Page 71 of Cookbooks and Demons

Pain.

Fear.

Eternity.

…and then the sensation of sharp rising, like breaking through thesurface.

Helena wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. She could barely draw breath. Beneath her shocked feet, the summoning circle disappeared into the damp pavement. Yet the marks remained indicated in the snow cover that blanketed the alley. Above her, snow fell in large clomping flakes.

Beside her, Rafferty stood, still holding Cindy’s towel-covered body, but he was human and dressed in a rougher version of his black clothes and knee-high black boots.

A siren chirped to her right and Helena snap-turned to see the entrance to an emergency room, an ambulance already parked in front with its lightsspinning.

Despite his burden, Rafferty tried to kick the snow to cover the lines of the circle.

“Just go! Take her in! I got this!” Helena cried. Quickly, she erased the melted lines with her feet and rushed to follow.

A car came to a screeching halt as Rafferty marched across the street, his longer legs eating up the distance. He didn’t even turn his head, his eyes locked on the entrance. Helena held up her hands to the driver who was shouting despite the obvious emergency and then continued to follow once he was clear.

Before they even reached the doors, two paramedics spotted them through the walls of glass and were rushing out.

“What happened?” one barked as the other doubled back to grab an abandoned gurney. Two nurses were already bolting from the reception desk to their sides as Rafferty dropped her onto the gurney.

“I don’t know,” Helena answered, coming around to grab Cindy’s towel to keep her friend covered. “I found her in the bathtub like this. She’s not responding. She’s got a pulse. He thinks she took something she shouldn’t,” she said, trying to relay all the information she couldthink of.

“What’s her name?” a woman in a long white coat asked as she pushed her way in, sticking stethoscope ends inher ears.

“Cindy. Dr. Cindy Hawthorn. She works at Mercy General,” Helenareported.

The doctor’s eyebrows shot up, but she nodded and focused on her patient. “Cindy, Cindy, can you hear me?” she asked, pressing the stethoscope into her friend’s chest, jumping around. Then she straightened and looked straight down at Cindy’s unconscious face. “Dr. Hawthorn, you’re needed in the ER,” she barked in an authoritative voice, slightly deeper than her normal.

Cindy jerked. For a brief moment, her eyes popped open, then dropped back again.

“Okay, she’s in there. Let’s go! I need a blood test immediately. Let’s figure out what she’s taken,” the doctor barked and Helena was grabbed back out of the way of those who knew what to do. A heartbeat later, she realized it was Rafferty who had pulled her back, his arm across her chest.

She didn’t know what else to do, so she turned and buried her face into her love’s chest.

“Thank you. Thank you,” she whispered.

Chapter 37

Then Cindy’sConfession

“What happened?” Helena asked. They were sitting in Cindy’s hospital room a few hours later.

Cindy was awake and calm, lying upright in a hospital bed, swaddled in blankets, a gown, and squishy socks on her feet. Helena sat by her bed, still holding one of the thin blankets a member of the hospital staff had given her wrapped around herself. She had been so focused on Cindy, she hadn’t realized that her coat had been soaked through with water and chilled. Rafferty had been much the same, but he had set his offered blanket to the side, leaning back against the wall facing the end of Cindy’s bed, his armscrossed.

“I’m sorry, Helena. I know what this probably has done to you,” Cindy said instead of answering.

Helena just squeezed her friend’s hand. “No, don’t do that. I’m glad I found youin time.”

“It was so stupid. What did I think… that it would solve anything? I know better,” Cindy said, setting her head back, then bumping it once in frustration.

“Hey, don’t do that. We just got you conscious again,” Helena said, lightening her voice and smiling. “I just want to understand what happened? What ledto this?”

“It wasn’t one thing,” Cindy said, shaking her head. “It was everything. I don’t know. It’s like ever since your dinner party… I mean it was before that for months. Just this low level scream underneath everything. You know. I could laugh and have fun, but underneath it all was just one long, eternal scream, and it just wouldn’t go away. Then something snapped after your party, and I felt like I was breaking through… It’s like I’ve always had this margin … and the last month the margin just disappeared. I couldn’t keep it togetheranymore.”

Even though she tried not to, Helena stiffened. There it was again.Ever since your dinner party…Ever since she had brought a demon intoher life.

---