Damaged Gods

Now what? Will you leave? Stay? What will you do with this choice you’ve been given?

I don’t know, so I don’t answer. I just turn away and start down the stairs.

Pell whispers, “Go after her,” to Tomas.

“Like this?” Tomas whispers back.

“Change.” Pell’s words are both a growl and a command.

But that’s all I hear, because I’m practically jumping down the stairwell and then there he is. Sheriff Russ Roth in the flesh. Standing in my lower hall like he’s allowed to be here. Hat in hand, smile on his face, looking super fucking hot and emitting those damn cupid pheromones. I can sense them from all the way across the room.

It’s not me. It is him making those attraction smells.

“Sheriff,” I say brightly. “What brings you out this way?”

He cocks his head at me, still smiling, but it’s a look I recognize. His look says, Are you fucking kidding me? But his mouth says, “You… kinda left our date in a sudden and unexpected way. I was worried.”

“I’m fine. As you can see.”

He smiles. Nods. Calls me a liar in his head. “I can see that. And I’m not trying to make a big deal about this.” He puts up a hand. “If I’m not your type, that’s totally fine. But… Pie. Come on now. Your exit was unconventional and, maybe this is just the lawman in me, but it was also suspicious.”

I point at myself. “You’re suspicious of me?”

“Not you.” He looks up and around, his eyes landing on the left stairwell, then the right. He sees it. He understands it instinctually. They don’t belong here. “This place,” he finishes. “There’s something…” He taps his head with his hat like that’s his thinking gesture. “Something not right here.”

I don’t want to get too close to him. I don’t understand what he is or what his weird power is doing. I don’t even know for sure that he’s aware of the way he affects me. But I don’t need to understand any of that stuff to know I can’t be near this man. And he needs to go. Like… now.

So when I reach the bottom of the stairs, I simply turn to the center stairwell and begin climbing back up.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m working, Sheriff. I have things to do and they are all up this way.”

I don’t look back to see if he’s following me, but what else can he do? Just stay down there by himself?

He follows. And he comes up those stairs fast, taking them several at a time. So fast that I have to stretch my legs and hoof it to keep the space between us at a reasonable distance so those sex pheromones he’s shooting at me can’t catch up.

When I get to the top I head straight to the front door. I know he’s not going to leave without some kind of explanation, but the closer I can get him to that exit, the easier it will be to push him out.

“Miss Vita,” Russ calls. “Are you running away from me?”

“Nope.” But I am, and we both know it.

The door is open and even halfway across the room I can see through it. I can see the outside. I don’t have the ring on, but I can see the wall, and the gate, and the Granite County Sheriff’s Department SUV parked out front.

This is when it hits me—I can leave.

I can drop my ring on the floor, walk out that door, and then…

And then what?

What the hell am I going to do? Steal his car?

This is why Grant needed to take me down to the caretaker’s cottage that first day. He couldn’t leave by the front door either. His car was on the other side of the sanctuary. And I’m not all up on the magic surrounding the lake and the forest down the hill, but if Pell’s remarks the other day were true, then they are hidden from outsiders. And I probably wouldn’t be able to find my Jeep again. I’d have to walk out of here with nothing.

I’d have to walk out of here without Pia too.

What would that life look like?

I don’t care about the Jeep. I don’t care about being so poor, I can’t even feed myself. I am a survivor. I can find a way. I always find a way.

But a life without Pia—or, rather, a life without magic—what would that be like?

What would it be like to be normal?

To not be the crazy girl who talks to herself?

To not have a real imaginary friend sitting on my shoulder or hiding in my pocket?

I slip the ring back on and turn to face the sheriff. “What exactly do you want from me, Sheriff?”

He stops in the middle of the great hall. The day is nearly gone. I couldn’t even begin to guess how much time we spent up there in the hallway rooms. But there’s sunlight coming through all those magnificent stained-glass windows and it’s backlighting Russ Roth, making him appear as a black shadow.