to reassure him she was okay, but she needed to be near her parents as well.
“Are you an elementalist?” Shelly’s dad asked her, bringing her attention back to them and away from Ra.
“I am now,” she said, “but I wasn’t when I was taken.”
“Taken by who?” her mom asked, and it was the mama bear voice Shelly had heard many times over the years when she had been hurt by the evil bitches at school and had bawled her eyes out.
“One of the acolytes took me in order to try and control Tara because he was obsessed with her,” Shelly answered.
“Did he hurt you?” her dad asked.
Shelly bit her lip as she considered how much to tell her parents. How much did they need to know?
“That’s difficult to answer because the answer is crazy. Like, seriously bizarre.”
“Stranger than what has already been told to us?” her mom asked.
“Yes, definitely,” Shelly said. Her voice shook as she remembered the pain she’d endured when she’d thought she had been burning alive. The flames were once again licking at her skin, and she heard herself gasp. Shelly tried to take a breath, but her lungs seemed to have stopped working.
“Shh, you’re not there any longer, Mery.” Ra’s voice whispered in her ear as he sat down next to her. She felt his arm wrap around her shoulders and pull her tightly to his side. The warmth from his body yanked her from the painful memory, and Shelly found herself staring up into the face of the man who’d gone to hell to save her.
His other hand cupped her face, and his thumb stroked across her cheek. “You’re with me, always,” he reassured her.
“I am,” she agreed. The clearing of a throat broke the spell that Ra’s nearness had cast over her. She looked back at her parents and then to Mrs. Carol and felt the blush heat her cheeks. “Wow, this is awkward,” she muttered under her breath. “Okay, so the battle that Tara mentioned…”
“At Terra Academy,” her dad confirmed.
“That’s the one,” Shelly nodded. “Well, he took me there, and then when things went to hell in a handbasket, he tossed me to another dude who then threw me into a portal that led to hell.”
“I’m sorry. What? Hell? You went to hell?” Shelly’s mom gasped.
“In the supernatural community it’s called the underworld, but yeah, it’s hell. And yes, it’s hot. Like soul-burning hot. I wasn’t actually hurt, like, there wasn’t any damage, but I felt as if I was burning alive. In fact, I was convinced our house had caught fire while we were sleeping, and I was trapped inside. But then I was like, why the crap am I not dying?” Shelly shivered as the memories still assaulted her. “I mean, you can only burn alive for so long before you’re burning unalive, right?”
She paused and realized her parents had gone deathly still. “Y'all okay?”
“Hell?” her dad whispered. His eyes were filled with horror as he stared at her, his voice filled with pain.
“The good news is Ra”—she pointed at the man next to her as if they needed clarification—“rescued me. He’s awesome. Like, badass, kicks-butts-and-takes-names kind of awesome. I mean, take the most awesome hero you can think of and multiply it times a hundred. He’s that. He’s—”
Tara interrupted. “Shelly, hun, I think they’ve got it.”
Shelly snapped her trap shut, realizing she’d been running off at the mouth. There was something nudging her mind, and she realized it was Ra. She still didn’t really understand how the bond worked, but right then, she could feel his humor in her.
“He went to hell and brought you back?” her dad asked, narrowing his eyes.
“He did,” Shelly said. “There’s a little more to the whole rescuing story, but it’s really not necessary to go into every detail at this point. It won’t help you accept all this. Mostly, what you need to know is that I’m okay.”
“You went to hell, you were burning alive, and all we need to know is that you are okay?” her mom asked in what Shelly had come to know as the ‘crazy’ voice.
Shelly sighed “When you put it like that it sounds whacked.”
Suddenly her mom was on her feet. “Because it is whacked,” she yelled. “We thought you had been abducted!”
“I was.”
“We thought some crazy person had taken you and was doing god-knows-what to you.”
“He had, and he was. Osiris counts as a crazy person if that makes you feel a bit better. You weren’t totally off