Page 83 of Bad Demon

“Have him turn his back because this isn’t happening without him in here as well.”

Cursing, I quickly texted Jag, and he replied instantly. He was on his way.

Fern cried out, writhing, panting, flushed, and coated in sweat.

“It’s gonna be okay, Fern,” Sutton said, brushing her hair back. “I won’t leave you like this. I’ll take that monster’s poison from you; I’ll take it all away.”

“You know who did this? Did you see something? A vision?” I said, already struggling to hold myself back, and she hadn’t even started. She had the sight, she might be able to help.

“I couldn’t see him, but I’ve heard whispers about a witch, and then two of my friends went missing.” Fury lit her eyes, and they flashed red.

Sutton wasn’t only a witch.

“You know for sure it was the same witch who took them?”

She looked up, those red eyes swirling with black as well now. “We found their mutilated bodies. The magic signature was the same as what I feel coming off Fern.”

“Coming in,” Jag called through the door.

Sutton quickly covered Fern before he walked in.

“Where did you find them?”

“An old boarding house.” Her eyes narrowed. “You already knew that though, didn’t you? You and your brothers found them first.”

The building we’d tracked Faron to. Her friends had been among the dead there.

“We did,” I said, not wanting to lie.

Her hands shook. “And when did you plan on telling the witches council? When were you planning on letting the families, the covens, know about their missing loved ones?”

“It wasn’t that simple,” Jagger said. “There are other things at play here, things we’re trying to figure out, and it looks like whatever happened to Fern is somehow connected.”

Her eyes were a swirl of red and black again, and the veins in her throat darkened until they turned black as well. “They were my people; you had no right—”

“We were going to find the families,” I said, trying to keep things calm. I needed her to help Fern—that was all that mattered. “We wouldn’t have just left them there.”

The black veins spread to her jaw. “I despise arrogant males like you. You think whatever you have going on is so gods-damn important. All you care about is yourselves. They were my family, and you left them in a steel bin to rot.”

“Like Relic said, we planned to tell the families.”

She shook her head in disgust, her hands trembling. “Sure you were.”

Jag’s eyes narrowed, traveling over her like he was searching for something. “You’re not just a witch. How does your coven feel about you having demon blood?” he finally asked un-fucking-helpfully.

Her red-and-black gaze sliced back to him. “The coven I was born into didn’t like it much at all. Which was why I found one that wasn’t filled with bigoted assholes. Every witch in my new family has been rejected because of their mixed blood or weird powers”—she smiled, but it was more a baring of teeth—“or because they could physically transform in ways that were consideredunattractive. Coven Ashborne is a family by choice, made up of people who don’t judge others for those things, who embrace and love each other for their differences. That is why losing two of my sisters and then finding out what had happened to them the way that we did when you and your brothers could have said something puts you and your pack in the number one spot on my most hated list.”

“Terrifying,” Jagger said—again un-fucking-helpfully.

He knew loss. We’d lost brothers, but his lack of emotion made it impossible for him to truly understand her pain, and until Fern, I was exactly the same, but he needed to shut the fuck up.

I snarled at him and turned to Sutton. “Please say you’ll still help Fern.”

“You think I’d leave her like this? That I’d let her suffer because you and your brothers were selfish assholes? Nice opinion you have of me.” She shook her head. “I would never leave anyone to suffer like this, especially not her. Fern is one of us. She belongs with us—”

“She’s mine,” I growled out. “And she belongs with me.”

“Well, that’ll be up to her when she wakes up.” She curled her fingers around Fern’s. “I get the feeling she’s never had a place where she felt she belonged.” She looked up again. “She’ll always have a place with us.”

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