24. Chapter 24
I waited inside the local fast food chain for my food. A notification popped up while I tried to open the message from Willow, bringing me to my social media.
My darling husband tagged me in a post featuring a picture with a bunch of younger women surrounding him with a caption; Back to single life.
I closed the application with a roll of my eyes. He wanted my reaction so fucking bad, as if I’d ever let him have that pleasure.
And he wasn’t the only one watching for how I’d respond. Abiel’s eyes were locked on me. I could feel it. If I freaked out, so would he.
That was the secret sauce I’d been missing.
His rage had two solid triggers. He needed to forget that he couldn’t protect Margaret, and he needed to prove he could protect me.
That was how I kept his destruction contained.
I couldn’t account for random hiccups, but I could stop flirting with topics that I knew would lead to the obliteration of innocents.
When I opened the messages from Willow in our group chat with Esme, the air relaxed, proving me right.
Willow: Bitch. Check in.
Me: I’m alive.
Willow: Why did it take so long for you to answer me?
Me: I had to turn my phone off.
Esme: Let me guess. That idiot put on the waterworks already.
Me: Yep.
Esme: I hope his dick gets stuck in barbed wire.
Me: Anybody got anything?
Willow: After endless research, the best I’ve got is an arcane ritual to remove shadows. But there isn’t a lot of information about it, I’ll keep looking for the spell’s origin. Check your email.
I opened the email and frowned at the image of the text she’d found. The paper was made of skin, and I was pretty sure it was dated from long before the colonization of America, which meant this wasn’t a Rinah document.
The weirdest part was how imprecise the spell was. The altar ritual was basically made out of whatever was available. Ingredients were the butter of a spell, it shouldn’t have so much wiggle room.
Something wasn’t right with it.
I glanced down at the light shadow on the ground. It was bright in here, so it was barely noticeable on the ground. Without a shadow, I had a chance to escape.
The idea of doing that made me nauseous.
It wouldn’t work anyway. For all we knew, it was the scribbles of a madman.
Was that because something inside me knew he’d find me eventually, or because I couldn’t see myself running away from him?
“Rinah!” Was yelled over the speaker.
I grabbed my food and forced it down, chewing over what the best line of action was. Caressing fingers danced over my thigh, and I could swear his face was resting in my lap.
Afterwards, I slunk down the alleyways, looking for a car to steal. A few men were lounging at the end of the alley, so I turned to take another route. Footsteps softly followed behind me, trying to not be heard. I ignored them.
Please. Turn back. You have no idea what you’re fucking with.
I eyed the abandoned industrial buildings that surrounded me. At least the loss of life would be minimal.
“Fuck off,” I warned them. “Trust me.”
“Did you hear how she spoke to you?” one said to the other.
Warmth plastered itself to my back, fingers running down my arms. A soft reminder that there was nothing to fear, because he was with me.
Why couldn’t they hear the warning growl echoing off the cement walls?
I barely saved a man who deserved to be saved. There wouldn’t be any saving them if they pursued me any further.
They continued following me.
His growling grew louder, and it made the men pause for a moment, looking for a stray dog or something. Not realizing something from their nightmares surrounded them here in the endless darkness of the alley.
What if I wasn’t a witch?
What if I didn’t have a psychopathic shadow born of man’s sins guarding me like a rabid dog?
And instead, I was a regular woman minding her business.
They deserve their fate.
That was a frail justification, and I knew it.
I was supposed to stop this. It was my job to preserve human life.
They didn’t know that a five-hundred-year-old curse was calling their most fucked up thoughts and desires to me. The kind of curse that destroyed an entire colony without leaving a trace.
The kind of curse that created the Rinah name.
It was my responsibility to hold myself to a strict moral code, and they didn’t know that at some point on this hunt that I’d abandoned it.
The shadows before me leaned toward the men. A threat they couldn’t see coming. A song of screams and panic started behind me. I didn’t bother turning around to watch or asking Abiel to calm down.
The men’s shadows on the wall twisting in unnatural ways was visual enough.
At least here, the only people he could hurt were people who deserved it.
The squelch of blood and organs made my stomach drop, but I kept walking. Even with all the cries and fear behind me, Abiel’s eyes were locked on me.
Was he waiting for my horror? My argument? Did he want me to turn to see what he was doing?
He wasn’t going to get any of those things.
A shadow stood still at the end of the alley, making me halt. My eyes scanned the other shadows slinking behind me to Abiel, like he sucked all the darkness in the area to him. Everything except that one shadow. Unease filled my veins with ice.
Something wasn’t right.
I squinted, trying to get the shape to come into focus, but all the other shadows moving over it kept throwing me off. Hot blood spattered across my back, making me flinch.
When I blinked, the shape took on a clear definition that made my heart stop.
It was the silhouette of a tall, skinny man with a cowboy hat on his head.
I swallowed, but my mouth was completely dry.
No.
He was made of shadows, like Abiel was, so there weren’t any features to confirm for sure. But the general outline reminded me of the wraith on my last job.
I could feel its stony gaze locked on me.
My stomach twisted painfully as I realized it was tracking every move I made, like a panther ready to pounce. The sudden thought that Abiel was the only reason it hadn’t hit me, and I scratched the back of my neck where his mark was.
Had I fucked up my last job somehow?
The flames should have destroyed the soul I’d trapped. It wasn’t possible for it to have survived.
There was something cold and unsettling about this thing. It was too still. Like he was deciding which part of me he wanted to eat first. I reached for my tool belt, only to realize that it was still inside the motel room the fire marshals declared inhabitable.
“Abiel.” I stepped backwards, where I knew he would be. I hated how my breathing stuttered.
I thought about how Abiel was created.
That thing that had nagged me when Esme told me about the theory around shadow people. That on a new moon a witch could taint a soul with her intent.
It was a new moon the night I decided to burn everything to the ground and never look back.
Margaret’s fear and regret created Ruin. What could my anger and resentment create?
Tears pricked my eyes, and my stomach dropped. Panic squeezed my lungs painfully.
I did the thing I swore I would never do.
I created a monster.
Bile rose in my throat. No. You don’t know that.
The sinking pit in my stomach disagreed.
We didn’t even know for sure that was how Abiel was made. It was just a theory.
“Yes, my dandelion.” Kisses landed on the mark on my neck.
Frustration that wasn’t Abiel’s sent shivers down my body, but when I focused on the shadow again, it was nothing more than a light pole.
Wait, keep your head on straight.
“Something else is here.”
I pointed to where I’d seen the shadow morph.
Abiel hummed in curiosity. His shadows darkened the entire space in a fog until I couldn’t see past my nose. I didn’t dare move.
I counted to three to ground myself before Abiel stood before me again. “No one else is here.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’d give you their soul to do with what you like, if there was.” I couldn’t afford to trust Abiel on much, but I knew I could trust that.
Then why did I have such a bad feeling?