soren chimes in to agree to pizza as well. This evolves into a talk about toppings.
“We are not putting fucking pineapple on the pizza,” Soren says.
“Yes! It’s so good,” Vaughn argues.
“Gross,” I laugh.
“It’s pretty good actually,” Laurent agrees.
“Fucking heathens,” Caine mutters. “It’s a fucking pizza, not a fruit tray. Throw some goddamn meat on there and eat it. Fucking pineapple? Why not put some fucking orange slices on there while you’re at it.”
“That’s disgusting,” I laugh.
The others laugh, and for a few minutes, everything feels normal. That word almost feels boring. No one is trying to kill us. No one is chasing us. No one has been tortured. We are just arguing about pizza. It’s ridiculous, and I love it.
When we finally pull into the driveway, everyone climbs out and heads inside. Dad immediately makes a line for the coffee pot while Laurent starts digging through the kitchen. Diego and Caine continue their argument about pizza as if it never stopped. I’m about halfway through taking my shoes off, and a heavy thump echoes through the house. Everything freezes, and the sound comes again.
“What the hell is that?” I demand after another thump. I look around the room, and Vaughn suddenly finds the wall fascinating. Laurent is staring into his empty coffee cup. Diego won’t make eye contact with anyone, and Caine is grinning like an idiot.
“Soren?” I ask. “For fuck’s sake… What did y’all do?”
“In our defense…” Vaughn starts.
“No. Fuck that. There is no defense,” Caine snaps.
“He deserved every bit of it,” Laurent agrees.
“No,” I say, and Dad chuckles. “No, you didn’t… Did you really? Is Micah downstairs?”
“Yeah…” Vaughn winces. “We couldn’t help it. We didn’t want him to be free.”
