“I know.” I curl my finger into my palms, missing the way the flames felt against my skin. “And maybe that’s why Aunt Estelle bound my powers. She said something about the cards not lying or being wrong or…or something. Maybe she saw me burning down a village.”
“Maybe.” Ethan squeezes my thigh. “We should get ready for bed after we eat so we can get some sleep while we can.”
“Good thinking.” I’m exhausted again, and it’s not just from using magic, but from my mind running a mile a minute, which will make it hard to sleep even though I’m so freaking tired. “Oh, and don’t forget to take your meds.”
“Yes, Mom,” he grumbles, playfully nudging me with his elbow.
I give him a pointed look. “I’ll try the healing crystal thing too. I bought a handful of little gemstones when I was at the witch-store last week. Two weeks ago?” I sigh. “Everything is blurring together in my head.”
“You’ll feel better after sex and a good night’s sleep.”
Smirking, I look at him. “I like how casually you slipped sex in there.”
“I can casually slip something else in later,” he says, and I laugh. I don’t know what I’d do without Ethan. I’d be dead, that’s for sure, and who knows how long it would have taken for someone to find my body at the bottom of that pond?
Ethan turns on the TV, playing Friends again. It’s a feel-good show that goes perfect with my comfort food, and I’m a little more relaxed by the end of this episode. Ethan puts the food away and I start making a list of magical supplies needed for protection spells.
My eyes start to get heavy, and a cloud of darkness surrounds me. I fight through it, feeling like I’m running underwater. I can see the sunlight just ahead of me, and I reach out my hand, feeling the warm of the sun on my fingertips.
But suddenly, I’m violently yanked back. A hundred dark hands pull me down, down through the earth and into utter darkness. The more I struggle, the darker it becomes. The darkness doesn’t just surround me; it engulfs me inside and out. I’m suffocating, trapped, alone and scared for all eternity.
Hunter barks, and I jerk my head back up, blinking rapidly. My heart is pounding and a deep chill sets in my bones. Hunter bumps the notebook with his nose and I look down right as Ethan rushes into the living room.
“Is everything oh—” He cuts off when he sees the notebook. The pen falls from my fingers, hitting the notebook and rolling to the floor. I blink again, making sure I pulled myself out of the vision. Because staring up at me is a perfectly drawn picture of the bird-demon.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I’m telling you, there is no way I drew this.”
Julia takes the notebook page from me, brows pushing together. “It’s creepy. Like really freaking creepy. This is what it looks like?”
“It’s exact,” Ethan tells her, opening the box of donuts. True to his word, we had sex—amazing, had-me-screaming-like-a-porn-star sex, and then fell asleep snuggled up together. I woke in Ethan’s arms feeling much calmer. We had a semi-lazy morning, taking our time getting out of bed, and then took Hunter for a walk around the block before heading out to his dad’s, getting coffee and donuts on the way.
“Who drew it then?” Julia puts the drawing down and joins us at the kitchen table.
“Me,” I say, knowing I just contradicted what I just said.
“She was auto-writing,” Ethan explains. “It hit her all of the sudden. We were together and I left for maybe a minute to clean up dinner. Hunter barked, and I came back to find her looking a little out of it.”
“It just came over you?” Julia echoes, and Sam pauses at the threshold of the kitchen, eyes narrowing when she sees me. She’s supposedly a good demon hunter, but that girl has the worst poker face.
“Yeah. I felt like I was dying and then Hunter helped pull me from whatever vision I was having. When I looked at my notebook, that was staring back at me.”
Julia nods, making sure she’s following along. “And you’d already killed the third one when you drew this?”
“Yes,” I answer, and see the apprehension in her eyes. If there were only three of these bird-demons, and I’d killed them all, then why channel something that made me draw them?
“Do you think that’s enough to go on?” Ethan asks, shoving half a donut in his mouth.
“It’s definitely helpful,” Julia replies and tears a small bit off a chocolate glazed donut. “I’ll ask around, and if anyone can match this description, I’ll question them further.”
“Thank you,” I tell her and hope I’m conveying just how thankful I really am. I’d be dead—literally dead—if it wasn’t for Ethan and his family helping me with everything.