Chapter 10
“And she said what?”
I was lying back on Ryan’s rug, unloading like I was at a therapy session. My nightmares, the wine, the stare down, the demoness’s final fade into oblivion—I let it all come out, sometimes easy, sometimes halting, sometimes jumbled. And though it felt good to unload, it also didn’t solve anything.
Now that Ryan had heard the whole story, he was doubling back to the real sticking point, the thing that I, too, could not get out of my mind.
“She said ‘Leave us alone.’ Leave us,” I repeated, spitting the words out. “Like I am harassing them. Like all this is… is my fault! Like I’m trying to be haunted by a gang of goddamned undead groupies!”
“Okay, okay!” Ryan said, interrupting my tirade. “But what do you think she actually meant by it?”
“I don’t know. Or
