Page 38 of Midnight Witch

That’s not me.

Mae’s eyes slammed open. Dexter yipped excitedly and resumed his ablutions where he crouched atop her. She carefully lifted the excited dog and sat up, the blankets pooling at her waist.

Violet’s spot beside her in the bed in Mrs. Son-Ha’s spare room was empty. From the coolness of the sheets, she’d been gone a while.

They’re downstairs having breakfast,Brimstone said distractedly.

The fox had his paws up on the windowsill and was staring outside with Hellreaver.

Mae stiffened, her belly warming as she reached for her magic. “Is everything okay?”

Brimstone huffed.Do not worry, my witch. It’s not that we sense an impending attack. It’s just…the wrongness around us deepens with every passing hour.

We have to reverse this spell and soon,Hellreaver said anxiously.Before your existence is erased for good.

The crushing dread that had gripped her last night and that had only abated with sleep surged afresh inside Mae. By the time she headed downstairs, her gut was tight with tension.

Mrs. Son-Ha looked up from where she was emptying sausages and eggs from a frying pan onto Cortes’s plate.

“There you are.” She narrowed her eyes. “Anyone tell you you sleep like the dead?”

Mae’s stomach grumbled loudly before she could come up with a reply.

Mrs. Son-Ha rolled her eyes. She indicated the steaming pot on the table. “Have some tea while I make you breakfast.” Her sharp gaze dropped to Brimstone and Hellreaver. “There’s steak and bacon for you two over there. You better hurry up and eat your share before the tiger steals it all.”

Tarang looked up guilty from where he was attacking a veritable mountain of meat piled on a dish on the floor. He licked his chops and made space for Brimstone and Hellreaver to join him.

Mae pulled up a chair between Nikolai and Vlad. “You guys sleep okay?”

Mrs. Son-Ha had given them sleeping bags for the night and told them to use the couch and armchair in her sitting room.

Nikolai scowled. “No. Some asshole kept kicking me.”

Vlad looked at him innocently. “I’m telling you I have restless legs.”

Cortes shrugged at Mae’s questioning look. “I took the couch.”

“I slept like a baby,” Miles confessed sheepishly.

“Both you and Mae could sleep through a goddamn earthquake,” Violet muttered.

Mrs. Son-Ha sat down with them a short while later. Mae looked guiltily from her greasy breakfast to the old woman’s bowl of porridge.

“Don’t mind me,” their host said at her expression. “You have to look after your health when you get to my age.”

Mae hesitated before tucking enthusiastically into her food. She’d demolished half her plate when she paused, fork poised above a sausage. A sudden thought had just come to her. She swallowed the mouthful of eggs she’d just taken and studied Mrs. Son-Ha warily.

“By the way, does this mean you saw what happened at Mr. Ho-Nam’s funeral?”

Wang Ho-Nam was an elderly patriarch who had passed on some two months ago. His funeral had been held at Mae’s family-run funeral home and had been the most attended in Koreatown in a decade. This hadn’t been so much because he was a well-respected and revered member of the community, as it had been for the spectacle likely to unfold when his wife Kyo Seung Ho-Nam and his mistress Jang-Mi Ye’un’s warring families inevitably clashed at his final rites.

To no one’s surprise, the funeral had descended into anarchy after someone threw a box of incense at Jang-Mi Ye’un’s head. It was thanks to Mrs. Son-Ha that things hadn’t escalated enough for the cops to be called.

The old woman blinked. She cackled in the next instant, her shoulders shaking. “I’d forgotten about that. The look on your face when you saw the boa constrictor was priceless.”

Millie looked up guiltily from where she was eating fruit with Trixie, Alastair, and Popo.

Vlad grimaced at Mae. “Wasn’t that the incident where you got punched?”

---