Page 55 of Soul of a Witch

“Some guy?” Hope bled out of me. I wanted to scream. “What was his name? Who did he work for? Where was —”

But Janet just said, “I don’t know. Did I do something wrong?”

Practically choking on my words, I said, “No. You’re good. Never mind.”

The grimoire was gone, sent away to who knows where, and the more questions I asked, the more suspicion I would draw to myself. But it was Callum’s absence that worried me more than anything else.

Maybe I shouldn’t have trusted him at all. Maybe my grandmother was wrong, and all this time, the demon had just been waiting for his opportunity to abandon me.

Even for me, who loathed trusting anyone, such a thought made no sense. Callum had no reason to go back on his word or make empty promises.

The way he’d held me…the things he’d promised…perhaps I was being naive, but I trusted him.

But that made my fear even worse. Because if he wasn’t here, like he’d sworn to me he would be, then what the hell happened to him?

Days passed.

There was no further discussion about the missing grimoire, but it was clear my father had not found it. He and Meredith were constantly on edge, watching me with suspicion every time I dared to set foot outside my room. When they weren’t watching me during the day, Leon was stalking around the house at night.

There were no opportunities to escape. Desperate, I tried everything I could think of to get the cuffs off my wrists. Perhaps, with them gone, I could teleport again. But whatever magic they held made them unbreakable, even when I locked myself in the bathroom, wrapped my wrist in a towel, and slammed a hammer as hard as I could against the cuffs.

The pain was agonizing, but the glass didn’t crack.

In a daze, I lay curled on the cold bathroom floor, waiting for the agony to subside. The sound of water dripping from the sink faucet was so loud it made me twitch, and I covered my ears to make it stop.

But it didn’t.

Drip, drip, drip.

Was I losing my mind? My wrists were so swollen, so reddened, it looked like they were infected. A slimy feeling crept up the back of my skull, and I squeezed my eyes shut as the sensation of ragged fingernails dragging along my spine made me shiver.

Let me in.

Something wet touched my cheek, and my eyes flew open. There was cold water all over the floor.

Drip, drip, drip.

I looked up.

The ceiling waswrithing. A mass of thick, gray tentacles coiled over each other, as cold viscous liquid dripped onto my face. I tried to scream, scrambling on my hands and knees for the door, but no sound came out. My fingers slipped on the doorknob, slick with the putrid slime covering my hands. My mouth filled with the taste of rot, and I gagged as something wriggled in my throat.

Doubled over, I retched until bile spattered across the floor. But something was still in my throat, filling it, choking me, cutting off my air. My head felt like a balloon about to burst as I used the sink to drag myself to my feet. My eyes were wide, blood-shot and terrified, as I stared into the mirror, opening my mouth wide —

A thick tentacle, covered in blinking eyeballs, protruded from my throat.

Without a sound, I screamed as the tentacle reached out of my mouth, curling around my head. The suckers latched onto me, piercing my skin, squeezing tighter and tighter until —

“Everly! Hurry the fuck up! I’m trying to get down to Main Street before all the parking is gone!”

My brother’s voice was accompanied by his fist pounding on my bedroom door. Standing in front of the mirror, clutching my head in my hands, I blinked slowly before drawing in a shaking breath.

The illusion was gone, just as quickly as it had come. Opening my mouth wide, I peered into my empty throat…then promptly vomited into the sink.

More pounding, this time on the bathroom door. The handle shook. “What the hell are you doing? Dad wants you at the festival, so get your shit together!”

“What festival?” I barely managed to croak out the words.

“Art Fest, dumbass!” Jeremiah said. “You know, that stupid thing you’ve been dragging us to every damn year since you started college?”

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