Page 88 of Midnight Witch

Blood pounded dully in Mae’s skull as she watched the three of them disappear inside the rift, disbelief a living thing twisting her insides.

“Don’t go!” she begged brokenly.

The portal closed with a hiss of corruption that seemed to mock her.

Mae stared blindly at the spot where Nikolai had vanished, the agony twisting her heart so fierce she almost wished it would strike her dead.

A scrambling sound came behind her.

Vlad climbed the wreckage of broken masonry and wood that was all that remained of the nave and stumbled unsteadily toward her.

“Mae!”

He dropped at her side, his body casting ripples in the growing puddles.

He closed his arms around her and pulled her into his embrace. Mae sagged as his warmth cocooned her. Her fingers dug into his flesh where he cradled her to his chest. Tarang nudged Brimstone and Hellreaver with a worried sound.

A strangled sob finally left her, her throat so tight and hot she struggled to draw air.

“It’s okay,” Vlad whispered in a harrowed tone. “It’s going to be okay.”

His trembling voice finally unlocked the scream building up inside her. Mae lifted her face to the stormy sky and bellowed out her rage and loss.

CHAPTER36

The stormthat swept through the magic community in the aftermath of the Illusion Sorcery the Dark Council had unleashed to make the world turn on Mae and to capture the strongest white magic sorcerer in existence had still not died down a week after the events that had unfolded in the abandoned church outside Concord.

By the time she returned to New York with Vlad, everyone had regained their memories and Mae’s status as the country’s most wanted fugitive had ended as abruptly as it had begun.

To Mae’s relief, it seemed only those with magic in their blood could recall what they had done whilst under the influence of Anya’s illusion. Although her family seemed unaware of the week-long fantasy they’d inhabited while under the effect of the spell, she couldn’t bring herself to go home. Instead, she spent the days that followed in a daze at Vlad’s apartment in Chelsea. She barely remembered him showing her around his place before she’d stumbled into one of his guest rooms and crashed out on the bed.

Alicia came to see her the day after they returned to New York. It had taken the Reaper Queen that long to shatter the prison in which Barquiel had contained her in the Underworld. Though Mae sensed her shock at Nikolai’s betrayal, Alicia didn’t say anything. They spoke for a short time before she left to take care of her affairs.

From what she’d hinted, there was trouble afoot in Hell.

Mae woke up only to eat the food Vlad brought her, go to the bathroom, and talk briefly with Violet and Miles and her family when they called upon her. She spent the rest of the time hugging Brimstone and Hellreaver to her while they drifted in a dreamless slumber.

There were occasions during the night when she roused briefly to find Vlad sitting quietly by her side, a preoccupied expression on his handsome face as he stared blindly at the cityscape outside the window. He’d healed his left shoulder with his incubus energy. Though only a faint scar remained where Nikolai had burned his flesh, the way he occasionally touched the wound told Mae it still bothered him.

An unexpected visitor turned up on the sixth day.

Mae had just crawled back into bed when a distant yipping reached her ears. She burrowed under the sheets, tugged Brimstone and Hellreaver to her chest, and started dozing off again.

The yipping got louder.

“I didn’t know tigers yipped,” Mae mumbled.

They don’t, Brimstone murmured.That’s Dexter.

Mae stiffened. “As in Mrs. Son-Ha’s Chihuahua?”

The door slammed open. A ball of fur bolted across the room, jumped onto Mae’s stomach with enough force to make her wheeze, and worked its way under the sheets.

Dexter’s tail blurred as he licked her face with aggressive enthusiasm. His owner marched inside the bedroom.

“You should air this place,” Mrs. Son-Ha stated sourly as she looked around.

“We shouldn’t disturb her,” Vlad protested, trailing in her wake.

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