Page 41 of My Demon Mate

Sighing, I sit back on my heels and look at her. I hate this for Everest. All these years, he feared his mother left him behind to suffer the abuse at the hands of Jack. He thought she was out there somewhere, happy and thriving. Free of the torment they both faced. To know she did not get away crushed him. I felt his emotions and how bleak they were when he heard the news. It will take some time for him to get over that, if he does at all.

“Thank you,” a sniffling voice says behind me. I look up at Everest, his arms locked around his middle and tears leaking from his eyes. But he is not hysterical. Maybe seeing her is giving him the closure he needs.

I climb out of the make shift grave and pull him into my arms. “We can stay as long as you need.”

He squeezes my waist once, then drops to his haunches, looking over the bones of his mother. “I’m sorry this happened to you,” he whispers. “Thank you for trying to take me away. Thank you for loving me. I’ve missed you all these years. If I had known, I would have tried to save you.” He stops talking and sobs for a moment. I want to comfort him, but his emotions make me stay away. He needs to do this alone. I will be here when he is ready for comfort. “I love you, Mom.”

When Everest stands, he squares his shoulders. “What should we do with her?” he asks, looking at me with wet eyes. “We can’t leave her here. This can’t be her final resting place.”

“I can cremate her. You can keep her with you wherever you go.”

“I’d like that.” Everest swipes under his eyes, straightening his shoulders. “Can you do it now?”

“Yes. Then I will set this fucking house on fire. Burn all your bad memories.”

“Thank you, Raven. I love you.”

My hearts soar and I cannot hide my smile. “And I love you, my sweet baby. Are you packed?” He nods. “Take your suitcase to the car while I gather your mother. I will have her arranged when you get back,” I say as gently as possible, not wanting to hurt Everest with a misplaced word when he is already feeling so low.

With the kill of his father, Everest should be on top of the world, but this turn of events has him so in his head he cannot seem to think straight. “Okay.” He walks away jerkily, his hands thrusts deep into the pockets of his jeans.

My hearts go with him as he returns inside for his things. When we leave this house, I will take Everest far away so he can heal. He cannot do that so close to his old home. Maybe he will fancy a trip to Xendail for some rest and recuperation.

Climbing back into the grave, I am careful to avoid stepping on his mother’s bones as I take them out. Once they are on the ground beside the grave, I arrange them in some semblance of a body. When Everest returns, his says a final good bye to her, looking down at the bones with such deep sadness that I feel it in my core.

After I summon an urn, I bend down to his mother’s bones and incinerate them. Summoning an item is easy—I just have to wish it into my hand from where it is and it is there. Summoning the elements take a lot of effort, since I am pulling them into existence from thin air. It saps my strength, but I would not have it any other way to do right by Everest and his mother.

Once her bones are ash, I scoop them into the urn and give it to Everest. He clenches it to her chest, his fingers turning white with the effort to hold on.

I recover the grave, smoothing it over with magic so it takes on the state it was in before we arrived. If the police come sniffing around, I do not want them to have a reason to say Everest had anything to do with this.

When I am done, Everest’s hard eyes meet mine. “Burn it the fuck down.”

“As you wish.”

Summoning gasoline and dousing the trailer with it takes no time. I make sure to dump more than is needed on Jack’s body. The coroner will discover this was foul play, but the police will not suspect Everest. With the injuries Jack suffered, there is no way they could think it was him. He is too small to pull out someone’s heart through their chest cavity and stomp their skulls in with enough force to crush the bone.

Trailing the gas in front of me, I walk backward, sloshing it over every surface on my way out the door. I avoid the hole in the porch as I drizzle more petrol, wanting everything to ignite when it is set alight. When the container is empty, I toss it inside the house. The fire will melt the plastic, but even if it does not I am not worried about the police pulling fingerprints from it—I do not have any.

Walking over to Everest, I summon matches and hold them up. “Are you ready?”

“Can I?”

Smiling, I hand the box over to him. “Be my guest.”

He hands me the urn and palms the matches, stepping closer to the trailer. After staring at his old home for a few moments, Everest strikes the match and drops it to the ground, rushing back over to me as the flame travels to the front porch of the house. The fire licks up the side of the trailer and a whoosh sounds as it engulfs the interior, the open front door allow the oxygen to feed the blaze.

The heat from the inferno flicks over our skin, and I pull Everest back so he does not get hurt. Still, we watch how the flames devour the place Everest called home since he was a child, the place where he experienced an untold amount of trauma. The place his mother died and his hopes and dreams were almost crushed. It is being devoured by flames and Everest is still here, getting stronger every day.

When we hear the sirens of firetrucks in the distance, Everest nudges me. “We have to go, right?”

“We do. I want to take you away for a few days, so you can get your head together.”

“I’d like that.”

After getting Everest arranged in the car, I buckle his seatbelt and hand him his mother’s urn, which he clutches to his chest gratefully. “Thank you, Raven. For everything.”

“I would do anything for you, baby. Let me get you out of here, and I will show you.”

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