Page 2 of Blood Magic (Ariel Kimber 3)

“It’s fine. Everything’s fine.” I lied.

I could feel him hesitating outside the door before moving away. My breath left me in a relieved rush.

With a new sense of urgency, no longer stalling for time in the slightest, I pawed through the backpack. Thick white socks that I immediately unrolled and bent over so I could stuff my feet into them. I was grateful to whoever had packed the socks for me. I didn’t like walking around barefoot in places that weren’t home. Next, I pulled out a pair of pajama pants. They were gray, had an elastic waist and a drawstring. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to belong to the owner of the t-shirt. I pulled the pants up my legs and tied them tight. They stayed in place at my hips, and I knew they did not belong to the twins. Maybe they were Ty’s?

The bag didn’t have a bra or panties in it, so I went without. No way was I digging through the pile of bloody clothes to get the matching set I had put on earlier in the day. Those clothes were going into the garbage can, never to be worn again.

I dug around through the rest of the bag’s contents. A black pull-over hoodie with a silver pentagram on the front. It was so big I knew it had to belong to one of the twins. A red beanie that I wanted to steal and keep for myself. Another pair of socks. Why were there two?

I didn’t put the extra pair of socks on. Nor did I put the hoodie or beanie on.

There was nothing else in the bag.

I wished there was more in the bag.

Coward, I whispered to myself inside my head.

My eyes shot back to the mirror, and my body froze solid. The fog had disappeared, and the mirror showed the room behind me.

And it showed… me.

The very thing I did not want to see.

There was a raw, jagged cut on my cheek, and it was oozing blood.

Where had the stitches gone?

There was so much blood leaking out of my face. It kept coming, pouring out of my cheek at an alarming rate.

Too much blood.

As my head grew light, my face began to melt in the mirror, distorting my image.

The picture that was left was so grossly distorted, my face so deformed that I opened my mouth and screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.

And sat up in my bed, wide awake.

My breath left me in a rush as I flopped back down onto the mattress.

Tears traveled across my cheeks, running into my hair. I held my body completely still and hoped to all that was holy that I had only screamed in the dream and not in the real world.

Footsteps in the hallway told me I wasn’t going to be lucky tonight.

The soft tapping on the door was to be expected because we had done this very same dance for the last three nights, ever since Dash had been released from the hospital.

If I had had my dreamcatcher hanging above me while I slept, I didn’t think I would be having these dreams or having to deal with this nonsense. But, Quinton had gotten his way, like I imagined he always would. And it hadn’t just been me who had been unable to tell him no. None of the guys had put up a fight or argued in the slightest.

“Ariel.” Quinton’s rough voice came at me through the door.

I couldn’t help the sigh that escaped me, or the fact it was loud and sounded annoyed.

“I know you’re awake,” he informed me like he’d done the past three nights as well. “I heard you screaming.”

Fuck him.

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