Page 27
It was me.
My heart thumped behind my ribs. Is that how she saw me? Hiding, watching? Always at a distance?
I mean, it made sense, that she’d paint me, right? This was Violet’s room and I was her mother’s familiar.
Wills took my arm and all but dragged me to the spare room. She had a bunch of towels and tossed several over the bed. “Now lie down before you fall down.” She handed me another towel. “Hold this to your side. We need to stop the bleeding.”
Willow took off again and was back a minute later with her supplies. She winced as she carefully lifted the towel. “He got you deep.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fucking fine. Look at you!” Her gaze moved over me, lingering on the scar across my chest. Pain filled her eyes, but she quickly looked away. Did she suspect? Did she know that self-mutilation was my thing now? The thing that kept me as close to sane as I was capable of getting. She’d never said anything.
“You’ve fought in the pit before, but you’ve never let things go this far. Why did you do this?” Her green eyes latched on to mine. “Tell me.”
I couldn’t. I barely comprehended it myself. I thought I was already as far past sanity as I could go, but it turned out I was wrong. “I just wanted to fight, Wills, it’s not that deep.”
“Bullshit,” she said as she cleaned the deep gouges. “Something’s bothering you, I can tell.”
“Apart from the savagely murdering a bunch of people thing, you mean?” I said, then tried to crack a smile like a fucking psycho.
She didn’t smile, she looked pissed. “Would you just fucking talk to me?”
This whole thing with Jasmine, yeah, I wasn’t getting into it with Willow. How would I ever explain it? She was Willow’s younger cousin, so of course I was feeling…protective, and then there was the connection between us, because of the message she’d given me—and that she knew…she knew what I’d been forced to do to those people because they’d shown her everything. Oh, and yeah, I had pictures of her on my phone that I obsessed over because even when I couldn’t have the real thing, her eyes on me stopped me from killing myself—but I’d never touch her in a million years because I was stained with death and blood.
Not that she would ever be mine, because she was Rome’s.
Fuck.
I thought about the mural, the way she’d painted me, summing me up so easily. Jasmine saw me, like no one else.
“Ren?”
“I’ve been feeling a spirit around me…not the normal shit at work. They’re not moving along as quickly,” I blurted, telling her something I’d already planned to, just not yet. But it was either this or tell her about Jasmine and all the shit with her that even I didn’t understand.
She straightened. “How long have you felt them?”
I shrugged. “A couple months, I guess. I don’t know why they’re lingering, but it’s getting worse.” I lifted my arm, showing her where one of them had touched me. There was a handprint burned into my skin. “Wouldn’t mind some help sorting it out.”
“A spirit did that?” Wills asked, worry in her gaze but also a small amount of relief. This was something she could actually help me with.
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wasn’t sure it was anything to worry about at first.”
“We’ll sort it out, I promise. We’ll get whoever it is to move along.” She swiped some numbing balm over my side and pinched my skin together. “I’ll need to sew up these larger slices to stop the bleeding.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. Once the soul moved on, things would go back to the way they were. My fox pressed against my skin and whined, telling me I was full of shit.
“We’ll get it sorted tonight,” Wills said.
Jasmine
* * *
Aunt Daisy and Arthur were out for date night somewhere. Else was in her workroom, which meant so was Stan. And I was curled up on a chair, watching TV and chatting with Mags, who was cuddled up with her crow-shifter mate, Bram.
