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Jess gestured with her wine. “It’s easy to get good reviews. You just buy them on Telegram.”
“You say that like we’re all casually doing that,” Priya said.
“Okay, so can we talk about what the hell actually happened around that fire?” I said. I’d drained most of my wine. “Did anyone else feel it?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“What was it?” Callie clutched her elbow.
“My guess?” Jess said, the base of her wine glass sitting between two fingers, “they summoned something that’s going to help us get what we want.”
Priya’s brows arched. “Excuse me?”
“That’s insanity,” Callie said.
“Or maybe it’s fine,” Jess said. “I mean, if you end up with your twin flame, was it really that bad?”
We all looked at her.
“I’ve never heard of that going well, Jess,” I said. “No one ever says, ‘remember that time we summoned a demon to make our deepest desires come true and everything was absolutely fine?’”
“Yeah, you have a point there,” she said.
“Maybe I should talk to Kai about it.”
“No,” we all said to Callie in unison.
“Why?”
“Because you have no idea if you can trust him,” Priya said, leaning in. “Don’t confuse lattes and orgasms with safety. They are not the same thing. What if he tells Aurora?”
“What’s she going to do?” Callie said.
“I have no idea. But the people on Reddit seem to think she’s the antichrist.”
“What if we’re overreacting?” Priya said, pushing her empty glass to the side. “I mean, we were all high. Extremely high.”
“And we all hallucinated the same thing?” I felt my brows knit.
“What did we see, exactly?” Jess said.
We circled the monstrous thing in the air that had breathed behind us.
“I mean, it could be a hallucination, if we were all being guided by the same crazy bitch,” Priya said.
“Aurora’s not a bitch, she’s just eccentric,” Jess said.
“Um, no. She’s a bitch, Jess. She’s more passive-aggressive than the emails I get from accounting, and the way she separated us yesterday morning was dark,” Priya said.
We ordered more wine.
“So what else?” Callie said. “I already told you what happened with me and Kai.” She was looking at me.
I told them about meeting Damian by the fire. About the ride back. About his confusing behavior. The dead fox, the hug, the tea. “He told me to drink it,” I said.