Page 59 of There is No Devil

I hate my weakness.

I hate that she wields it against me as a weapon. Shaming me because I loved her. Guilting me because I want to stop.

Cole comes into the kitchen, dressed as I expected in a dark brocade jacket.

“What is it?” he demands, seeing the look on my face.

Without waiting for an answer, he grabs the laptop and turns the screen toward him.

He reads the email in a glance. The look that falls over his face would make a grown man stagger.

“When did she send this?” he barks.

“Just now.”

I’m shaking. I feel like she walked into the room and spat in my face.

She still has so much power over me.

I’ll never be free of her. She’ll never allow it.

Cole slams the windows shut and strips off his jacket, wrapping it around my shoulders.

“I’m covered in paint,” I tell him.

“I don’t give a fuck.”

I feel him shaking too, with anger.

“Where does she get the fucking nerve,” he hisses.

“She has no shame.”

“The fact that she thinks that proves anything except how fucking brainwashed you were—” he cuts himself off, seeing that talking about it is only making me more upset. “Never mind. Come on—I’ve got an idea.”

Numbly, I follow him.

I thought Cole would take me upstairs to the bedroom, or maybe into the main living room.

Instead, he leads me down to the lower level, to a parlor we’ve never visited before.

Like all the rooms, its doors are thrown open. I’ve only seen one locked room in this house: the one leading down to the basement.

As in much of Cole’s house, the original purpose of this space has been altered to suit his eccentric preferences. While the far wall is a large stone hearth, and the usual sofas and chaises are present, the bulk of the room is given over to a potter’s wheel.

Cole lights a fire in the grate. The pale applewood logs give off a sweet scent reminiscent of their fruit. The flames leap up, bringing alive the figures in the many paintings on the walls.

“Relax a minute,” Cole says, pushing me gently down on the sofa closest to the fire.

I sink back against the cushions, soaking in the heat. I’m still shaking, but not as much.

Why in the fuck does she still have this effect on me?

I have her blocked on every platform, I haven’t seen her face in years.

She’s 5’5 and fifty years old. Why am I afraid of her?

How does she still have the ability to reduce me to a blubbering child in an instant?

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