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Authors: Phaedra Weldon
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crack for a while as Grey whined at me. At first I thought…I could have sworn…I saw a thin, red worm crawling out from the crack across the glass. Then another one popped out.
More of the red worms poured out from the crack and squirmed around on top of the glass. I recognized what I was seeing—this was Ivan's description of what he saw when he viewed Arcane Magic. Usually, I saw it as red and sparkling. Like glitter.
The smell followed the worms. The rotting chicken aroma.
Grey barked.
The phone buzzed, and then rang as Crwys's number showed up. I slammed the phone on the counter. The worms abruptly disappeared. There was no way I was answering that.
I ran my fingers through my hair. I needed to find my center and think. Times like this, I wished I had a bunch of white boards I could throw up in my apartment and just write everything down like a detective would. Put all the tiny pieces together and look at things in a whole instead of feeling overwhelmed by a dozen little things.
Though my dad losing his mind and me being threatened with being warlocked weren't little things.
Ina had white boards in her house. She used to use them to teach students.
Well, she used them to teach her ghouls how to kill people and do her bidding. But they were still white boards. As far as I knew, no one had been in the house since the night I killed Arwen and ended up in the hospital. My hand went to the spot on my neck where Dionysus bit me.
The house was legally mine. Ina—Dionysus—had insisted on us jointly owning it. I never understood why. He was gone. Crwys suspected he was off starting a new life, probably one he'd been planning on for a while. Might have even taken a new body. Probably a man this time.
Me? I wasn't so sure. Dionysus had invested a lot of time taking care of me—but I didn't know why. Me. The daughter of his tormentor. I had this bad suspicion I wasn't going to find that out for a while, and when I did, I wasn't going to like it.
Going back into that house wasn't my top priority. But I needed to be away from everyone for a breather. How was I going to react emotionally to returning to a house where I murdered someone?
I didn't know. But if there was one thing Dionysus had taught me it was to face my fears head on. Don't run from them, but run into them.
And right now, I was afraid of that house. Of what I did. And that fear had kept me in a state of hesitancy for the past two weeks. I felt if I moved through this level, I could think clearer and pick a direction.
Any freak'n direction.
I grabbed my phone with a dishtowel, even though I didn't see anymore of those little red worms, slipped it into my bag, grabbed my guns and loaded Grey in the Jeep.
It was time to face fear number one head on.
T he smell that hit me when I opened the door knocked me back a few steps. Grey whined but she went inside. It wasn't like a garbage smell. More like an earthy, compost heap smell. And I had a pretty good idea where it came from.
I learned about Dionysus’s plan for my mom and Ina's unwilling part in it all on Halloween. Ina had been in the kitchen making pies and the center island had been filled with baskets of all sorts of apples. Granny Smith, Fuji, Pink Ladies, MacIntosh…
Now, all of those apples were little more than rotted husks in ruined baskets in the kitchen. The pies she'd made sat on the stove where she'd put them to cool and each one was covered in a thick, green mold.
I stood by the island looking down at the place where Dionysus tried to drain me. My blood, now stained brown, still coated parts of the white tile floor. There weren't any black dusts of powder where a CSI team looked for prints. No police tape in the back yard around the Circle.
Because Crwys had taken care of everything. There was no body to find. No evidence of what I'd done. Except what I held in my memory and the sparkle of glittering red I sometimes saw
More of the red worms poured out from the crack and squirmed around on top of the glass. I recognized what I was seeing—this was Ivan's description of what he saw when he viewed Arcane Magic. Usually, I saw it as red and sparkling. Like glitter.
The smell followed the worms. The rotting chicken aroma.
Grey barked.
The phone buzzed, and then rang as Crwys's number showed up. I slammed the phone on the counter. The worms abruptly disappeared. There was no way I was answering that.
I ran my fingers through my hair. I needed to find my center and think. Times like this, I wished I had a bunch of white boards I could throw up in my apartment and just write everything down like a detective would. Put all the tiny pieces together and look at things in a whole instead of feeling overwhelmed by a dozen little things.
Though my dad losing his mind and me being threatened with being warlocked weren't little things.
Ina had white boards in her house. She used to use them to teach students.
Well, she used them to teach her ghouls how to kill people and do her bidding. But they were still white boards. As far as I knew, no one had been in the house since the night I killed Arwen and ended up in the hospital. My hand went to the spot on my neck where Dionysus bit me.
The house was legally mine. Ina—Dionysus—had insisted on us jointly owning it. I never understood why. He was gone. Crwys suspected he was off starting a new life, probably one he'd been planning on for a while. Might have even taken a new body. Probably a man this time.
Me? I wasn't so sure. Dionysus had invested a lot of time taking care of me—but I didn't know why. Me. The daughter of his tormentor. I had this bad suspicion I wasn't going to find that out for a while, and when I did, I wasn't going to like it.
Going back into that house wasn't my top priority. But I needed to be away from everyone for a breather. How was I going to react emotionally to returning to a house where I murdered someone?
I didn't know. But if there was one thing Dionysus had taught me it was to face my fears head on. Don't run from them, but run into them.
And right now, I was afraid of that house. Of what I did. And that fear had kept me in a state of hesitancy for the past two weeks. I felt if I moved through this level, I could think clearer and pick a direction.
Any freak'n direction.
I grabbed my phone with a dishtowel, even though I didn't see anymore of those little red worms, slipped it into my bag, grabbed my guns and loaded Grey in the Jeep.
It was time to face fear number one head on.
T he smell that hit me when I opened the door knocked me back a few steps. Grey whined but she went inside. It wasn't like a garbage smell. More like an earthy, compost heap smell. And I had a pretty good idea where it came from.
I learned about Dionysus’s plan for my mom and Ina's unwilling part in it all on Halloween. Ina had been in the kitchen making pies and the center island had been filled with baskets of all sorts of apples. Granny Smith, Fuji, Pink Ladies, MacIntosh…
Now, all of those apples were little more than rotted husks in ruined baskets in the kitchen. The pies she'd made sat on the stove where she'd put them to cool and each one was covered in a thick, green mold.
I stood by the island looking down at the place where Dionysus tried to drain me. My blood, now stained brown, still coated parts of the white tile floor. There weren't any black dusts of powder where a CSI team looked for prints. No police tape in the back yard around the Circle.
Because Crwys had taken care of everything. There was no body to find. No evidence of what I'd done. Except what I held in my memory and the sparkle of glittering red I sometimes saw
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