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I waslying. I didn’t want him to leave. Fuck it—I wanted to wake up with him here every single day! I didn’t want him to leave.
Stay. Please stay.
But while my thoughts wreaked havoc in my mind, Dominic let go of me and turned around to walk back to the bed without another word.
I did the only thing I could think of—I slipped back inside the bathroom and closed the door fast, like the coward that I was. I sat on the floor and wrapped my arms around my head, hoping I didn’t cry, and hoping he wouldn’t hear it if I did.
And when I heard the door of my apartment opening and closing again, I broke all the way.
ChapterSixteen
Don’t think.
I brought the glass of water to my lips and drank, but I didn’t even feel it. Why was I even drinkingwater? I needed to eat chocolate. My body demanded it. It was going to help clear my mind.
Except as soon as I saw the bar in my kitchen drawer, my stomach turned, and all my organs tried to come right out of my mouth. I closed the drawer again.
Don’t think.
He was gone—so what that the sheets of my bed reminded me of him? So what that this entire freaking place now smelled like him, too? That leather scent and the other that was all Dominic hung in the air and stuck to my nostrils every time I breathed.
He was gone now. It was for the best. “I made the right call.”
My stomach turned again.
Don’t think!
Someone up there must have had some mercy to spare for me because my phone rang before I burst out in tears. I picked it up without even glancing at the caller ID.
“De Ver,” I said, and I already sounded breathless.
“We got a match,” said a man, whom I was pretty sure was Robinson from the research crew. My heart skipped a beat.
“What match?”
“It’s high fae magic all right,” he said, his voice light as a feather, like he was in the best mood of his life. “And we’ve got the complete list of ingredients, too. Sending it to you right now.”
“What are they?” The complete list of ingredients. The confirmation that it was in fact high fae magic, just like I’d thought. More than enough to give us the green light and as many search warrants as we needed.
Finally—a break.
“Fuck if I know. I can’t even pronounce half these things,” Robinson muttered, just as my phone vibrated with a new email.
“Thanks, Robinson,” I said and hung up, too excited to wait for him to say anything else. I pulled open the attachment of the email he’d sent, and a simple list of thirteen ingredients greeted me.
Out of all of them, there was only three I recognized: aester, sage, and philodendron. I rushed to the closet to pick out my clothes and send that same attachment to my mom, before I called her.
She answered after the first ring. “Teddy?”
“Thank God. Are you asleep, Mom?”
“No—about to go to bed,” she said.
“You busy? Because I need your help,” I said.
“Of course, honey,” she said. “What do you need?”
“I just sent you a picture with a list on it. I need you to read it and tell me if there’s something on there you recognize. Can you do that?” If there was anyone in the world who recognized plants and powders, it was my mom. Her head was like an encyclopedia of everything ever grown from the ground.
