Page 24 of Demon's Bane

“According to the message Esme sent, yeah. It sounds like she’s organizing the whole thing. Didn’t you see it come through?”

“I haven’t checked,” I murmur.

I missed a message earlier today, one that came through on the quill I finally found at the very back of my bottom desk drawer in the little office I keep behind the kitchen. The one enchanted to send messages to and from the coven and its witches. When it arrived, I assumed it was Esme writing to ask about my progress with our bargain, and I hadn’t bothered to read it.

“Can you imagine?” Belinda asks. “Moving to a whole new realm? Marrying a demon?”

Nadine, whose divorce finalized last year, just snorts a laugh. “Goddess, I’m almost tempted to break my exile for that.”

The conversation devolves into good-natured speculation about which witches we think might go and what might wait for them in the demon realm. I do my best to act natural, chime inor laugh when appropriate, and resist the urge to jump up from my seat at the table and go read the message for myself.

Everyone moves on to other topics after a few minutes, but I still can’t fully relax.

Guilt and anxiety and disappointment in myself all war for center stage in my mind.

I already know full well I’m going to the Veil tomorrow, any other plans I might have had be damned. The chance to see Allie is one I absolutely can’t pass up, and knowing that means I’ll probably see Esme, too, still isn’t enough to make me change my mind.

And now, with everything else going on, with my agreement to Esme’s bargain and the possibility of more witches going to the demon realm, it’s all the more reason I’m already mentally mapping the route upstate to coven lands.

All those creeping tendrils of Crescent magick feel like they’re reaching back out for me. Little vines to wrap around my wrists and ankles, tugging me back toward what I’ve been avoiding for so many years. A sore tooth I can’t stop poking with my tongue. A scab I pick rather than let it heal and scar and be finished for good.

The shadow of the coven hall, blocking out the sunlight of the life I’ve built.

Why can’t this be enough?

This, right here, surrounded by good company and good conversation, a goodlife, why can’t I just let the Crescent Coven go?

I don’t have the answer. I don’t know if thereisany answer that won’t make me feel like an idiot for getting myself into all of this.

All I can do is push those worries to the furthest corner of my mind I can manage, to forget about them for a little while and just be present.

But the shadow won’t leave and my guilt won’t stop gnawing, and even as the night carries on and my friends eventually say their goodbyes, I can’t shake it.

When I clean up the shop and flip the lights off, I can’t shake it.

And when I make my way slowly up the back stairs, the shadows follow me all the way to my apartment and the demon waiting inside.

6

Rhett

The ceiling in Joan’s spare bedroom is made of some sort of off-white plaster. Textured, cracked in a few places, and with a bit of water damage staining one corner.

There’s a cobweb in the adjacent corner, and three small, circular holes carved out of the space just in front of the window, like someone once had something hanging there.

And the only reason I’m so intimately familiar with every square inch of this ceiling is because holding myself here, staring at it, is the only way I’ve been able to stop myself from going to her.

By the time Joan finally comes upstairs, I’ve been awake and lying on the small, uncomfortable piece of furniture she calls afutonfor hours.

All evening, the sound of good-natured conversation and laughter drifted up from downstairs. Just like when I was in her shop this afternoon, there’s no reason to think she was ever in any danger. Even if I still can’t get over my irritation toward Seren for breaking into Joan’s shop, there’s been no sign of trouble, no reason for me to still be as on-edge as I am.

Goddess above, if this is what I have in store for me for the rest of my days, these instincts that have me ready to jump outof my skin at every small creak of the building and every peal of laughter below, this unrelenting need to go, find her, protect her…

I’d still be as blessed a creature as there ever was.

Because despite my worry, the wave of peace that washes over me when I hear the door open, then close, when I hear Joan’s even steps on her wooden floorboards and catch the hint of her scent in the air, is more exquisite than anything I’ve ever known.

Just having her near is a balm for my unsettled soul. A piece I didn’t even know was missing slides back into the place it’s always belonged.

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