unnerving smell of seawater. We were in St. Thaddeus. She’d come here, despite my warnings not to, and summoned me.
The stubborn, disobedient, foolish little brat.
I leveled my eyes on her again, my gaze cold, and the stick shook in her hand, at the ready to strike. “What do you think you’re doing, Raelynn? Why are you here?”
“None of your business,” she snapped, baring her teeth at me.
“You’ve made it my business,” I hissed, taking a step towards her. She swung the stick wildly, ready and willing to try to bash my face if I got too close. She was brave, if nothing else. Foolishly, blindly brave.
God, I wanted to put her over my knee and teach her a lesson. She hadn’t even given herself any protection: no herbs, no sigils surrounding her feet, nothing. No one with a bit of sense would do something so ridiculously dangerous, and for what? She didn’t even seem to realize what she’d done, she thought this was a prank — but then I noticed the camera, set up on its tripod.
She’d recorded this.
She’d done this for a video.
“You little fool,” I said softly. “You hard-headed, insolent, reckless woman.”
“Shut up,” she said furiously. “Why the hell are you here, you creep? What the hell is wrong with you? Did you follow me out here?”
She truly didn’t understand. She thought I was merely here by coincidence. I was honestly stunned into silence at the realization. Never, in all my centuries of existence, had I been summoned by accident.
This woman was a walking disaster, a stunning danger to herself, and she didn’t even know it.
She threw down her stick and stomped passed me, kneeling to collect an open book from the ground. My heart lurched as I realized it was the grimoire, the urge to rip it from her making my fingers twitch. That book was my ticket to freedom. All I needed was for her to hand it over.
Hand it over willingly. The protective spells on the damn thing meant I couldn’t take it by force.
“Fucking weirdo,” she grumbled, shooting a glare over her shoulder as she collected her camera and tripod. “Who the hell does this shit? You’re lucky I’m not calling the cops!”
Oh, what I would have given in that moment to see her expression if I revealed my true form. I wanted to see that righteous indignation melt from her face, I wanted to see her fall to her knees in terror.
“Why don’t you?” I taunted. “Call the police, Raelynn, if your phone even has any service. I’d love to see how you manage to explain why you broke onto private property, and into a private building.” I chuckled, stepping easily out of the remnants of my poorly drawn summoning circle. She stepped back hurriedly, stuffed her camera into her backpack, and held up her phone. She was recording me; likely a smart move if circumstances had been different.
A smart move if I’d been human.
“Is this the attention you wanted?” She glared up at me as she blasted the phone’s flash in my face. “Well, now I have it on video that you’re a creep who follows women into the woods. Good luck keeping your job after this!” Her heart was pounding a million miles a minute. I could smell the sweat on her skin.
Her gaze moved toward the door, contemplating an escape. Then she looked down, to the dark stain on the floor where her chalk markings had been. She stared in confusion, her belief that I’d only pranked her not aligning with what she was seeing.
“How...how the hell?”
Before she could make a move, I grabbed her wrist and yanked her phone down, taking the annoying light out of my face. I shoved her back until she was pressed against the pulpit, among all the candles and the Libiri’s vile trinkets to the Deep One. It was too easy to forget how quick humans would crumble under my strength; reigning it in, especially when I was frustrated, took no small amount of willpower. I was certain I felt my disguise slip for a second as I grabbed her — although she couldn’t have noticed the flash in my eyes with her light pulled down.
Her eyes were like saucers as she stared up at me, her breath coming in nervous gasps. I leaned down, my face within inches of her, the scent of her flooding me. Fuck, earthly bodies were far too reactive to stimuli. My heart beat faster, saliva increased around my