Page 47 of Guarded By the Nightmare

It’d never occurred to me that Sylas wouldn’t enjoy our encounter in the traditional sense, and I absolutely felt like an asshole now.

He’d consented, but—I guessed I’d just wanted the whole thing to feel magical? I had no idea why it should’ve though, or what I was thinking.

There’d always been just two pathways for me, for The First Time after My Assault, because it felt like moving back twenty spaces on the Life board, and becoming a virgin again.

Either it was going to be something sacred and life affirming—shit with candles lit everywhere and sheer silks blowing in a gentle wind—the kind of sex that people had on TV shows—or it was going to be something I never, ever mentioned after.

Like a box I checked, or a corner I turned: Operation Mina Gets Sex Done.

But what that’d meant was that I’d been so up in my head about my own stuff, I hadn’t even considered him—even though there were still dents on my thighs from where his claws had held me. I put a fist to my lower belly, where I felt a little good-sore from bouncing on him—he’d been theperfectsize. And then I let my fingers sink to the outside of my underwear, which were so wet I could’ve wrung them out—I didn’t know what he’d done with his form at the end there, butoh, Godhad it felt good.

So I couldn’t complain about it being my last time before dying...but I guess it just made me sad that it might be his, for the next century or three, and it hadn’t made him happy.

Good thing I knew what would, though—I cleaned myself up, then grabbed all of my notes about Nolan and took them out to my living room, to plan a murder-night.

“And so hedoes the same thing every evening after practice?” Sylas asked, after I explained my new plan—wait in the bar where I was sure Nolan would wind up, slow down time, kidnap him, and take him someplace quiet for torturing.

“Yeah, like clockwork,” I said with a nod. In my pre-Sylas world I was going to shoot Nolan from a safe distance in the bar’s parking lot, but now we needed to keep him alive some, to figure out what the fuck was going on with Ella.

“That’s not very wise of him.”

I snorted. “He’s never had to fear anything, ever before. And he’s—huge,” I said, with a wince.

Sylas considered this, with a nod. “And is there nothing about the other boy? The handsome one?” The way he said it, I knew he was making fun of me, so I rolled my eyes as I pulled out my phone, scrolling through the most likely webpages.

There was finally something online about Logan. “A car accident?” I snarled—but there was a picture of Logan’s huge truck, totally gutted out by fire.

“What?” Sylas snapped, looming over my shoulder at once.

“When you exploded him, Sylas—what’d you do with his belongings? His keys?”

Sylas flowed up at once to start pacing, which for him meant zooming back and forth in my small living room. “I do not recall.”

I made a sound of pure frustration. “You probably flung them three blocks over, then someone found them, took his stupid truck for a joyride, crashed it, and now they’ve—I don’t know. Got the wrong body or something.” I couldn’t very well hop onto a public forum and tell them to try to match dental records—or to go to his tutor’s house to pick human flesh out of her lawn. “Fuck!” I shouted, and then I looked up.

If I thought I was pissed—Sylas was very, very much more so. He was glowering in a way, like if I saw him in a store, I would not only run out of the store, I would leave the goddamned state.

“Tonight’s death will have to be ten times more memorable,” he said, sinking back down to be beside me. “Show me what structures are nearby,” he said, and I switched to street view on a map.

Three hours later,we were in my Fiat, driving out to Nolan’s favorite bar to scope out the parking lot.

“This vehicle doesn’t leave a lot of room for company,” Sylas said, looking around inside.

“Usually renting a van to do murders is a bad idea, but yeah, you have a point.” The sun had fallen, Nolan’s practice would be done soon, and I didn’t have a back-up plan for snagging him—he was the RRP I had the least amount of information on, because he scared me the most.

“You have me,” Sylas said, like he was reading my mind. I glared at him, then noticed how tense I was, my hands white-knuckle wrapped around the steering wheel.

I didn’t see any other familiar cars present, just the normal mishmash of rides, some too nice to be believed—kids who’d gotten Teslas from their parents for their sixteenth birthdays—and other beater cars that had pieces of them zip-tied on. Alcohol was the great equalizer in the current equation—Swords and Daggers was the bar closest to campus. Their logo was the three of swords from a tarot deck, and the rumor was the owner had an in with the state so they didn’t closely card.

“What did he do to you?” Sylas asked.

“Yelled at my grandma.”

“I thought you didn’t have a grandmother?”

“I thought I told you not to ask.” I kept my gaze straight at the parking lot’s only entrance, but I could still feel Sylas’s gaze.

“But what if I need to know? To break Ella’s curse?”

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