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She lunges forward, busting the straps off as if they were mere rubber bands. Her clawed hands wrap around the throat of the person who injected her, and she squeezes until their life is gone. Then she looks right at me with those piercing eyes.
“This is your fault, Tamsin.”
I jerk upright in my bed. Magic is pouring off of me, green light that fills the whole room. Thistle, who is sleeping on my feet again, opens her eyes and lets out a low whine.
I force myself to take several breaths, and my magic dissipates. My heart still thrums in my chest, though. Usually, the nightmare is just a replay of my memory of watching the video for the first time. Everything in the dream actually happened, except that last part. The part where Luciana spoke to me. That’s new devilry, wrought by my guilty conscience, no doubt.
For a few minutes I try to go back to sleep, but I give up after a while. I have too much adrenaline and too many pent-up emotions running through my body. Whipping back the thick comforter on my bed, I sit up and find my fleece-lined slippers on the floor. Then I grab a sweater-robe and head downstairs to the dining room.
My head is pounding by the time I reach Luciana’s side. This is all my fault. I’d cut out my sister just like I’d cut out Blake and this place. I’d tried my hardest to remove everything from my life that reminded me of my parents. Of the unbearable pain and emptiness they’d left behind.
I need her to be her again. So we can start a new life together.
Hours pass by as I run through tests on variations of a cure. My world distills down to boiling liquid and chemical beakers and my microscope. There is such simplicity in science. It’s black and white. No gray areas, just logic and reason. The opposite of magic.
I don’t even notice that the sun has come up, not until Ainsley shuffles downstairs in her pajamas.
“Have you been up all night?” she asks incredulously.
Her eyes are wide as she stares at me amidst the tools of my trade, all strewn across the table. I can only imagine what I must look like, red-eyed and wild-haired, standing here in my robe and my slippers. A mad scientist in her castle.
“Not all night.” I shake my head. “I woke up and couldn’t sleep. Figured I’d put myself to good use.”
“Well, you look like a banshee,” says Nessa, coming up behind Ainsley. “Come and get something to eat. You’re too pale.”
“In a minute,” I say, looking down through my microscope. “I’m almost done with the current permutation…”
Nessa sighs and shuffles off, and I can hear Ainsley’s footsteps as she follows her. I adjust the settings of my scope, looking closer at the results of the most recent test. My breath catches in my chest. I check several times to be sure what I’m seeing is accurate, and it is.
The latest test shows a major reduction in demonic cells. It’s the best result I’ve gotten so far, by a good margin.
Now I just need to administer it to each of my patients and see how it works. Testing on cell samples is one thing. A whole person is quite another. Trying not to get my hopes up too high, I inject each of them with a dose of the new serum. Now it’s just a waiting game—it’ll take a couple of hours to see if it makes a substantial change.
I need this to work.
If it does, that’s one step closer to getting out of here for good.
