Page 97 of A Bond with the Dark

Not a hair singed, not a parcel of skin burned. There’s no need to tell Dom about the dream.

Right?

28

OUT OF TIME

DOM

“Dom, I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do,” my mother’s British cadence echoes through my cell phone.

“Fuck! Mom!” I’m pacing around the living room of my rented house, wearing a path on the hardwood that matches the worn path in my patience.

“It’s been three weeks since you helped her with her tiny flame and nothing with fire since.”

“I’ve been working with her with the other elements; the fire doesn’t want to come out. I need a seasoned witch to help her; I’ve been doing it alone. Her aunts aren’t helping. I need you to come here, meet, and help her.”

“Dominic, we are out of time. The leader of the Nyktorim lost a daughter to the grims. It’s personal now. They’re sending someone to her as we speak.”

“Fuck,” I say again, kicking a basket with magazines in it. The basket goes flying, magazines sailing across the room. “How much time do I have?”

“A few days. They’re consulting the witch you saw in Never. Shayde?”

“Yeah, Shayde.”

“They want to consult her energy spirit, Aura, first to see what the prophecy says, and they are in Salem. If she tells them, they will journey to Colorado to carry out the rest of their mission.”

“Their mission? Their mission is tokillthe woman I lo—” I cut myself off. I can’t say the words. I can’t breathe to life what flits around on broken wings inside me. I am desperate, feeling it slipping into my voice and spilling through the phone.

I can’t lose her. Losing her would be like losing the one person who breathes life into your broken pieces and still looks at you as though you are whole. Losing that unfathomable existence, the only one who not only welcomes your demons to her table, but she learns their names and introduces them to her own. Like how autumn dies for winter to let spring live.

“Oh, Dom,” her motherly tone is strident. “You knew the risk. The entire reason we sent you out there was to try and see if we could avoid her dying. Youknewbetter than to fall in love with her son!”

“You know what? Fuck it. I’ll handle it myself.”

“Dom--”

I hang the phone up and throw it onto the couch.

The sun beaming outside is warm and comforting, yet my desperation swallows the light and makes me yearn for the dark.

Salvation is a reckless companion to a tender heart.

The phone rings again, and I pick it up.

Ollie’s name is across the screen.

“Hello?” I answer.

“Hey,” Ollie quips, his brotherly voice always steady. “You doing okay?”

“I don’t know what else to do,” I say despondently, walking over to the window and picking at the peeling paint on the sill. “I should have brought Mom here sooner to help with the fire spell. After seeing everything else that she was capable of, I thought she’d get it by now. I?—”

“Why don’t you have Scar or Hattie come help you?”

“Are you kidding me? You know they wouldn’t help me with this. They’re all about killing her. If I brought them near her, they’d snap her neck.”

“Doesn’t she have to die by fire or something?”

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