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  Before I can react, it catches me across the throat.

  I expect blood to pour out. I expect to die fast.

  But it is like a papercut. A long, thin, painful line. And blood does escape my body, but not enough to kill.

  The male arsonist drops the knife and lunges forward, gripping me by the hair and shoving my head forward. He holds me there and I fight as hard as I can, but he is inhumanely strong. Blood hits the ground, droplet by droplet.

  When the dirt floor is spotted heavily with blood, he shoves me to the side and I hit the ground hard. Neither Kyle nor Terrance rush to my aide. I search for them, and find them floating several inches above the floor, their bodies are frozen in midair. Kyle is still vibrating, waves of short furs appearing and disappearing across each inch of skin I can see. The female Eve who seemed so harmless, surrounded by that lulling silver mist, has them caught in her grasp.

  She turns slowly to look at me. Her face is a mask of pain. “I told you it was too late.”

  The symbols on the wall near me come to life like a neon sign on the Vegas strip.

  “We are almost finished, my love,” the Adam says, walking around my body and kneeling down. “The seed of sin must be returned, so that we can reap the sow and take the world.”

  I see it then, pinched between his index finger and thumb. The tiniest seed.

  The seed that is born in darkness knows only shadows. Mordecai, who knew so much, but wished for a life of solitude, had prepared me for this. A seed is not nothing.

  A seed grows.

  I can’t let this happen. A hellmouth. The Cage of the Unseen. The Grimm Reaper. It’s all one evil. One giant seed of darkness waiting to bleed into the world.

  I struggle to my feet. The male witch is digging a shallow hole and placing the seed into the soil. He covers it reverently and he begins to chant again. The female witch joins him this time, their voices perfectly matched. I expect a hole to begin opening in the earth, but nothing happens.

  When the woman’s voice dissolves into screams of pain, I turn my attention to her. Kyle and Terrance are unceremoniously dropped to the ground, and neither of them move once they’ve made impact. The spell holding them has broken; she’s unable to keep them airborne and be consumed by the terror that’s so plain in her expression.

  Her stomach is expanding outwards, growing in what should be the loveliest way. The curves of motherhood. The future contained in the life-giving womb, born from a fertilized seed. Oh my God... she’s the hellmouth.

  But it’s malformed, awkwardly angled, continuing to expand so far outward that the woman’s gown, which I now see is split down the front, falls to the side and I can see her skin, which has grown so stretched that I behold the redness of her womb underneath the too-thin, sickly layer of gaunt flesh.

  And the man is still chanting. He’s walking towards her and staring at her like she is the great mother of the world, giving birth to creation.

  I hear Liam in my head, and this time it is not his voice anew, but past words spoken.

  You’re saying that you’ll kill these coven leaders, like it’s grabbing a burger at a fast food joint. And you know, and I know, that you cry over killing a spider even though they scare the hell out of you.

  If that’s what I have to do.

  I reach for my power, but it is still a hesitant thing inside—a butterfly with broken wings.

  So, I turn and find the knife on the floor that the male coven leader has discarded. Kyle and Terrance are still unconscious on the ground.

  And I don’t have a choice.

  I have to do this. I’ve killed before. They’re evil. They’re doing an evil thing.

  I walk forward quickly.

  The would-be Adam of creation has his back to me. I want to stop myself, but I know I can’t. I am driven by a different urge now to be near him.

  I’ve killed before.

  I’ll probably kill again.

  He is transfixed by the Eve growing into monstrous motherhood. And I plunge the knife into his back, to the left side of his spine and I angle it slightly inward towards the heart. His blood spurts out at me and I use that little death to fuel a tiny ounce of obliging power that is so very weak. Yet it does its job and helps me find the exact spot to end it quickly.

  The Adam, the arsonist, the evil walking, falls to the ground. And his face is peaceful, his mouth is slightly upturned in a smile. He thinks he has won already. But he hasn’t. Revenge for my fucking house, is the only thought that crosses my mind as I focus on a new target.

