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“Oh, I know who you are, but I don’t know who you think you are.”
He huffed and turned on his heels. He didn’t walk away, though. Not yet.
“You can’t stop me.”
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the crisp, freezing air. My lungs protested, which took me by surprise. Then I remembered almost four months had passed since my blood sacrifice. I groaned internally, suddenly less interested in Morningstar’s shenanigans.
“I will try anyway,” I said, just to make sure he didn’t have the last word. “It’ll help me sleep better at night.”
He nodded. “Until next time, daughter.” He teleported away.
Oh, fuck me! Why am I cold? I lifted my arm and sniffed under my armpit. Aloe Vera deodorant. Good. The rotting process hadn’t started yet. God, I hate my life. On second thought, this whole thing about freedom from Life and Death didn’t sound that bad. I could bet Yig wasn’t complaining. I started walking in the opposite direction, my eyes scanning the forest up ahead. I had to get back to the ball, finish the scythe demonstration, but I didn’t feel like it. I needed a moment to myself.
“I can’t just let him destroy the world, that’s for sure,” I started talking to myself out loud. “I should just tell the Council what he told me and let them deal with it. Hm.”
I reached the shore of the frozen lake and stepped on solid ground. A white fox ran out of the trees, startled. She stopped a few feet away from me and turned to study me curiously, one paw in the air. All dressed in white, on a white background. I might as well have been a ghost.
“What’s your opinion about the Wheel of Time, little fox? About Miss Life and Miss Death? I bet neither of them is married.”
The fox sniffed the air. Seeing as I was safe, she trotted toward me, stopped at my feet, and sniffed me again. She stuck her tongue out and licked her snout.
“Really?!”
Foxes ate dead things. I huffed and teleported back.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was an ambush. I didn’t want to meet my revenant brothers and sisters, yet they wanted to meet me. Or more like Leopold Saint-Germain and Francis Saint-Germain Senior wanted to introduce us, so it was done. When I followed Francis, GC, Paz, and Sariel into the cavern, – Francis pushing the blindfolded girl we were about to throw down the well, – the first thing I noticed was that all the tunnels were lit. A knot formed in my throat. As we approached the main cave, a murmur of voices echoed down the narrow corridors, and I stopped dead in my tracks.
“Francis, what did you do?”
He turned to me, his mossy green eyes soft and pleading.
“I couldn’t stop them. When my father and my grandfather want something…”
“I’m not going in there.”
“It’s just a few people, I promise. Close family friends.”
“You don’t understand. I’m not part of your cult, okay? I’m not going in there.”
I started down the tunnel, back to the beach. The boys shuffled behind me, unsure of what to do. A muffled cry from the girl and a curse from Sariel. Quick steps. Francis must have pushed the sacrifice into Sariel’s hands for safe keeping, so he could catch up with me. A few more strides, and I’d be out in the open air.
“Mila, please!”
I snapped around to face him. The late December wind blew my hair back and caressed my collarbone. God, I was freezing! On second thought, though, winter was good for my rotting body. It slowed down the process.
“There’s a cult down there,” I pointed angrily toward the dark mouth of the cave. “A group of insane murderers who’re worshipping a monster from another dimension as if it were a god.”
He furrowed his brows and bit the inside of his cheek. “He is a god, Mila.”
“No, it’s not.” But Francis didn’t know what I knew. I hadn’t told my boyfriends about what I’d found out from Morningstar the night of the Yule Ball. In fact, I hadn’t found out anything. It was all insinuation. Either way, I refused to call the thing in the well “he”. “It’s different than us, it can do things we can’t, but that doesn’t make it a god. And I will not be part of its cult. So, kindly tell your dear family friends to fuck off, so I can push that bitch down the well and go home for Christmas.”
Almost everyone at the Academy had gone home for the holidays. Klaus and Lorna had left the morning after the Ball. Only Patricia and Joel had had to stick around and help with the cleaning. The bitch I was talking about? Drug dealer. Paz, who had a special built-in radar for sinners, had found her for me. She’d been dealing to high school kids. The world was going to be a better place without her. Or so Paz said… Or so they all said, because it was the only way to convince me. They needed me alive more than the world needed her, that was for sure. God, what have I become? God? Maybe I shouldn’t… speak your name.
“I’m sorry,” he said, defeated. “What’s done is done.”
“You couldn’t keep them away? You couldn’t stop them from coming? For me…”
