Page 72 of Kat Bethel

“What are you going to do?”Willow's voice hardened. “Burn it all down in typical Sasha Rinah fashion? Does that ever work out for you?”

No. It didn’t.

But this time it would work.

I grabbed my phone, rolled down the passenger side window, and tossed it. The car beside me swerved and drove into the ditch.

I should’ve cared, instead I was numb to it.

“You’re worrying me,” Abiel told me. “You aren’t acting like yourself.”

“You don’t know me.” The words came out cruel and harsh. This was exactly who I was.

“Yes, I do.” The calm in his voice threatened to crack the walls around me.

But then it went quiet again, and I found myself in front of the Dark Entry Forest. I kicked the door open, grabbed my bag, and cleared some of the overgrown grass out front.

“What are you doing?” The first trickle of suspicion filled his voice.

I didn’t respond. Instead I grabbed the gasoline can out of the back of the car. No doubt I received a bunch of complaints about my reckless driving. At least one of them probably grabbed the plates to this stolen car.

Once the car was soaked, I tossed a lit matchbook and focused back on building my altar of elderwood with dandelions as an offering. I hoped the offering was sufficient, because it was the only sure thing I could offer.

He hovered close, watching me, and while he didn’t interfere, suspicion rolled over me in waves. That made me pause, and almost reconsider the consequences.

No. This would work.

I slit my hand.

“What kind of spell is this?” The grass around us died, but my altar held firm.

After all, I made it from things he couldn’t destroy.

I kneeled in the dead grass, drawing a line of my blood from my chin to my chest. “Sun god fill me with your light.”

I started the chant. His shadow wrapped around me lovingly, “Don’t do this. I can fix it.”

I couldn’t be fixed. That twisted the knife deeper in my chest. People like us didn’t fix things, we broke them.

His tendrils wrapped around my throat threateningly. “You think you can get rid of me?”

It grew tight enough to make my chant turn into raspy whispers.

“I’ll turn everything ash. Is that what you want?” he whispered in my ear. His cool touch pressed to my back, and everything inside me wanted to lean into him.

He was the best at making me forget. Traitorous tears filled my eyes. The flaming car exploded a few feet away from us.

I was the oil, and he was the fire.

That was why he was perfect. No one understood oil like fire did.

“That’s it,” he murmured.

I realized too late that I’d stopped chanting. The last word sat right on my tongue. One more word and I’d be free of him.

It would hurt. He was the only one who made me feel seen and heard.

But everything else would hurt more.