Page 502 of Flirting with Darkness

“They’re my parents, Tor. Don’t hurt them.”

His jaw flexed as if he hated what I’d just said. But after a second, he bowed his head in a nod. “I’ll fix things, but I won’t hurt them.”

He set me gently on the edge of the bed. I clung to his arm. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’m never far.” His eyes had gone stony, distant, but he tried to give me a smile. “I’ll be right back. Sleep.”

“No, I want to come with you—” But my eyes felt heavy, and when he pushed me down and pulled the blanket over my chest, I couldn’t resist closing my eyes, just for a second.

When I woke, I sat up with a start. I crept to the hallway, and despite Tor’s promises, when I pulled open my bedroom door, I expected blood to streak the white carpet.

“At least let me say goodbye,” Tor said.

“You’ve done enough damage.” The man who spoke to him was impossibly tall and even more impossibly gorgeous, with flowing dark hair and a glittering crown. “We do not interfere in the mortal world, son.”

“She’s special,” Tor argued.

The beautiful man snorted. “She’s mortal. They’re all the same.”

“No, they aren’t.”

“You can’t cast spells on mortals,” he said. “Look at you. You’d done so well beginning to sustain your glamour, and now you don’t have anything left.”

“It takes my magic.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the other man said impatiently.

No, he wasn’t a man. I knew that, but I wasn’t prepared to name them, not yet.

I stood frozen, not daring to move because I was sure they would hear me, then the other man looked up and his gaze found mine.

“You’ll think this was a dream,” he told me. “You’ll never believe it was real. Sleep now.”

“No,” Tor said, but then he was being dragged away. He turned to look back at me, his gaze meeting mine. His lips moved in a faint, silent spell.“You’ll remember.”

“Sleep,” said the other.

I stumbled to my knees in the carpet.

* * *

When I woke, the house felt silent, unlike the night before when the rain had pounded against the roof. Then I heard a sound in the kitchen.

With dread, I went down the hallway, checked my parents’ bedroom expecting to find their corpses, but the room was empty. It felt as if I were walking through thick, heavy mud as I forced myself slowly toward the noise from the kitchen.

My father stood at the stove. The vanilla-and-butter scent of French toast hung in the air. My mother was at the refrigerator, and she turned around with the orange juice in her hand and a smile across her face.

“Bethany, good morning,” she said, her voice hushed like the day after a snowfall. “Do you want orange juice?”

“Yes please,” I said, trying to make sense of what seemed different, off, about my parents. Besides how nice they were being.

I got a glass down from the cabinet, but regretted it as soon as I took it, because my fingers were shaking. What had Tor done?

I tried to put the glass down on the counter, but it slid off the edge and smashed on the tile floor. I looked up in horror, expecting to see my parents’ fury.

But my mother said, in the exact same hushed tone, “The glass dropped. Stay away, Bethany. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She knelt and picked up the pieces of the glass, dropping each one into the trash can. The glass cut her fingers, and the red blood trickled over the bits of glass, but she didn’t seem to notice. She smiled when it was done, a dreamy smile as if she wasn’t quite there, not noticing that she was leaving bloody fingerprints on everything she touched.

---