Page 44 of The Blood Witch
Maybe we’ll get lucky and whatever demon she’s making a deal with will finish her off once and for all.
There’s a surge of tainted power that flashes out from the front of the church, and then suddenly it’s quiet. I look up against my better judgment, but there’s nothing there. Jamie and whatever the hell she invited here are gone. The candles still burn, and the bag she carried in remains on the altar, but Jamie, the smoke, and the dead hare are gone.
I’m silent for a while, looking around as though the psychopath will wander out of a shadowed corner or something. Nothing happens. The light in the church brightens slightly, and the symbols scorched into the ground dim and fade until they’re once again black. Relief washes through me. I’m not dead. I haven’t been tortured yet, but what just happened makes me feel uneasy as fuck.
“What the hell was that?” I ask, even though I’m pretty sure I already know.
I never thoughtthatwould be something I would witness. I was always taught that you don’t mess with some entities in the magical world, and demons are one of them. Obviously, no one taught Jamie that lesson, because the idiot just summoned a demon and then went somewhere with it. Seems Jamie missed Oprah’snever let them take you to a second locationlesson too. There’s no way that’s a good thing for her, which means this can’t be a good thing for us.
“That was Jamie getting her batteries recharged,” Elon offers, his tone haunted.
“Was it doing what I think it was doing to her?” I ask and then suddenly wish I hadn’t. There are some things I just don’t want to know.
Elon thankfully doesn’t answer.
The room reeks of foul magic, desperation, and sulfur. I bury my nose in the crook of my arm to try and block the smell, wishing I could crack a window. I stew silently and try to understand what would drive a person to this.
“What’ll happen now?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. I hate the hint of hopelessness I hear in it. I tell myself I need to fight, to stay strong, but I’m beyond spent physically and magically, and I haven’t even been here a day. How has Elon survived this long without losing his mind?
It’s silent for so long I don’t think he’ll answer.
“She’ll come back,” he tells me, shattering the heavy silence. “And when she does, we’ll all wish she hadn’t,” he adds cryptically, but it’s not hard to figure out what he means.
When she comes back, one or all of us are going to die.
My heart starts to hammer in my chest. I can tell myself I’ll fight, that I won’t give up, but what if it’s not enough? Who knows how strong she’ll be when she returns or what she’ll be capable of? Yeah, I’m an Osseous, but who knows what the fuck Jamie is anymore? How do I fight that?
I pull my knees to my chest and rest my head on the bony peaks. Internally I fight the despair that’s trying to sink into me. I think of my Aunt Hillen and how she would hold me as a little kid. She would cuddle me and smooth my hair with her hand. She would sing to me one of her favorite songs, and then I would beg her to sing me my favorite until she tickled me and finally relented. I fall into the memory like it’s a pile of warm blankets, letting it comfort and soothe me in all the ways I so desperately need right now.
I start to quietly hum “Savage Daughter,” the lyrics rising out of my soul and fortifying my will. I think about my ancestors and the trials and tribulation they experienced and survived. I feel so brutally lonely, but as I hum, resonating with the message of the haunting song that was my favorite lullaby as a kid, I know that I’ll never truly be alone. Not when the love of my family—both here and gone—is there to guide me.
I open my eyes to find Elon watching me. I offer him a half smile while I continue to hum my tune, each verse and chorus a soothing balm to my battered hope.
Something hits my foot, and I flinch away from it. If there are fucking rats in here on top of demons and batshit crazy witches, I think I will officially lose my shit. A girl really can only take so much. I look to find an opened red and blue package of digestives teetering at my feet. I look up to find Elon close to the edge of his cage, watching me.
“They taste like graham crackers,” he informs me awkwardly. “She doesn’t do anything to them, I’ve been eating them since I’ve been here and I haven’t been poisoned yet by anything other than too much fiber.”
I pick up the package and look at the nutrition facts. “These cookies have fiber?” I ask absently, and Elon chuckles and shakes his head.
“I don’t know, I was just trying to get you to stop singing. The promise of death by demon spawn is one thing, but I refuse to be tortured by a tone deaf tune. Even I have my limits,” he deadpans, but there’s a cheeky glint to his eyes.
“Sit on it and spin, I have a beautiful voice,” I counter, faux offended but grateful for the gesture he’s making nonetheless.
“Tone deafandhumble too! Well, if I didn’t just win the fellow abductee lottery,” he teases, and I shake my head and pick up the half package of crackers.
“Pshhh, you know it,” I declare. “You’re going to be singing a different tune when I figure out how to get us out of here,” I tease him right back, biting into the brown cookie-cracker hybrid thing that someone decided to name a digestive. Yeah, that’s never going to make sense to me.
I look at the biscuit in my hand quizzically as the taste spreads across my tongue. He’s right. Tastes like a graham cracker...so weird, but good. I shove the rest of it in my mouth like a squirrel preparing for winter, and I hear Elon chuckle quietly and then sit down.
“I’ll sing whatever tune you want for the rest of our lives if you can get us out of here,” he counters, the declaration joking but with an underlying foundation of sadness.
“Holding you to that,” I tell him, pointing the package of food at him as though it’s serving as witness to this conversation.
I didn’t think I was that hungry, especially not after watching Jamie kill an innocent animal and then practically fuck a foggy demon in front of me, but as soon as I swallow down the first cracker, I inhale the rest, suddenly starving. I feel bad for eating half of Elon’s portion, the stars know he needs it more than I do, but I eat it all the same, grateful for his kindness.
I look over at the biscuits I threw to Brianne, but they’re still just there, untouched and possibly unseen. Part of me wants to try and help her snap out of what she’s going through, and another part of me feels like she’s earned the right to deal with all of this however she wants to.
“Will the lunatic bring us water?” I ask as I swallow down a thick bite that feels like it gets stuck in my esophagus.