  But the woman is still airborne. She is harder to approach, because I know there is still some goodness in her. I know in my heart that she was not the one that set the fires. I can close my eyes and see her softer soul in juxtaposition to the male witch’s fire and brimstone. It goes to show that even innocence can be warped. And there comes a point in that conversion where the person does make a choice—to give into willful malevolence.

  The witch’s stomach is so large and heavy that it hangs on the ground. It is beginning to tear at the navel, allowing steam and a trickle of liquid hell to escape. It looks like a dress I once bought, three sizes too small, and how the seam had pulled so far apart when I’d tried to wear it that the line of it had only been held together by intermittent stitches. The woman’s eyes are no longer open, her face is slack, and her chest rises and falls jerkily. She’s dying anyways.

  This is a mercy.

  I begin to move around her great heaving stomach to get to her throat and I scream when a hand presses against her belly; gray, warped fingers push outward through the ripping seam of her body. Other hands join it, some with only three insanely long fingers and claws that try to slice through the skin that is still locking them in—prisoners ready for escape. All manners of atrocities. Whatever horrid things that have been locked in the Cage of the Unseen.

  Where is the Reaper? Where is the neutral, abiding force the coven leaders expected? I see nothing here save terrifying, monstrous destruction. I rush the rest of the way to the woman’s prone upper body. She’s still alive. I can only hope that killing her before the hellmouth is open will stop the spell. I whisper that I’m sorry, and then I slice the knife across her neck. I do not go shallow; I dig deep so that there is no hope for survival.

  Suddenly, the belly bursts in a convulsion of flesh and fluid.

  I brace myself, ready for the birthing of absolute evil.

  An arm crowned with a four-fingered hand reaches weakly out of the mess of guts and organs. Another arm appears. They grasp and claw and pull themselves.

  The face that is revealed is blood-soaked and alien. The eyes are black pits surrounded by sallow flesh. But the lower part of the demon is missing, as if the end of the spell cut him in half as the portal closed.

  I stand there, knife in hand, overcome by nausea and fear.

  And the monster reaches for me... and whispers Master.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “IT’S OVER,” I ASSURE Kyle and Terrance. They’re both leaned against the decrepit shelving, staring around the room. The dead witches, the carnage of the exploded stomach, the dead demon with half a body.

  “I feel like the worst kind of hangover,” Terrance rubs his head.

  “Hammers and fashion sense,” Kyle says weakly.

  I nod, smiling. “Hammers and fashion sense.” A knife, and a seed of broken magic.

  Clean-up isn’t something we can delegate. I don’t think the Bonneau police department is ready to face the truth about magic and hell. The first thing I want to do, and I’m not sure why, is to dig through the soil and find the seed. I search and I search, but I’m only sifting dirt. There’s nothing. The seed is tiny, but it’s here. It should be here. I wonder what it means that it’s not...

  It wasn’t the apple that made the sin. It was the seed.

  That grew without sunlight. That grew without water.

  The end in a single spark of life.

  We bury the bodies right the
re in the hidden wine cellar. I’m the only one who can manage scooping the woman’s flesh and organs into a small pile to push into the shallow grave. Both men gag as they try, but I’m used to the death. I’m used to cleaning out a person’s insides and preparing them for what comes after. When we’re done there are two small mounds in the ancient cellar.

  Terrance secures the kitchen floor tiling in place. The room below was untouched for so long; we can only hope it falls back into obscurity, that no one finds it again.

  I don’t tell either of them about the demon, about what it said before dying.

  A problem for another day.

  It seemed like I was saving them up lately.

  Leaving the restaurant feels strange, anticlimactic almost. Like the end of the world, or at least our little piece of it had almost ended, but we were the only ones who knew about it. So did it really happen?

  As everyone woke up today to go about their business, blissfully unaware... a tree falling in the forest, and no one to hear its death cry.

  We’re standing around the cruiser, all of us silent and reflective. When the sun begins to rise, flooding the sky with striking colors and the promise of a new day, Terrance phones his wife to tell her he’s safe and he’ll be home soon. Part of me wants to reach out to Liam, but he would have known how in danger I was. And he didn’t contact me. He didn’t come to help.

