Page 62 of Sinful Urges

Trine

Ipress my hand against my throat, the skin on my neck hot but soft under my touch. It makes no sense. Only a few seconds ago, I was absolutely sure I could hear it sizzle. Now it’s as if nothing has happened, and it’s completely disorienting.

I look up at Misha, who’s staring at me with obvious concern. Maybe that’s pity. I don’t know, and I hate it. Tom, Rei and Luke are behind closed doors, and I can’t hear them at all. But I was there, all of us were there, and that was real.

The words Tom said. The way he pressed his hand against my throat. That was all real. The way his skin branded mine. That happened.

"I won’t ask if you’re okay," Misha says, taking a step closer to me. I tilt my head up so I can look into his eyes, and I can see the ridges of his well-defined lips, the shadow of his beard, a muscle clenching along his jaw. "I know you’re not okay. But it’s a bit easier, in my experience, if you talk about it."

I shake my head, closing my eyes. I can feel warm tears sliding down my cheeks, but I didn’t even realize I was about to cry until I’m actively crying. "He…I mean, it happened, right? I didn’t imagine it?"

Misha nods. "That wasn’t your imagination. I was there. Woods and Salinas will back me up," he says. "Tom…or, I don’t know, whatever is inside of Tom; it wants to make you feel crazy. The more destabilizing it is for you, the better."

"But I’m nobody. Why would Tom, or whoever that is, care about me at all?"

"Because you were there to help. Because it has plans for Tom, and you got in the way," he says. He crosses his arms over his chest, his gaze flitting away from me. I don’t know him well, but I can tell that the silence between us isn’t like the silences we’ve shared before. There’s no playfulness here, no mild flirting. Misha is worried.

No. He’s scared.

"But I didn’t even get to talk to him."

"You didn’t have to," he says. "Tom knows that you’re there to support him, which is immediately grounding. The demon’s going to fight against that. They don’t want Tom to be present. The longer Tom is present, the longer he can fight for, the weaker the demon gets."

I sigh. "So what now?" I ask, wiping my tears away with the back of my hand. "Do you want me to go back in and talk to him again, try and get through to him?"

His eyes widen. He looks completely horrified. "Absolutely not. You need to stay away from him. You need to stay away from all this. I should’ve never brought you in."

He might regret it, but it’s too late. I’m here. I’m going to stay here, at least until I find answers. And if Tom is lashing out, if the demon is lashing out because I’m helping him, then I’m sticking around. "Absolutely not."

"You can’t stay here. This is dangerous."

"I’m aware it’s dangerous," I say. "I was there when he was trying to choke me to death."

Misha grows, rubbing his temple in frustration. "Fuck. There’s nothing I can do to make you leave, is there?"

I square my shoulders in defiance, but his expression softens when he looks at me. "You’re right," I say, faltering a little at the admiration I see on his face. I expected anger, not whatever this is. I try to swallow down the knot in my throat, which feels like it’s closing. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah," he says. "I can’t promise I’ll answer, but you can ask me anything."

I steel myself to ask him, my hands fists at my sides as I choke on my own words a couple of times. "Was that what I was like?"

I know he understands what I mean, but he still waits for me to add something. I don’t want to add anything. I want him to tell me everything that happened, even though there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to hear it at all.

I wait. It’s maddening. But I wait, and I wait, since this appears to be a game, and I’m not willing to lose. Not right now.

"No," he finally says, so softly I can hardly hear him.

"So what was I like?"

He considers it for a second. I’m about to tell him that he doesn’t have to censor himself, that I want to hear the truth no matter how ugly it is, but his shoulders slump and he speaks softly again. "Defeated, mostly. You were really sickly. You cried more than you screamed. And you—or, well, whatever you were dealing with—didn’t seem to want to leave. You started getting…"

"What?"

"Welts," he says. "Welts all over your body. But it wasn’t just that. Every time you moved your lips, you’d tear them open, and you’d bleed all over your own face. It was…brutal. Rei had to give you some sort of coagulation medication because he was so worried you were going to bleed out."

I swallow. I didn’t even think about the fact that Rei had treated me as a patient, but of course he had. That made perfect sense. And it made me feel dizzy, completely destabilizing me.

Misha turns to look at me. "Your case was one of the worst cases I’ve ever seen in the decade I’ve been doing this," he says. "You weren’t violent, or unkind, even. But whatever was in you—I don’t know. It was eating you from the inside out, and it was definitely planning to kill you."

"Why?"

He shrugs. "We don’t know," he says. "Most of the time we know when a doorway is opened. That’s what they use to possess people. Your case remains kind of a mystery to us, at least as far as its provenance."

"Is anything else a mystery?"

He looks at me, his eyes narrowing. "Someone called to report it. Said they would pay for it. When we called back, the number was disconnected."

"Wait," I say. "Does that mean I owe you money?"

His eyes widen, and then he throws his head back and laughs.

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