Page 6 of The Witch They Crave

But the voice is in my head, warm as it has ever been.

Which means…

I was wrong?

About what I've been talking to since the day I got here. About the thing that has lived past every wall I have, that knew me before the academy did, that told me I was strong and told me to stay away from Kage and went velvet-over-a-blade the one time it wanted something—

I go very, very still, in the darkness of my cottage over my half-packed bag.

Who are you? I think, and my own voice shakes inside my skull.

The warmth deepens. Leans closer. Wraps around the cold scraped place like it's coming home.

You're not going anywhere, Calypso, it says, gentle as a hand on the back of my neck.

I've waited too long for you to leave.

Chapter 2

I don't move for a long time.

The shirt is still on the floor where I dropped it. The bag is still open on the bed. And the thing in my head is still there, warm and settled and waiting, taking up the exact space it has taken up for a month.

Calypso.

"Don't."

You're shaking.

"I said don't." My voice sounds like someone else's but I can’t just keep this interaction inside my mind anymore. "Who are you?"

Nothing. Not silence—it doesn't leave. It just declines, the way you'd decline a second helping. The warmth stays right where it is, patient, like it has all the time in the world and knows it.

I pick the shirt up off the floor because my hands need a job. "Fine. Easier one. Two weeks ago, on the levee. I got powdered sugar all over him and left a handprint on his jacket." My throat tries to close. I talk through it. "Which shoulder?"

Does it matter, now?

The bottom drops out of me.

Because that's not a no. That's not a yes either. It’s a copout. A really fucking cruel one.

"You let me think you were him."

I never said I was.

I put my hand on the bedpost.

It's true. That's the worst part. It never once said it. I was wondering and filled in the rest, because a boy was kind to me in the daylight and something was kind to me in the dark and I wanted them so badly to be the same person that I never asked. Not once. Twelve years of trusting nobody, and I handed the inside of my own skull to whatever this is because it used a nice voice.

"How long?"

Longer than you'd like.

"How long?"

Calypso. And it's gentle. That's the thing. It's so gentle. You're already frightened. You don't need the rest of it tonight.

"Get out."