Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
We couldn’t verify complete success unless she woke up.
One day turned into two and five and then we went over a week with no changes. Octavia remained unconscious. Elmwood remained quiet. I woke up from a nightmare I couldn’t remember every night.
“Are you expecting someone?” December asked Wilson, who sat next to her underneath a blanket with a pile of yarn between them. The chilly wind in the air bit at our cheeks, keeping us awake and briefly distracted from our collective distress.
There was a dirt cloud in the distance, a car emerging from the dust. I’d only stood on the porch because December begged me to join them.
And Jonah promised to watch Octavia. Someone was at her bedside around the clock.
I preferred that someone be me. The closest my head got to quiet was when I could hear her low exhales.
“I should get back.” I pushed off the porch railing, in no mood to talk to visitors. No mood to do much of anything except dig through the Guild archives and make phone calls to hunters who may know how to revive someone who’d had an experience like Octavia’s.
If Daylan couldn’t, it was highly unlikely that anyone else could. But I still called the other demon hunters twice a day in hopes of finally getting a response. I’d even considered tracking them down in person if I could stomach leaving Octavia for longer than a half an hour.
“Rae,” December said before I could open the door. “Wait.”
I opened my mouth to protest, words never leaving my tongue when I saw whose car pulled up next to our RV.
Opal stepped out first from the back seat. She wore the same block heel I’d had on when I came to the ranch. A couple of her braids hung out, framing her round cheeks, while the rest stayed tucked underneath a red scarf. She ran up to the porch, and I met her on the steps.
I hadn’t cried once since that day in the stable. Hadn’t felt like I deserved to because of how my client…how Octavia wasn’t awake.
But as soon as I smelled the amber and clover on Opal’s jacket, the tears fell. She hugged me tight against her, rubbing my back without saying a word.
“Sorry we couldn’t get here any sooner.” Dawn held back, pausing at the bottom stairs to take a proper scan of the house. Her micro-locs were in one loose braid that reached down her back. “The—”
“Guild, yeah.” I pulled away from Opal, quickly trying to brush away the rogue tears, and stood straighter. “Honor bound.”
Dawn studied me for a second before stepping close to offer a one-armed hug.
“I’m sorry, Rae,” she whispered in my ear and pressed a quick kiss on my temple. The affection was warm, but her expression was unmoving stone.
For a second, I was ten again, wishing and praying her quiet calm would become my religion and I, its most devout follower.
“Want to run us through it?” Eve tugged on a pair of knitted gloves, barely making eye contact with me. Her silver wire-framed glasses held back her loose brown coils. She kept sniffing; the cold proving to be an opponent she’d sneer at if possible.
They were here, and somehow my head ached even more. Because for a second, everything smelled like home, but it didn’t bring me the typical nostalgic comfort. The only place I seemed fit anymore was the one place I wasn’t sure would have room for me in the coming days.
“I’ve already done that,” I said flatly. In between the day with the demon in the stable and now, I’d spoken to at least one of my sisters once a day. They used their network too, trying to find answers, but every debrief was a lesson in disappointment.
“Where we can see firsthand.” Eve raised a brow when my jaw went stiff.
“Fresh eyes.” Opal rubbed my forearm before giving me a gentle squeeze. “We could catch something new.”
I swallowed my argument and my whiny declaration that I’d turned this place inside out, along with my brain trying to figure out how to get the woman I needed more than the sun to open her eyes again.
My sisters followed me to the stable. The ground was dry and cakey. Piles of debris and clouds of dust welcomed us inside. The smell of sulfur lingered in the air, causing my nostrils to burn.
Frog and Kat had to be housed with the neighbors. None of us had the time to come into the stable to clean up again, mostly because it was a pseudo-prison.
I wiped my hands over my face as I relayed the story beat by beat. Dawn walked around the stable with her hands behind her back as I spoke. She peeked into the stalls but didn’t touch a thing.
“And this was where you exorcised it?” Eve kneeled over the pieces of the loft that were still bound with fraying rope. She poked it with the long, silver pointer she always had on her. “Where it’s trapped now?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled, picking at a hangnail. “It’s holding for now.”
The demon was trapped along with his contract inside the dark drawings Octavia’s uncle had created. His ritual had been strong and accurate.
Opal remained at my side, slowly panning her phone to get a video. “There’s been no sign of it on the property, right?”
“Right.” No moving shadows or sinking shoes.
“That’s great.” Opal tried to smile, but it vanished as soon as she saw my frown. “Looks like your cuff job’s holding.”
“I think you did well,” Dawn said.
It was brilliant praise from her. I stared blankly at the empty stall. “Okay.”
“She’s right,” Opal chimed in.
Eve stood from her inspection, brushing her hands on the back of her jeans and not saying a thing. The fine line her mouth made told me she had a differing opinion. But I couldn’t handle criticism right now. I could barely see straight, a headache growing.
“You got rid of their problem but stuck around longer than necessary—” Dawn said.
“She’s not awake.”
Dawn didn’t even blink at my interruption. “—I don’t think there’s anything you can do. Anything you’re obligated to do.”