  You’re the one who banished him, idiot. Shut up, brain. I don’t want to listen to reason right now.

  “We can go to my place, Tori. I’ll take you to your house in the morning. You need to rest.” Kyle opens the door to the cruiser. “Terrance, you mind taking us out that way? My vehicle’s still at Tori’s.”

  “Sure,” Terrance said, his voice hollow and tired. “Off Blackdog Lane, right?”

  “I can’t rest right now, Kyle. I need to go home—to my home. I need to see what I’m dealing with. It’ll be easier anyways, to go ahead and get your car so we have transportation tomorrow.” I reason with him.

  “We’ve got Dad’s bike,” he responds halfheartedly, knowing that it’s not the vehicle convenience. The Victorian is my family; it’s part of my body, deep to my bones.

  I shake my head, but my mouth is dry and my heart is tired. And when the squad car moves towards my part of town, instead of Kyle’s, I can’t tell if the weight in my chest is lighter or vastly heavier.

  I CLOSE MY EYES AS we turn the corner onto my street. I don’t know how to prepare myself. I should have gone to Jim’s house instead. Denial was easier, every single time.

  “We’re here,” Kyle says softly once the vehicle has come to a stop. My eyes are still closed, my heart beating out of my chest. I finally face the truth. I face what’s happened. Evil followed me home again, and this time it destroyed everything.

  I peer out the window and my heart beat halts. It is not so bad as I have imagined, but it still feels like I have lost a giant chunk of self. Terrance and Kyle get out of the car. I must wait a moment longer, to make sure my legs will support me when I get out.

  Air hits me, thick and choking. It is like the entire world is smoke-coated. My legs are unsure things beneath me, so I lean back against the now-closed passenger door.

  The structure is still standing, broken and brown. It is damp from a thousand gallons of water—maybe more. It will never be same, no matter how much money is poured into its walls in an attempt to bring it to life again. It will be a reanimated thing. Its spirit gone. I cannot change that, despite my continually-growing powers.

  Nearly all the front-facing windows are broken. The firemen are still here, watching the house and making sure the flames are well and truly out.

  I step away from the squad car and being to walk forward, caught in a daze. This can’t be real. This house... it means so much to me. The memories made inside its walls are constant embraces. Knowing my dad and my grandmother slept in these rooms and walked these halls, gives me a connection I can’t get anywhere else.

  I’m untethered. Floating in the wind. Unrooted.

  “Miss, you can’t go in there yet.” A voice calls to me, and I realize I’ve walked nearly to the front porch. My feet are ready to mount the steps, to enter and return to normalcy. But that part of me has been amputated.

  Strong arms go around my shoulders and pull me into a steady embrace. “I don’t even have more underwear. I didn’t even do wash this week,” I mumble out. I speak quietly, because what I really want to do is shout and scream at the sky and rail against the devices of life that have robbed me of this house and its wonderfully-complicated innards.

  It’s dumb, to be focused on piles of dirty laundry. Yet... in the wake of losing all of your material things, you begin to think of how precious the tiniest object is—like clean, non-granny panties. Or a wayward single cufflink of your father’s and a note from your grandmother that might have survived, sitting in a little sterling box in your room. Or an ironic throw pillow with disgruntled blind mice.

  “We’ll get you some things tomorrow. Come on. You need some rest.” Kyle pulls me gently. I don’t want to leave, but I move anyways, feet feeling like they’re trapped in concrete.

  “I need to call Dean and tell him what’s happened.” I need to cling to something—business and responsibility.

  But it’s not really possible to cling to a business that’s burned to the ground, is it?

  “We’ll call him, just... not right now.” Kyle squeezes my body gently. It should feel good, comforting. Instead I feel a bit trapped.

