Page 122

I kept my lips pressed together. “I think you’ll have to drag me kicking and screaming out of your quiet little neighborhood if you don’t make this one simple promise.”

I watched her consider. “Fine,” she huffed. “I won’t end any innocent lives.” The wind picked up again. “Even if you think you’re a hero, we both know you’re not innocent, are you?”

“My innocence died in a field in the middle of a high school party you weren’t invited to when Colton took my virginity.” I waggled my brows at her. “And then again the night you cursed him to kill my parents,” I added with less humor.

She clicked her tongue. “We’re past that, aren’t we, Hadley?”

“Absolutely fucking not,” I replied. “Now let’s go.”

Though it was a stupid plan, I left the house, willingly, with Shay. To seemingly be her sacrifice.

The talisman burned my ankle while rage burned in my heart. All I could do was hope it was enough.

And if it wasn’t, I was supposed to meet Dante a while ago. He would know something was wrong. Not that there was anything that would lead him to Shay. Expecting him to save me was a long shot.

And just damn embarrassing.

I’d save myself.

Or die trying.

And maybe I’d bring a murderous witch down with me.

twenty-one

Shay was chatty in the car. After hiding her true nature, her power, for over a decade, she had been dying to show off to someone. Apparently, all the hell-given power still couldn’t command her a bestie.

Or maybe that was because she was an evil bitch.

She was responsible for the attack on Sarah. I hadn’t so much as given it a second thought. Colton had mentioned it in passing, the hairs rising on the back of my neck in suspicion, yet I ignored it. Sarah wasn’t anywhere near the top of my list of people to worry about.

“Why didn’t you just kill her?” I shifted in my seat to face her, genuinely curious. “Why didn’t you just kill us all?”

It seemed she’d slowly, over the years, done increasingly horrible things to her former high school bullies. Cursed a husband with violent tendencies to take it out on his wife, given a child cancer—luckily, the child survived, though the parents’ marriage did not—bankrupted another woman. The list went on.

“Killing is too easy, and it doesn’t make y’all suffer enough.” Her hands, still clawed, clenched the steering wheel of her Nissan Leaf as she spoke.

She was sadistic, conniving, and bloodthirsty. We actually might’ve been friends … if she weren’t an evil bitch and all that.

We got out of the car at a familiar trailhead, taking the same short walk I’d recently taken. My steps were slower, my body shrieking with pain from Shay throwing me against her shelves. The thing in my boot felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. It took all of my effort just to put one foot in front of the other. The taste of blood clung to my tongue, and more than once, I had to resist the urge to empty my stomach on the side of the trail.

How I was going to kill Shay was still a mystery. If I could get her inside a salt circle—lucky for me, I always carried a vial in my jacket, the best weapon in a hunter’s arsenal—and spilled her blood while in that circle, I had a chance of ending her. There was the problem of the demon’s true name, though. I was still hoping I could somehow coax that out of her.

Though I figured I might not need to if we were going where I thought we were going.

The terrain off the track was uneven and hard to navigate for me. Hot blood was trickling down my calf where the wounds had somehow reopened. My bones felt brittle, like they were made of glass. Meanwhile, Shay floated an inch off the ground.

Creepy.

The tree came into view, and my suspicions were confirmed.

“This is your ritual site,” I deduced. Dante and I had been there not long ago. Oh, what I would’ve given for his smarmy remarks and little bag of witchy tricks to give me a fucking hand right then.

“The hot springs give off a power that I haven’t felt anywhere else.” Shay was willing to explain things to a dead woman. Yet again, I made a mental note to do more research on these springs if I came back here. If I survived the next few hours.

Ghosts of memories kissed the insides of my eyelids. Dante’s wry grin, his lips against mine, the taste of him.

Now why in all fuck was I thinking of Dante fucking Fields right then?