Page 16 of Corrupt Shadows

Jay nods. “Yeah, you always see an upside-down cross in horror movies and stuff.”

She drops it back into her purse. “Hmm. I’ll, uh… ask him about it.”

“Can you take Gomez with you?” I ask Rosa when Jay checks the time on his phone. “He’s been jumpy today, and I don’t feel comfortable leaving him alone.”

“Sure.” She heads to the fridge, grabs some berries, then hands him a few. “Here, baby.”

He pulls it from her fingers and swallows it quickly, squeaking for a second. “Thanks. I’ll come by and get him in the morning.”

Jay places his hand on the small of my back, and Rosa gives me a look. I follow her outside with Jay at my side, but I can’t shake the horrible feeling that someone is watching me as we head for the door.

SIX

Lorcan

I still cannot get my thoughts straight. Rage is my constant companion. I order Aiden to continue his ruse of being an order member. Him giving the pink-haired one the cross worked well. The witch’s face drained of color when her friend pulled it from her bag.

I sit in the witch’s office while she’s at work, looking at myself in the Fallenmoore mirror and recalling the day when the coven forced me through it. Their powerful ritual and symbols trapped me in front of it. I believed I could overpower them, but they knew my true name. My brothers had to have given it to them. There’s no other way they would have known.

I trusted the elder, Evangeline. That was my first mistake and one I wouldn’t make again. Fate has a sense of humor at least. Because of course the one who can set me free was named after the one who sealed my fate. If Evie knew why they locked me in here, she would be smart to run. But the witch is curious, to my benefit. Unlike the rest of her family, she wears the darkness so beautifully. I’ll ruin her with it.

It’s a fair punishment. Evangeline manipulated me. Now I will do the same to her last living descendant.

I step away from the mirror and through the Shadow Realm version of the witch’s office, which is more like a library. I kneel by her bookshelves, then slide my fingers along the spines, breathing in the scent of parchment from the older books. She’s even categorized them.

Leather-covered tomes fill the bottom shelves, reminding me of my library back home. It’s been some time since I’ve been there, but soon I will return, and the witch will walk these hollow hallways alone, as I have done for a century.

I look over each title: A History of the Salem Witch Trials, Demonic Oppression, Demonology in the Modern World, An Origin of Necromancy.

Above the nonfiction titles are shelves of fantasy books, some thrillers, and four entire shelves of horror. I slide my finger down a Stephen King novel and smirk. No wonder she’s harder to scare than anticipated. I do enjoy a challenge.

She needs to believe her life is in danger if I have any hope of driving her toward me and away from her world. If she ends up using her magic, our attachment will grow. Then it won’t be long until she’s a fractured, broken thing in the palm of my hands.

In the meantime, I’m learning everything I can about her—any fuel I can use to open her mind further. From the glimpses into her life, I’ve learned one important thing: she’s lonely. It’s unlikely she even realizes it, but she doesn’t let anyone in. She has two people, the colorful witch and the boy with heart eyes. Once they’re removed, she’ll be completely isolated. It’s easy to remove a person from existence when there’s no one to miss them.

I stride to her desk and look around at the printed papers and their highlighted sections about secret orders within the church. I also find a stack of papers and notes describing signs that a person is going insane.

My lips unfurl into a sadistic smile. She’s terrified of losing her mind.

I decide to go to Aiden this evening. He needs to amp up her fear of the Order, enough to make her believe they are here but not enough to make her run again.

The witch is an escapist, and I won’t let her slide through my fingers this time. If I could come through to the Human Realm for just a day, I could easily unravel the witch. Instead, I must use the boy.

I sigh deeply. My hands fist at my sides. Disgust washes over me at how far I have fallen, reduced to use a human to do my bidding.

If I could return from this blasted realm, I could also feel the thrum of her blood as my hands encircle her throat, watching the life drain from her eyes.

No, I must not kill her. If I do that… I let my thoughts trail off.

Not to mention the added irritation of the witch’s bat. At first the little pest tracked me with his eyes as he snuggled against Evie earlier this evening. It seems as though he is always within a wing’s length of her.

Most of the time he rides around on her shoulder, hiding in her hair. I enjoyed his terror when I showed myself in the mirror earlier, but then guilt slammed into me. I shouldn’t give a shit about hurting a pet’s feelings. So why does it make me feel horrible that I increased the bat’s anxiety? I couldn’t care less if it is her familiar. What can he do to protect her?

The fucking bat is on my last nerve. It has far too much intelligence in its dark beady eyes. I wonder if she was drawn to him by their connection. How did she find him in the first place? Not every witch gets a familiar. I may be a demon, but I have a vast knowledge of all things witch, a side effect of my crusade for revenge.

I step out of her office, slamming the door shut behind me. The fact that I was brought so low as to spy on the mundane everyday activities of the witch is torture. I am the demon king, and she is so far below me. Yet I have become a man possessed. I’ve barely slept or eaten because I must know her whereabouts at every given moment. My hatred for needing her consumes me.

I don’t even like the witch, but I am ravenous to see her curves on display beneath my gaze. She’s weak, afraid to lean into her own power. The magic aura surrounding her is thick, and the power she emanates comes off her in waves. Her magic is going to explode, despite the leash she keeps on it, if she does not start easing the pressure. I cannot allow her to be foolish and get discovered because she refuses to let that delicious darkness out to play.

---