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The pain it…fuck, it slipped away in a rush, and the sudden urge to hold her back filled me along with a wave of euphoria. There was no other way to describe it. I didn’t know what the fuck to do with myself. I fisted my hands tighter to stop from wrapping my arms around her, but there was no stopping my face from dipping lower, from pressing it into the side of her neck and breathing her in. My lips grazed her throat, and a jolt of something powerful slammed through me.

Fuck.

She counted down the last five seconds, then her arms fell away, releasing me. She stepped back, and I sucked in a desperate breath.

“You did amazing,” she said, turning away from me. She was shaking, her cheeks damp with tears.

I wanted to ask if she was okay, but my throat was too fucking tight.

She grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder, still not looking at me, and I realized she was giving me privacy to get my shit together. “What time do you finish work tomorrow?” she asked, swiping the tears from her cheeks, her body still trembling, her gaze on the floor.

“Six.” My voice was fucked, it was all I could manage.

“I’ll see you around seven, then?” she said.

I nodded.

Then she was out the door, closing it softly behind her.

I shoved my fingers through my hair and sat heavily on the couch.

How the fuck would I do this all over again tomorrow?

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Chapter 10

Jasmine

* * *

Magnolia and Bram got in her car, and I jumped in the back.

“And she definitely knows we’re coming?” I asked Mags.

“Yep, I texted Agatheena last night, and she was cool.”

Bram snorted beside her. “Still can’t believe she took that phone you gave her.”

“Me either, honestly,” Mags said and grinned. “Though I can be persuasive.”

“No shit,” Bram said, but I saw his lips curl.

Magnolia and the crone had struck up a kind of friendship. Agatheena Burnside was scary, powerful, and more than your average witch. She was half demon and, like Mags, walked a precarious line between dark and light magic. I guess you could say she’d become a kind of mentor for Mags.

Mags thought the old witch might be able to help me with Death’s missing souls, or at least point me in the right direction. I won’t lie; I was nervous as hell to meet her. My other cousin, Rose, had met her as well, and she was not in a hurry to ever go back.

Bram started the car and reversed out of the drive, then turned in the wrong direction.

“Are we going somewhere else first?” I asked, leaning around Mags’s seat.

“Picking up Ren,” Bram muttered. “That forest is crawling with demons. Not taking you both in there without backup.”

I froze. “Ren?”

“Bram and Ren know those woods better than most. You’ll be safe,” Mags said, mistaking my freeze response for concern over my safety.

It wasn’t. I knew Ren could kill a demon, multiple demons, on his own. I’d heard the hounds talk about him. My reaction was over the fact that last night I’d drawn sigils all over his body, including the base of his dick, followed by some intense emotion-healing therapy, where I’d been bombarded with everything he was feeling, as if those feelings were my own, and the enormity of that had left me shaken and in tears.