  We finish the walk to Kyle’s car. I’m still a zombie, trapped by the death behind me. Kyle has to open my door, help me slide against the seat, and he even leans over to buckle me up. Leaving the house is worse than arriving. I can’t pull my eyes away from the corpse of my home. The personality is gone, though the ‘x’ of yellow caution tape looks like a gag around the screaming half-open door.

  Where will I live? It’s too soon to move in with Kyle officially. I’m not ready. And I don’t want to be in Jim’s house. Liam’s hideaway... but he’s gone. And I couldn’t move in with Liam either, even if he was here.

  The road passes by too slowly; it gives me too much time to wallow. Kyle takes the turns gently, as if that deliberate kindness can make things better. If he knew me, and what I needed right now, he’d be going at breakneck speed. He’d take turns like the devil himself was after us. He might lose control. Spin off the road.

  Erase everything.

  We pass a road sign then that leaves me feeling sick to my stomach, not for the first time today.

  I know exactly where I have to go. The only other place where my family once lived. The only other place with memories—though many of them weren’t good.

  I’d go to my grandmother’s house. To that little cottage adjacent to that bog of eternal spirits.

  Hellhole Bay.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “I DON’T THINK YOU CAN save that,” Kyle speaks gently.

  Nodding sadly, I drop the photo album into the bin. Even if the pictures were not blackened beyond recognition, they would still be soaking wet from the firemen’s efforts. “So much is just... gone.” All my life when I’ve thought about fire, I’ve also thought of the end. Dying. Being discovered and tortured and burned.

  Not once did I foresee this outcome of flame.

  Kyle’s arms go around me. I know he means it as a comfort, yet every time he’s touched me this past week since the night my home had died, I’ve felt trapped. Rationally, I know it’s not Kyle himself, but the emotions I’m pushing down. I’ve tried my hardest not to take it out on him, and even when I have he’s taking it in stride. Like when I basically kicked him out of the hotel two nights ago so I could be alone.

  He squeezes me again, and that human touch threatens to break my strength, tear down the walls I’m building up to help me face what’s about to happen.

  And what has happened, I think trying to call my power once again, and finding it still a feeble thing. At lea
st the voice is gone, that thing that wanted to take me over at Mordecai’s and spoke to me in my home.

  “It should have been in my room,” I say, pulling away from him and picking up a soaked pillow to toss it onto the growing pile of things to be trashed. “Let’s keep looking. Or... maybe I’ll just stay in the hotel forever.”

  Kyle chuckles. “Yeah, not very sustainable. You know my offer stands. You’re more than welcome to—”

  “I’m not ready to live with you, Kyle.”

  “Can’t blame a man for trying.” He pats the pocket of his jacket, and I know it’s subconscious. That’s where the ring still is. A promise represented by a never-ending circle. I keep thinking about what I’ll say if he... when he pulls it out.

  “Here, is this it?” Kyle is holding a little silver jewelry box in his hands. “Wonder how it got out here.” I didn’t like that something dear to me had been buried beneath the contents of an overturned bookshelf in the hallway. I mean, I understood why police and fireman had needed to trudge through my home—to check for lingering damage, to find the source of the fire.

  Of course, they’ll never find the source, because he’s dead. The Adam buried in a hidden cellar room, no longer able to revel in the ashes of his handiwork.

  “Yes, thank you.” I close the distance between us and take the sterling box. It is coated in a thin layer of smoke residue and I lift the edge of my tank top to polish it away. On the lid are my initials. And below those the words—Beloved Daughter. I open the precious thing gently to see a singular cufflink, a grouping of worn keys, and a folded piece of paper. This I unfold, though I know what is written on the paper by heart.

  I know you hate the house, Piccola morte. My lovely little death. A day may come when you need the shadows there. I am always with you.

  I refold the paper, put it back in the box, and then lift the keys. They jangle quietly. “There’s no avoiding this, I guess.” I think back to Dean talking about money, and being smarter with the business. Maybe if I had been, I would be able to live in a hotel indefinitely... or at least for longer than a week’s time. Though, how many families wouldn’t have been able to afford coffins and flowers had I only thought about the payout?