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 didOpal 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.
