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I took a second, trying to picture it. “We stayed too long. I mean—we left, but we waited for Samantha to quickly gather her stuff. That minute and a half was enough for Astaroth to come through the portal. We thought we were golden, but he was there in the parking lot and…” I rubbed the back of my neck. I could almost hear the snap. “Next time we ran right away. Got on a plane. We went to the meeting with the other Alphas at St. Ailbe’s, but there was too much talking. Nothing was getting accomplished.” I couldn’t remember anything that would’ve triggered Astaroth showing up. “I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly Astaroth was there.”
“Wait. Where?” Claudia asked.
“In the conference room at St. Ailbe’s,” I said.
“That’s impossible,” Adrian said. “He couldn’t—”
I wasn’t going to argue. “Is anything really impossible at this point? All I know is that he showed up and we all died.”
“Fuck,” Chris said. “And you lived through this?”
I nodded. “Over and over again.”
“No wonder you’re upset.” He got up for a second and came back with a candy bar. “This might help with the headache.”
“Thanks.” It came out short, so I took a breath. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“So, Astaroth showed up at the meeting. What happened after that?” Claudia asked, keeping us on task.
I blinked as I tried to sort one time out from the next. It wasn’t until recently that I’d been able to see the future in my visions, and before I’d lived a possible future—a single future where I’d made a mistake—and then gone back to the present. My visions were a warning so that I didn’t make grave mistakes. Usually it was just one vision—one warning—and I could easily avoid doing that one thing. But this time, I’d had so many visions and they’d come so fast—right on top of each other…it felt like there were way too many ways this could go wrong.
My head throbbed as I tried to make sense of them. “Next time we went to the compound. We were digging around the remains of Luciana’s house and…” I rubbed my temples, trying to ease the headache that was forming behind my eyes. “I don’t know. He was suddenly there.”
“Were we doing a spell?” Claudia asked.
“No.” I tried to remember—it was all getting blurry—but I didn’t remember doing any spells. “No witchcraft. Nothing. Just literally looking through half-burned books and then all of a sudden he was lifting me in the air by my neck. And then…” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I need a water.” I started to get up, but Adrian passed me a bottle before I could. “Thanks.”
“What happened next?” He asked.
“We went to talk to Tía Rosa. He showed up.”
“And then?”
I rubbed a hand across my forehead. “We flew to Ireland. We went to meet up with Meredith, who had some friends she was going to hook us up with. That was a disaster. Innocent humans died. Like a lot of them.”
“Did we go to Peru?” Lucas asked.
I laughed. That had been a massive mistake. “We died as soon as we landed. Total shit show.”
“This has to be a joke,” Adrian said. “If there’s nowhere we can run to… How is he even getting through at all these places?”
I wished it was a joke and I really, really wished I had an answer as to what we were supposed to go or how Astaroth was managing to beat us every single time. “I don’t know. And I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m open to suggestions. Because running doesn’t work. As far as I experienced in my visions, everyone we went to for help from here on out ended up dying. We never straight up fought him, but I think that’s definitely the worst idea ever.”
“I agree. He’s too strong, and there’s too much at stake if we lose.” Claudia got up and started pacing up and down the small aisle. “We’re thinking about this the wrong way.”
If she thought this was the wrong way, then she had to have an idea of the right way. I leaned forward, on the edge of the seat. “How are we supposed to be thinking about it?” If she had an even half-way decent idea, I was down for trying it.
“Well, you tried running. What about magic?”
I wasn’t sure. “I think we tried a couple of spells but we never got far with them before he showed up. I don’t think we even finished a spell.”
“Okay. So, we don’t run. We look for a spell.”
“What about Eli?” Chris asked.
I sat for a second. “I don’t know. He never showed back up.”
