Page 86 of Cursed by Night

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“Pizza?”Thomas asks the moment I walk through the door. “It smells like pizza.”

“It is,” I say, endearingly rolling my eyes at him. “I take it you’re hungry?”

“Starving,” he says, taking the pizza boxes from me and bringing them into the kitchen.

Jacques is at the table, working on translating the rest of the grimoire. He looks up, eyes meeting mine. My heart flutters and I smile. He closes the book and stands, stretching his arms above his head. And then he smiles, too.

The sun set about half an hour ago, and I’m just now getting home from work. I don’t usually work on Sundays, but, after finding out about the nurse at the free clinic, I went to the office to do some research and then took an officer with me to question Shawn, and I’ll just say he’s having a bad day right now.

Talking to him turned into an arrest, after seeing several bags of blood out in the open in his house. When he was asked about it, he started ranting about vampires and how they are going to turn him into one if he keeps supplying them with fresh blood. He’s currently in a holding cell, awaiting a psych eval before the case can even be considered for trial.

Everyone at the station thinks I solved the case and caught the crazy murderer.

Shawn—whose real name is Josh—might be crazy, and he’s no doubt an accessory to murder, but he shouldn’t be tried and punished for crimes he didn’t commit. I’m conflicted yet again and keep reminding myself that, no matter what, this guy needs to be off the streets. He’s unstable and is going to extremes to be made into a monster. If the vampires had followed through on their end of the bargain, he would have become a killer eventually. I stopped it before it happened. Yet I don’t feel good about it.

I take my shoes and coat off, moving slowly. My body aches, and I had to wear a stupid scarf all day to hide the nasty bite mark on my neck.

“Do you guys want to watch a movie while we eat?” I ask, finding all four of them already digging into the pizza. I get a collective yes and we go into the living room. It takes a bit of finagling to get my computer onto the internet, and we flip through previews on Netflix until we find something we all agree on. I sit on the couch between Thomas and Gilbert and press play on a Batman movie.

Halfway through the movie, I start to get tired. I lean against Thomas, stretching my legs out over Gilbert’s lap. Thomas hooks his arm around me, and Gilbert starts massaging my calves.

“Guys,” I start, voice thick with sleep. I force myself up and look at each one of them. “I’m going to break this curse. I promise.”

Jacques turns away from the movie just long enough to make eye contact for half a second. “I know. You’re a powerful witch, Ace. You just need to learn how to use your magic.”

“That’s the tricky part. It might take me a while.”

“That’s okay,” Thomas says, sliding his hand over my abdomen. “I’m okay with this.”

His words bring a smile to my face, and I settle back onto his lap. For the first time, I’m not alone. For the first time, I have people around me I can count on.

I’m okay with it, too.

To be continued…