Page 22 of The Book Reader
The kitchen is shrouded in darkness, the nightmare paving the way to nightfall. My limbs are stiff, since I haven’t moved from where I was in when my aunt turned to dust.Witches don’t turn to dust, I think over and over again, disbelief plaguing me. My tears have long since dried up, but the pain in my heart still threatens to break me from the inside out, but it can’t. Iwon’tlet it.
I glance around the kitchen at the four piles of daemon dust when there should only be three. I lower my head to my hands. This is all wrong—my aunt should be here making us dinner, asking too many questions about the man I just met and his intentions, scolding me for eating yet another cookie before dinner.
My phone rings, the upbeat tune taunting me. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Not yet. I need time to process all of this.
I pull in a breath as I stand, muscles protesting against the cramp as I make my way down the hall. I’m still holding my aunt's necklace. The house has locked itself tight, the air feels tight around us in response. I can feel it like a pulse running through my body—no one is getting in or out. Which is goodbecause, right now, I can barely process what just happened, let alone anything else.
I don’t make it to the living room. I drop to my knees, a wail of frustration and anger taking over. I punch the floor, then the wall. “She didn’t do anything wrong… She was…” My words trail off. The family I thought I knew seems to have been keeping secrets, and there was no one left to clue me in.
I curl into a ball on the floor, the grief slowly suffocating me as I close my eyes., There’s only one thing left for me, one tiny shred of reality that I can cling to—the man in my dreams. I fall into unconsciousness, hoping to lose myself in that delusion.
The constant ringing of my phone wakes me. I roll over, and my whole body is stiff with pain from sleeping on the hard floor. I blink my tired eyes against the sunlight streaming in—. Hours of sleep and not one dream to distract me from… I look around the hallway, and everything comes flooding back.
“No,” I sob. I’d hoped it was all a dream, but the blood and daemon dust tell me otherwise.
My phone chirps in the eerie stillness, making me jump. I’d left it beside the pile of dust that should’ve been May’s body. I’ve got twenty missed calls from Mekhi and fifteen from Lucy. I press the call button on the most recent one, and she answers on the second ring.
“Thank god, Ari! Where have you been? We’ve been trying to reach you for ages! Is everything alright?” Lucy shouts, and I hear the telltale signs of her walking to work. I open my mouth to speak, but she carries on. “Mekhi was freaking out because of a stupid dream he had, so now I’m late for a meeting with the new girl, Eden,” Lucy huffs.
More tears spill down my cheeks. “Luce?” My voice shakes.
“Ari? What is it? Are you okay?” The clicking of her steps skitter to a halt, as though she’s forgotten what she’s supposed to be doing.
I shake my head even though she can’t see me. “They killed her… Aunt May —.”
There’s a pause, emotion making her voice thick as she says, “What? I’m coming… Hold on?—”
I don’t hear the rest of what she says. I drop my phone as I fall to my knees, letting out an agonizing sob.
I’m notsure how long it takes. But I don’t move again till my phone rings. “Lucy?”
“Ari? We can’t get through the gate.” I blink my eyes a few times and then stand, trying to process her words. I pull the front door open. I can just barely see Lucy and Mekhi standing at the gate—Mekhi glaring at it and Lucy watching me with pain-filled eyes
“Let them in,” I whisper. “Grant them entry in perpetuity.” The house almost seems to take a breath as my words imprint on its walls. The gate swings open, and within seconds, I’m in Lucy’s arms, and she’s hugging me tightly to her. But my tears have gone now. I’m too angry to cry.
“Hitch?” Mekhi reaches out his hand. He’s not good with this sort of thing—but I feel the love he is sending me.
The three of us stay like this for a while, until Lucy pulls back, with tears in her own eyes—other than Mekhi or myself, my aunt was one of the first people Lucy met after her accident, and she’d become a pseudo parent for her too.
“What happened?” Her words come out choked.
“Daemons,” I answer, my voice flat.
Mekhi gasps. He fears daemons more than any other supernatural being. “They’re dead. I killed them.” I pull away, heading for the kitchen. It only takes Lucy a moment to follow. Her eyes take in the mess—the blood and the four piles of dust.
“You killed four demons?” she asks as she walks into the room, looking at everything in shock.
I point to the three piles of dust by the fridge. “Those are the demons.”
She bites her lower lip, worrying it between her teeth, as though she can sense what’s coming. “Ari? Where’s Aunt May’s body?”
Mekhi, who came into the room much more quietly, stands next to me, and I know what I’m about to say is going to freak him the fuck out. I lift a shaky hand and point. “That pile of dust there…thatis Aunt May.”
Confusion draws Lucy’s eyebrows together. “No, that can’t be right. That would mean—” She breaks off as Mekhi answers for her.
“Daemon?” He looks at me. “Your aunt was a daemon?”
I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know. It seems that way. I don’t know many witches who burst into dust when they die, do you?” The thought that I no longer know anything about my entire family makes my heart squeeze painfully. “I need to clean this up. She would hate this mess.”
