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Salinas nods slowly. “I guess that’s another reason not to leave Florida.”
Woods laughs under his breath. He’s about to say something else when someone knocks on the car’s window. My shoulders straighten as I think that it might be Malon or Trine who’ve caught us following them.
It’s neither.
It’s a young woman, maybe in her early twenties, wearing a long white dress and a wide floral headband. She has straight dirty blonde hair, wide green eyes, and a friendly smile.
Woods flashes me a look.
“She looks harmless,” I say.
He raises his eyebrows, but says nothing. He rolls the window down. “Hi,” he says. “Do we need to move or something?”
“You don’t,” she says softly. She grabs something from her bag, then hands Woods some sort of brochure. She smiles when her gaze meets his eyes. “I just wanted to invite you guys to our event this sunday. We’re asking every congregant to bring a friend, or several friends.”
He looks down at the brochure, his brow furrowed. The sun glints on the lens of his glasses as he reads.
“What kind of event is this?” he asks. He sounds genuinely confused.
“It’s our official inauguration,” she says. “We’ve already done a soft opening, but this is going to blow everyone’s mind.”
“Okay. Thank you,” he replies.
“Of course,” she flashes him a bright smile. “I hope we’ll see you there. We have to make everything we can of the time we have left.”
Before any of us can process what the fuck that’s supposed to mean, she’s walking away.
TRINE
There is no way that they aren’t going to be hugely pissed off.
I realize that what I just did doesn’t make much sense, but it was what I wanted, and it's been so hard to ignore what my body wants lately. It’s like my body dictates the terms but I have to go along with them no matter what. I guess, if I wanted to, I could resist, but that would only make things more difficult for me. It certainly doesn’t make much sense, considering what I’ve just done, but I kind of wish I hadn’t done it. I can’t take it back. Things were already super fucking difficult to wrap my head around and now all I’ve managed to do is make it worse. I don't know what’s wrong with me…
…wait. I do know what's wrong with me. I’m possessed. By demons. Still possessed by demons.
Still without the ability to get away from whatever the fuck has decided to keep me in its grip and not let me go. The exorcists have offered their services, but I can’t take them up on it. Now, more than ever, I trust Malon.
That might just be that the oxytocin and endorphins are still coursing through my body because we’ve just had amazing sex, and I definitely should stop thinking about how we did this in a church after I abandoned several people who I know genuinely care about me.
“Are you okay?” Malon asks, green eyes wide. He looks genuinely concerned about me. It makes my gut twist. I don’t understand why this man—this demon—cares so much about my well-being. I seem to have just accepted it without thinking about it even though there’s clearly something off there, something strange. He’s been inhabiting my dreams for almost half a decade and I don’t know that much about him except that he likes me. That’s not right.
“I’m fine,” I say as I straighten my clothes. “Just wrapping my head around this is all.”
“Which part?” He asks.
“All parts,” I reply, looking at him as he puts his clothes on. When he slides his jeans up his legs, he looks exceptionally human. There is no part of me that thinks he might be a demon, that this man I just had sex with is in fact a supernatural creature who sometimes inhabits my dreams.
He meets my gaze. “What?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I’m just wondering…you said you didn’t want them to exorcise me because you thought that was only going to make things worse. You said you’d been protecting me from whatever else is in my head.”
“I know. I was there.”
I don’t return his smile. “But why?” I ask. “If you’re a demon, shouldn’t you have just done what everyone else was doing?”
“I was doing what everyone else was doing,” he says, slinging his shirt over his shoulders. I watch as he slides it down so that the fabric covers his abs. He zips up his jeans before he talks again, his face flushed pink from exertion. “And then I wasn’t.”
“I know,” I reply. “But what happened? What changed your mind?”
