Page 21 of The Darkest Night

A memory flashed before her eyes. Of the bloodied hole in Rose’s chest and the beating heart quivering in the devil’s hand. Her head throbbed. She clenched the bed sheets with her fists, her own heart screaming in denial as her mind tried to force her to accept the reality of Rose’s fate.

Chapter 11

“Are you okay?”Ryu asked, alarmed. “Should I get someone?”

She jumped from her chair.

“No!” Mae barked.

The window trembled. The table at the end of the bed shook slightly. Ripples broke out across the surface of the soup Yoo-Mi had served out in bowls.

Everyone stared at the quivering dishes until they stilled.

“Damn,” Ryu mumbled, pale-faced. “Was that an aftershock?”

Mae swallowed. She was pretty certain she now knew the cause of the violent tremors that had shaken the city three days ago. It hadn’t been an earthquake, like most people had originally presumed.

It had been the power that had awakened inside her. The power she could still sense in her heart and belly, points of heat she couldn’t explain but which felt familiar, like they had always been there, deadly and dormant.

She hadn’t heard the voice again since that night.

One of the ICU nurses popped her head through the door. “Is everyone okay? I thought I felt the floor shake a little.”

“We’re fine,” Mae lied.

Ryu frowned.

“Alright. Call me if you need anything.” The nurse left.

“Let’s eat,” Ye-Seul said in the strained hush.

Mae forced herself to chew and swallow, conscious of her family’s stares. Her queasiness had thankfully abated. She wondered whether it had anything to do with the echo of magic that had just erupted from her core.

Ryu and Yoo-Mi made light conversation while they ate. Ye-Seul remained mostly silent, her expression thoughtful as she studied Mae. For some reason, Mae felt her grandmother could see right through her.

They left soon after, their unspoken words a heavy strain that filled the space between them. They were a close-knit household, which made the tension between them doubly worse. Mae knew she would have to talk things over with them soon. She just wasn’t ready to have that conversation yet.

Her hand rose to the pentagram pendant under her hospital gown. It lay flush against her chest, the metal unusually warm where it kissed her skin. She lifted it out and scrutinized it, her thumb running absent-mindedly over the design.

She’d found it in the drawer next to her bed when she’d woken up yesterday, along with Rose’s bracelet and the belongings Hodge had retrieved from the autopsy lab. The nurse looking after her had told her it had been around her neck when the rescue services had discovered her on the rooftop of the surgical block.

Mae had no recollection of ever owning a pentagram pendant. Still, she would not be parted from it. The pendant belonged to her.

She knew it in her bones.

The restless feeling that had been brewing inside her all day escalated as the afternoon wore on. Dusk soon leached the light out of the sky. Thunderstorms lit a bank of dark clouds to the north. Mae finally grew tired of flipping through TV channels, slipped into a dressing gown, and headed out of the room.

“I’m going for a walk,” she told the nurses manning the station in the middle of the floor.

The ICU staff glanced uneasily at one another.

“We shouldn’t really let you leave,” one of them said.

“I need the fresh air,” Mae insisted. “I won’t go far, I promise.”

The male nurse in charge of the shift sighed. “Well, seeing as you’re back on your feet, we can let you go out for a short time. Be back within the hour, though. We need to check your vitals.”

“Thanks.”

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