Chapter 9
SALEM
P ines fold over the road like ribs.
Bass leaks through the trees, a low, steady thump that makes the lake breathe fog. The house shows itself all at once—three stories of glass and wood angles, a dock lit up like a runway, a bonfire the size of somebody’s ego eating driftwood and yard chairs.
Plastic skeletons lounge in chairs with Solo cups taped to their hands. Orange bulbs string the railings; a plywood gallows someone’s handy cousin built, leans over the water for photos.
Laughter skates over everything, loud and relentless, even from the oversized driveway.
“Ground rules,” Miles says, tapping the wheel like he’s conducting. “Hydrate. If Jamie starts limbo with a broom, you tell him no. If you vanish, I’m telling the park rangers a cryptid took you and I expect a reward.”
“Let me guess. You’ve already drafted the missing person’s poster,” I say, flipping the visor down to check my face.
The witch is intact—black liner thick enough to count as armor, smoke dragged under my eyes, black lipstick steady.
Hat at a cocky tilt. Corset laced tight.
Sheer sleeves slipping off my shoulders.
Long skirt that parts high. Boots to my thigh.
A thin black thong that’s no one’s business.
And at my throat, the tooth he gave me, exactly where he’d put his mouth first.
Miles leans on the horn at a frat devil blocking our spot. “Move, Beelze-bro,” he mutters, then slides into a space with attitude.
We climb out and the night swallows us, smoke, bass, the bonfire chewing driftwood.
Jamie’s already on the deck steps, glittering like a fucking warning label.
They went couple-costume this year. Jamie’s a velvet-and-mesh vampire prince, pearly white fangs flashing in the lights.
Miles is his very willing snack, white shirt artfully ripped and with painted bite marks, black suspenders, and a ribbon collar stamped PROPERTY OF JAMIE .
Jamie throws his arms wide as we hit the steps. “My witch! Look at you—absolute menace.”
“Sir, this is a Wendy’s,” I deadpan, but I’m already hugging him with a smile.
Miles shoulder-checks him. “Calm down, Count Costco.”
“Excuse you—it’s Prince of Party City,” Jamie says, looping an arm around me and steering us in. “Come on, I need my hot witch for vibes.”
The deck is bouncing to 2012 bangers with random wolf howls pasted over the drops. Heat from the bonfire rolls across the boards; somebody boos a beer pong fail and then cheers like it was on purpose.
Beyond the railing, the property drops into thick woods, pines climbing straight into a sky full of stars. The moon is fat and nosy, silvering the lake and the needles.
I hook a finger under the lace bracelets I added to the costume and fuss with them like they’re fashion, not camouflage.
Skin meets bruise.
The tether answers with a cold ripple up my spine, like a hand skimming vertebrae. I shiver, blame the night air, and smile at no one.
“Costume check,” a girl with a cape says, sweeping me from hat to boots. “Witch approved.”
“Blessed be,” I say, and smile because it’s easier than speaking.
Miles puts a can in my hand. “Mostly cider. Do not sniff it. Jamie, if you shotgun by the fire, I’m calling your mother.”
“My mother? Martha loves me,” Jamie says, glitter bright. “Shit, she’d probably help me.”
We fall into orbit.
Miles ricochets around, delivering drinks and hugs and chargers like a one-man hospitality staff. Jamie drags me to the rail for pictures and announces we’re doing the bridge of a song we screamed in his Corolla at seventeen.
I sway and pretend to drink and pretend to laugh and let the noise stick to me until the hum under my sternum starts pushing back, steady and low.
A pull I can feel in my teeth.
At the deck rail, a row of crows sits like judges. Every time I look at the trees, the dark makes a skull for half a second, then it’s just leaves.
“Bathroom? Drink? Petty commentary?” Jamie asks, reading me too well.
Miles leans in, softer. “You good? Need anything?”
“Yeah. I’m fine, just gonna take a quick walk,” I say. “Lap the trees, be mysterious.”
“Go,” Jamie says, kissing my cheek and leaving glitter. “Text your safe word. Mine’s ‘Pinterest.’”
I smirk and slip off the deck.
The party snaps shut behind me.
Pine needles replace sticky boards under my boots.
The deck light drops off fast. Two, three steps into the trees and the noise thins like someone shut a door behind me.
Pine needles give under my boots; the air turns colder, cleaner—sap, damp bark, lake breath.
The hat brim cuts the house out of my sight and the bonfire becomes a low orange smear between trunks.
Something under my sternum gives a little tug—steady, insistent—like a hand at the back of my ribs. The bracelets at my wrists itch. I slide a finger under the lace and the tether sends a chill up my spine, an attagirl I didn’t ask for.
