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“What happened?” My tone was cold, stepping out of her embrace to begrudgingly stand closer to the man in the hospital bed.

He didn’t look smaller, weaker, in the bed. He still was imposing, almost comically big for the bed, possessing the same features. But his skin was deathly pale, and he was still, eerily so. A tube was stuck down his throat.

Machines beeped erratically.

“He collapsed, out of the blue. Doctors are saying it was a massive heart attack.”

Looking at him, I forced my expression to remain blank, even though my chest had started to tighten.

“But you don’t think it was a heart attack.” I read her tone.

“No.” She settled on the other side of the bed, peering down at her husband with a tenderness that I couldn’t bear. Instead, I looked at the wires connected to him.

“We, uh…” She cleared her throat. “Though we still consider ourselves human in all the ways that count, we do not suffer from human afflictions like heart attacks.”

I pressed my lips together, eager to ask more about what that meant and if it meant they were somehow immortal. I’d seen them both age. Although they looked younger than their actual ages. I had thought it was tasteful surgery on Sharon’s part and the annoying reality that men looked better as they got older on Gerald’s.

Colton, more or less, looked the same age as me. I was painfully human and had lived somewhat of a harder life than him, so it was inevitable I’d look a tiny bit older.

Though the questions were on the tip of my tongue, even I could realize that it was not the time.

“What do you think it was, then—if not who?” I posed the question even though I already had a hunch.

“You know who.”

I sighed, drumming my fingers against my thighs. “I do not know who she is specifically, other than a giant pain in my ass.”

I couldn’t escape Sharon’s reproachful glare. Her husband was cursed by a demon-blessed witch, her son was little more than a dog on her lead, and she obviously didn’t take kindly from my making the situation about me.

I held her stare. “Don’t you have witches on your payroll to help break the curse, assuming that’s what this is?” I waved my hand at Gerald’s prone body, pretending it didn’t mean anything, pretending he didn’t mean anything.

Sharon’s eyes panned to the closed door, checking to ensure no one was about to come in, I guessed.

“Magic like this, dark magic, cannot be broken,” she said quietly. “He will die. Eventually. Unless the witch who cast the spell is sent back to the demon she sold her soul to.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I was afraid that was going to be the answer.” I opened my eyes. “And I guess you want me to be the one who kills her.”

Sharon twisted the tennis bracelet on her wrist. “You’re the hunter, aren’t you?” There was a familiar bite to her words. A bitterness toward me, my kind.

The feeling was fucking mutual.

“Don’t you have a whole pack of werewolves that could tear her apart, if they so wished?” I asked with venom.

“We’ve been trying to find this witch for years.” Sharon’s piercing stare didn’t waver. “She knows about us, has magic to prevent us from changing, finding her.”

“She knows about me too.” I rubbed my neck. “She’s been trying to kill me a whole bunch.” I had just received another text from my witch contact about my quickly amassing bill from all the curses she was having to protect me against.

“But here you stand.” Sharon’s statement didn’t contain the concern I’d come to expect from my surrogate mother. It wasn’t because she was callous; it was because she seemed to have a strong faith in me.

“Here I stand.” I motioned to my body, not letting the pride in her eyes penetrate me. I wasn’t doing this to make her proud; I didn’t give two shits about making anyone proud with my life choices. She was the reason for them, after all, having spawned the monster who created me.

“And isn’t it your job to kill monsters?” She tilted her head. “Isn’t that why you came back here, for revenge? On whoever killed your parents?”

My lungs seized, licking up my throat. “Your son killed my parents,” I told her, words barbed. I should’ve been satisfied with her flinch.

I wasn’t. The words felt oily and poisonous in my mouth.

“Not my son,” she replied quietly, not looking away. “It was someone else, using his body and mind like a puppet. He’s not a killer.”