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His smirk turns wicked, and he reaches over to clasp the back of my neck. Pulling me close as he leans down, he brushes his lips against mine. Excited that my ploy worked, I try to deepen the kiss, but I’m quickly thwarted by his low, gravelly chuckle. “Nice try, angel. Your cooking is a safety hazard. We’re doing this. Now tell me where.”
“Fine,” I grumble with an exaggerated pout. “You’re no fun.”
“I’m a lot of fun, and if you’re a good little student,” Donovan murmurs, brushing his nose against mine, “I’ll treat you to as much fun as you want.” He nips my protruding bottom lip, which sends an excited shock through my system, and releases me.
Sitting back in my seat, I cross my arms over my chest and do my best to hide how affected I am by the mere suggestion of the “fun” he offers. “We should probably go to my house.” I fidget in my seat as I mumble, “Mildred sort of already put fire suppression spells in the kitchen from my last attempt to practice.”
He opens his mouth, a follow-up question in his eyes, before he snaps it closed and shakes his head. “You know what? I don’t want to know.”
“Probably for the best,” I comment, chewing on my lip.
The incident in question wouldn’t have been so bad if we didn’t have a gas stove at home. The small flame already makes me nervous, so when the grease caught fire, instead of quickly throwing a cooking lid over it to smother it, I panicked and made it bigger. Luckily for me, my nan was nearby to quickly magick it out. Now all of our pots and pans have safety spells on them, which means nothing is getting flambéed anytime soon.
As we leave school and start heading toward my house, I try to come up with one recipe I’m not absolutely horrible at and miss that Donovan has also grown contemplative. The drive through town is accompanied only by the sounds of some kind of hard rock playlist, and it isn’t until we hit the long strip of highway that leads toward home that I notice how tense he’s gotten.
Staring at the way his knuckles have gone white from gripping the steering wheel so hard, I ask gently, “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he grunts through clenched teeth.
“Let me rephrase,” I state with a raised brow. “You look like you’re about to bend the steering wheel into a new, creative shape. What’s wrong?”
His hands shake as he tries to relax them. “Have you…” He hesitates, the words hovering on his tongue.
“Have I what?” I prompt, my hands restless in my lap. I want to touch and comfort him, but I’m never sure that’s what he wants.
He swallows heavily. “Have you seen any ghosts around?”
“Occasionally, when I’m volunteering at the hospital, but Kaleb’s parents are quick to help those who don’t immediately move on,” I answer, twisting my fingers together. “I do my best to pretend I don’t see them. It’s hard, because they look so lost, but I know I’m not equipped to help them. Sometimes I wonder why I even have this power at all.”
Donovan nods, a quick jerk of his head. “But not right—” He stops but then shouts, “Shut the fuck up!”
A startled squeak pops out of my mouth when he slams on the brakes and swerves off the road. We bump along on the gravel and dirt shoulder before sliding to a stop. Adrenaline courses through my veins as my heart hammers in my chest. I turn in my seat to find Donovan’s fists pressed against his eyes as he hisses, “Fuck,” over and over.
Immediately, I unbuckle my seatbelt, get to my knees, and reach for him, pulling his rigid body against mine. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“She’s fucking haunting me,” he shouts, his breaths coming out in labored gasps. “Constantly whispering her bullshit. I didn’t know there was a choice. She was going to kill him. I did what I was supposed to do, and she won’t leave me alone.”
My head whips around, searching for any other presence, but I only sense the two of us. “Who?”
He moves his hands away from his face, and his expression is tortured as he stares at a fixed point just beyond the nose of the truck. “You don’t see her?”
Despite knowing what I’ll find, I look again—dirt, gravel, and trees. No ghost. “There’s no one there.”
“Shit!” he yells, slamming his hands against the steering wheel. “That’s fucking great. I’m going insane.”
To hide my flinch, I squeeze him tighter, my fingers barely touching around his broad shoulders. “Who are you seeing?”
“Letti,” he whispers, his voice hoarse. “Ever since I cut her head off and sent what was left of her soul back to hell, she keeps showing up to fuck with me.”
“Nolan’s sister?” I clarify, my stomach sick with the knowledge of the trauma Donovan’s been suffering for the past seven months.
He nods woodenly. “She looks so much like him. Sometimes I don’t see her. Sometimes it’s Nolan’s neck under my blade.”
Knowing he’d hate if I started crying, I blink really hard and release a shuddering breath. “What did you mean you didn’t know you had a choice?”
“Her soul. It wasn’t…” His hands fall limply in his lap as he continues to stare into the distance. “Demons don’t just exist. They are the corrupted souls of the eternally damned. It’s the torture that creates them, stripping away any remaining humanity until all that’s left is the embodiment of what got them sent there in the first place.”
“But Letti’s soul never went to hell,” I reply, starting to puzzle out what he’s leading to. “The demon inside her was the one corrupting her… but not all of her.”