A crow croaks from somewhere in the trees, hidden in the shadows.
Following
Always following.
Ten more feet and he’s just… there.
Leaned against a pine like it’s his, relaxed in that way that says he’s been here a while, watching the path he knew I’d take.
He doesn’t straighten when I stop.
“You left me,” I say. “In the graveyard. In the dirt.”
“I let you sleep,” he says, calm, and a little amused. “The crows were watching. You weren’t in danger, bonepetal.”
“Great,” I deadpan. “Hired bird bodyguards.”
“They’re union,” he says, mouth tipping.
Is he really cracking jokes? Right now? After everything?
“Do us both a favor,” I say, “climb back into your hell hole and leave me alone.”
He laughs low, mean, delighted. “We both know that’s not happening.
” He pushes off the tree and starts toward me.
I backpedal without meaning to until a big pine stops me cold; sap smears my sleeve and the side of my corset, tacky on skin.
He closes the last few inches, close enough the night gives up its chill.
“Hate me all you want. You still came. You always will.” His gaze drags from the hat to the slit in my skirt to the tooth necklace at my throat—hungry, certain. “The tether won’t let you walk.”
“I can.”
“You won’t,” he says softly, and somehow crueler for it.
His thumb ghosts my mouth. It opens like it remembers him.
“You made the vow. You still wear my tooth. You sleep in my hoodie. You burned the Patch to ash—their saints, their rules, and yeah, I put your parents in the ground so they couldn’t feed you to the fucking devil for their gain.
But even after all that, you never buried me .
Not us. I’m under your skin, bonepetal. I’m the voice in your throat when you come apart.
You can hate it, you can hate me , but you don’t get to pretend you don’t belong to what we made. ”
I swallow but don’t give him the word he wants.
He hooks a finger under the lace at my wrists and rips one, then the other. Two sharp snaps in the dark.
“Don’t hide these. Not from me,” he says, calm as laying a knife on a table.
I step back; he follows. Another step and bark bites my shoulders.
He crowds in and braces an arm beside my head, closing me in. His thigh slots between mine; heat rolls off him and the cold of the October air lets go.
“Eyes on me,” he says.
I hold them.
He takes my wrists, lifts them to the trunk—light, and testing.
I don’t pull away.
His other hand slides down the inside of my leg, coaxing my knees apart until my pulse trips. Fabric gives under his knuckles. He drags the thong aside, then brings two fingers to his mouth, sucking them deep—slow, and obscene.
When he lowers his hand again, it’s deliberate, unhurried, a promise I feel in my pulse.
“Breathe,” he murmurs at my ear.
I do.
The hat bumps a branch and the tree takes my weight.
His fingers find me hot, and slick, and my spine bows.
He strokes once, twice, learning the rhythm my hips try to hide, then settles into it, steady and sure.
The sound I make isn’t polite. He swallows it in a kiss and keeps going, working me open with that vicious, exact kindness I hate him for.
“Still mine,” he says, voice frayed.
“Don’t—” My voice shreds as he presses deeper, knuckles grazing my folds as his thumb sets a cruel, perfect circle over my clit. He pumps inside my pussy, patient and relentless, curling just right until the ache in my core goes molten.
His other hand frees my wrists and cups my face. His thumb under my jaw to make me look at him while he ruins me.
“That’s it,” he praises, voice rough as gravel. “Ride my fingers, bonepetal. Show me.”
I do, shuddering through it, hips jerking helplessly, slick gushing warm over his knuckles while he works me down from it, steady and sure.
When I finally sag, he eases out slowly; the wet sound is filthy.
He holds my gaze again as he lifts his fingers to his mouth and sucks them clean—cheeks hollowing, tongue chasing the last of me with a low, satisfied hum that makes my knees go weak all over again.
“Fuck, bonepetal,” he breathes, wrecked and claiming. “You always were so fucking pretty falling apart for me.”
He hooks his hands under my thighs and lifts. Bark presses through my dress; my hat knocks sideways. The zipper’s rasp is a live wire. He noses my cheek, reverent, thumbs spreading me open as he lines the head of his cock against my slick folds.
“Can you feel it, bonepetal?” he murmurs, eyes on mine as the wind hushes. “The veil is down.”
Shadows shift through the trees like they’re listening. He drags the tip through me once, slow, cruelly careful, breath shaking.
“When I take you, I want it raw, ruinous, and loud enough to make the veil itself split. Every moan a fucking prayer to the devil who wanted you. Every scream a vow remade.”
Then he slams into me.