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“Then let’s get her up there,” Emmanuel interjects.
I want to scream out my frustration, but I can only watch in a daze as the two men lift Bec from the couch and carry her slight frame toward the stairs. I move to follow when Salomé wraps her claws around my arm, trying to halt me.
“This doesn’t concern you, witch.”
“Fuck you,” I snap at her as I yank away. “Don’t ever touch me again.”
Mocking laughter echoes behind me as I dart after Azrael, Emmanuel, and Bec’s medical team. Not only is it wildly inappropriate at a time like this, but it makes me wonder if Salomé even cares how ill Bec is.
Everyone filters into one of the spare rooms upstairs, and I almost stop short when I see all the medical equipment there. Azrael wasn’t lying about that. But still, I can’t help feeling this isn’t right. That Bec shouldn’t be in this house. That, in fact, she needs to be far, far away from here.
I don’t always understand these feelings when I get them, but right now, it’s more potent than ever. I can’t help myself. I know Azrael doesn’t understand it. He couldn’t possibly feel the same sense of desperation clawing at my insides. The warning bells are going off in my head. My intuition has never led me astray, even when I chose to ignore it.
“Azrael.” I grab him by the arm, glancing up at him with the hope that I can still appeal to him. “Please, you have to take her to a hospital. I know you think this is the best place for her, but I’m telling you, something isn’t right in this house. I can feel it. I can sense it—”
“Enough.” He shrugs me off with a glare colder than I’ve ever seen from him. “You want me to listen to you now? You made it clear where the lines were drawn this morning, and this doesn’t concern you.”
“This isn’t about that.” My voice cracks. “It’s about Bec.”
“Yes, and she’s my family,” he snarls. “Not yours.”
His words are meant to wound, and they do. But it isn’t even the final blow.
“Go back to the room,” he orders. “As of now, you are on lockdown in this house.”
Horror washes over me as I shake my head. “No, you can’t do that. I have to see my sisters. We have to do a binding spell for Bec. Please, Azrael, I’m begging you to listen—”
“Fuck your spells!” he roars. “They have no meaning here.”
I know his words come from a place of helplessness and rage over Bec’s illness, but it doesn’t make them any less painful when he inflicts them. I can see that hope is lost in his eyes, and it guts me all the same. But whoever my husband was last night when he held me in his arms, that man has disappeared. He’s going to remove me from the room, shut me away from Bec—and I don’t know how to stop it.
So, with one last desperate effort, I hurl myself toward the bed, nearly knocking the nurse out of the way as I grab Bec’s hand.
She blinks up at me, her eyes at half-mast, and I don’t know if she can even understand what’s happening right now. But I have to do the only thing I can at this point.
“Mother Goddess, please protect her,” I whisper. “Stop the evil in this house from bringing further harm to her. Bless her body with your healing powers. Bind the evil, bind the evil, bind the evil.”
“Enough,” Azrael bites out, his arm latching around mine.
“Wait!” I meet Bec’s gaze, my voice panicked. “Your protection stone.”
“I… have it,” she answers, her voice barely a whisper. “It was working. It was. And then…” Her words drift off, her mouth too dry to speak.
“Bec,” I choke out.
Azrael yanks me back, effectively separating us when his arm bands around my waist, and he begins to haul me from the room.
“You can’t do this!” I scream at him. “Something evil is working here. I’m telling you, it’s not natural!”
Azrael doesn’t respond, making it clear he won’t listen to what I say right now.
But it doesn’t stop me from trying again. “Salomé was in Bec’s room last night,” I blurt out.
He pauses at the door to his bedroom, his fingers wrapping around my jaw. “What are you trying to say?”
His question isn’t a question. It’s a challenge. He’s daring me to speak ill of Salomé, to cast the accusation he can feel brewing beneath the surface.
“I’m saying Bec has been okay all week,” I clip out. “And after Salomé snuck into her room in the middle of the night while she was sleeping, she’s not okay anymore. You figure it out, Azrael. Your loyalty to that horrible woman has skewed your perception. She’s fucking deranged—”
