Page 24 of Bad Demon

What the fuck was Fern up to? She was reckless and fucking fearless, except when it came to me. I seemed to scare her, no matter what I did or said. She acted tough and threw attitude, and that confused me when the unmistakable scent of fear was there underneath it all.

Getting on my bike, I started it up and took off. Why I was going back to Seventh Circle, I didn’t fucking know, only that there was this pull, and I just I had to.

Whatever she was doing, she was afraid and vulnerable and desperate enough to seek out Agatheena for help and take down a demon twice her size in that forest to get it.

I hit Seventh a short time later. The street Fern’s store was on was busy during the day, but a fucking ghost town at night. She lived above her store—I knew that because after she closed up, the light would come on upstairs, and last night, I’d seen her from my spot across the street through the window when she shut her curtains.

I stood in the same spot now, under the eave of an empty store, and shoved my hands in my pockets. I’d just wait until she was asleep, and then I’d go over there and guard her door. With the shit she’d pulled, she was a sitting target, and I still felt guilty for scaring her. That was why I was doing this. That was why my protective instincts were off the fucking charts.

I could see her now through the window, moving around the store, serving customers, and doing whatever else it was she did in there during the day.

It eventually grew dark, and I stepped back into the shadows when she locked the door and flicked the Open sign to Closed. A short time later, the light came on upstairs, and I could see her moving about up there. She’d pulled the curtains, but they weren’t very thick, and her shadow drifted by every now and then. It grew later, and finally, her light went off … then it came back on. It flicked on and off three more times. What the fuck?

Then the room went dark, and it stayed dark. I waited a few minutes. I was about to cross the street and stand in front of her door—just so anyone thinking of coming for her saw that she was protected—when it opened, and she walked out, gave the door four hard tugs, then headed off down the street at a fast clip.

She had on spiked boots, and instead of tight blue jeans, these ones were black, and she wore a short black leather jacket, zipped up.

Where the fuck are you going, Tinker Bell?

Pushing away from the wall, I trailed after her. If she was going back to that forest, if she was thinking about taking out another demon for Agatheena, she was fucking mistaken.

Fern darted down the same alleyway she had the last time I followed her, and I growled under my breath as I rushed after her through the alleyway and out the other side.

I didn’t spot her right away, and then I saw her, somehow sprinting at full speed in those fucking boots. She’d made me.

Fuck.

If I didn’t set her straight now about what I was doing, she’d think I was stalking her again. I took off after her. It wasn’t hard to catch her. Not only was I fast, but her strides were tiny compared to mine. The sound of my boots echoed off the storefronts as I closed in on her.

She spun on me suddenly, her hand flying up. She was holding a blowgun, and she lifted it to her lips and fired. I dodged the dart, forced to veer around her, so I didn’t run the fuck right over the top of her.

“You cannot be serious,” she said through gritted teeth as she reloaded the blowgun. “What the hell is your problem?”

I lifted my hands and took a step back. “You’re not in danger from me.” I curled my lips in an attempt to defuse the situation. I’d never felt more fucking confused and out of my depth than I did with this female.

Her eyes widened. “You followed me—again—and then chased me down the fucking street,” she said, panting. “What else am I going to think?”

“It’s not like that.”

“You’re a fuckingstalker,” she fired at me.

I bit back my growl. “There’s nothing about you in the records at the witches council, Fern.”

She froze, blinking those wide, peridot eyes at me. “You had someone look into me?”

“That’s my job, and so is keeping an eye on bad, murderous little demons who lie about what they are.”

She backed up, and I stepped forward, like there was a tether connecting us, and I had no other choice but to follow.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I didn’t know. All I knew was I had to go with this feeling—there was no other choice. “No, Fern, what the hell are you doing?”

The attitude dropped, just for a moment, and she looked up at me with an expression I had no hope of reading.

“I promise you don’t need to do this. I-I’ll stay away from demons with sanctuary. The other night in the forest, that asshole, he scared me. I needed an offering for Agatheena. I was running out of time, and I-I panicked, okay? That’s the truth.”

“Running out of time for what?”

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