Page 192 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

I gulp down an ineffective breath, clenching over my sternum with my free hand.

“Sentimental,” the monster spews. “Foolish girl. Tying the magic to your heart.”

He vomits thick globules of ichor, but the magic tearing me apart doesn’t ebb. It only pulls tauter. Then—something that I know spells disaster. A tearing sensation in my chest. Not the muscles of my torso, but deeper. Beneath my sternum. A sharp pain that grows unbelievably sharper. I feel it in my shoulders, in my neck.

Aortic dissection.

He’s literally ripping my heart in half.

I gasp; the air enters my lungs, but that’s all it does. There’s nothing to pump oxygenated blood through my body. The light in my wrist jolts to the tips of my fingers. I don’t know why, but I make a weak attempt at closing my hand.

“No,” I wheeze out with the last breath I have. “It’s mine.”

There’s a moment of satisfaction. A look of fear and surprise on the monster’s face when it works. I can do this. I can protect this little sliver of magic. I can keep it and give it back to Lillith. It might be the last thing I do, but I can give her this little piece of herself back, and then just give her the entirety of myself, too.

The fucker lets out a pathetic sob, the blackish blood pouring out of his eyes now. “Give it to me! Give it to me!” he cries. He sounds like a shitnosed kid.

I laugh, but my vision flickers.

I blink, smile falling.

God, my hand is so tired.

What’s wrong with me again? What was I doing? Where am I?

It’s a nightmare? No. No. Lillith. I’m holding onto Lillith’s magic.

Tearing pain in my chest. I can’t breathe, that’s right. Aortic... I...

Slime climbs up my body from a different place. Within my body, but outside of it as well. Then a burst of euphoria, reasonless and confusing.

In a last burst of clarity, I realize.

My brain is going anoxic. There’s no oxygen in my blood. I’m dying. I’m dying and my body is flooding me with a flush of feel-good drugs, so I can die peacefully and comfortably. But I can’t die. I have to give Lillith’s magic back to her.

The putrid fluid lifts and arcs back like a furious asp. It bobs like it’s ready to strike, making my flickering vision swim.

It snaps out, slipping past my lips and taking up all the space in my throat. The taste is metallic and rotted. There’s terror. Genuine, shattering terror.

And then it’s gone.

DMT floods my nervous system, and when I close my eyes, behind my eyelids, I find Lillith sitting on a blanket with Gloam. Her pewter eyes crinkle up at me, speckled in the dappled, warm sunlight of a summer afternoon. She is a calm night against the most verdant of green grasses. Outside of her house. Free. With me. Right. Here.

Thank god. She’s here.

What was I so worried about? She’s right here. I feel so silly that I ever...

That I ever what?

Nothing is righter than this. This euphoria is my past, my present, my forever.

I sigh as I drop onto the blanket next to her, pulling her tightly against my chest.

“God, I missed you,” I say, burying my nose into her neck and inhaling deeply.

“We haven’t been apart that long,” she says, laughing. She cups the side of my face and I look at her. She’s so beautiful. Her white hair soothes some deep fear in me. I can’t remember what it is, though. So, I kiss her.

I kiss her and kiss her and kiss her.