I scoffed, the air catching in my throat.
My oldest sister’s eyes softened. “You shouldn’t feel guilty about this, Rae. It was a demon. You locked it away. That’s more than most hunters could ever dream of.”
“It’s all you really could do,” Opal added in a quiet voice. “All anyone should have expected of you.”
“She likes her,” Eve said point-blank.
Damn it. I massaged the back of my neck, the base of my skull begging for relief.
“Likes who?” Opal tried to catch my gaze.
“The client,” Eve added, voice flat.
Dawn frowned. “Is that why you’re still here?”
I laughed humorlessly. “I’m still here because I care about them. No Guild is rushing me off to leave this family alone to manage their lives after they’ve been forever altered. We should do so much more than…”
“Fix things?” Eve asked with a raised eyebrow. “Help people? Save them? Tell me, what more do we owe them?”
I let out a slow breath and threw my head back for a second to look at the ceiling.
“It’s not about owing people. It’s about knowing that these cases aren’t just clean-up jobs.
They shouldn’t just be clean-up jobs. And I couldn’t…
I wouldn’t leave them even if I knew she didn’t care about me, too.
Even if she told me she didn’t care. If nothing about how I felt about her was reciprocated, I’d still be here because they deserve to have someone who knows exactly what they’re going through.
And maybe I can’t fix it, but I could teach them how to feel it.
To understand it. And to live with it. We were lucky enough to learn how to live with it, and I can’t keep that knowledge to myself anymore.
I don’t know how you guys do it. How you stand it.
I especially can’t understand now because Octavia…
god, she’s…just getting started. She deserves to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And…”
I selfishly wanted to be a part of it all.
My words came out so fast and my breathing so hard that I got lightheaded. Opal gathered me into a hug, and I almost pulled away before relaxing into her embrace.
“And I don’t think I’ll survive if I can’t give it to her,” I continued through a sob. “Because what is the point? If she’s not here, then why am I trying so hard? So…yes, I like her.”
Opal laughed a little, sniffing along with me as she rubbed my back. “Oh, Rae.”
Dawn offered me a small smile. “You don’t say.”
Even Eve offered me the small comfort of an empathetic sigh.
“Why did Opal tell me you’re staying?” Nico wiped the same camera lens for the sixth time.
After another day of no change in Octavia, he’d started giving me tasks. Ordering me to help him relabel old films. We had the RV to ourselves. At first, I thought it strange that he didn’t enlist December and Jonah to join in our cleaning spree.
“Staying?” I poured alcohol onto a washcloth and pressed it to the hard case that housed an expensive tripod.
“At Elmwood,” he said. “It’s not…Rae, she’s not getting better, and you being here doesn’t change that. But you could change other things.”
I scrubbed harder. “I’m not interested in changing anything but this right now. My brain literally can’t hold any other case. It’d be unfair to take on something.”
“I think it’s unfair that you’re not even open to considering it.”
“Nico,” I warned.
“I know you’re into her.”
“Into her?” I laughed. “Wow.”
“But she’d agree that sitting in limbo is going to do nothing for you.
It’s going on two weeks. We should consider…
going somewhere. Even if it’s just a small job to get some perspective.
We can come back. We could always come back.
Elmwood will not be a rearview mirror thing. It would never be forever.”
“There’s nothing left out there.” I slid out of the booth and went to the kitchen sink to run my hands under the cold water. “You know that. Even before we got here. Nico, I need to stay…”
“And do what?” He got up too, joining me at the sink. “Become a rancher?”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. The window faced the house. My sisters were still here; I could see the faint outline of them on the couch across from Wilson, Jonah, and December. They were playing Magic. I brushed the back of my hand along my cheekbone.
“You’re not a rancher,” Nico whispered.
“I’m not a hunter either. Not right now.” I splashed water on my face. “All I want right now is to figure out how I’m supposed to accept losing her. How I’m supposed to proceed with living.”
“Distance,” he insisted. “That would help.”
I shook my head, breathing in a few water droplets by accident. “I’m tired of moving; I want to be in one place. Planted somewhere so I can rest, you know? You don’t want that ever?”
Nico searched my face, looking for the girl who’d grown up with him.
The one who longed for adventure and excitement.
Who’d begged her parents for her own hunting belt and the keys to a car so she could go out and build something.
So she could burn through miles and miles of concrete, visiting town after town, diner after diner.
It’d all been magical and real, but it was now fading into something that could barely be read.
“Not even a research position?” Nico whispered, a last-ditch effort. “Something with demons.”
“One day.” I nodded. “Maybe.”
Nico’s nose wrinkled, but he didn’t protest. He reached for my hand and held it.
We stood there, not saying a word as we stared at how our hands fit into one another.
The light from outside faded. I didn’t know which one of us let go first, but in the end, I’d bet everything it was a mutual release.
“I’d still swim against the tide with you,” he whispered before pressing a kiss on my forehead. “Whenever you’d like the company.”
I smiled. “I’ll always like your company.”