4
I woke up sore in places I shouldn’t have been sore.
The good kind of sore. The kind that left me limp-limbed and wet just from remembering it. Although I had bruises. Not imagined ones but real, faint violet imprints shaped suspiciously like fingers along my hips and wrists.
I sat on the couch wrapped in a blanket, legs curled under me, watching the doll from across the room like it might blink. The candle circle was gone. I’d cleaned up in a daze, barely able to think straight with the feeling of him still pulsing between my legs.
Azariel.
I couldn’t stop saying his name in my head. Azariel. And every time, I clenched a little.
“I’m losing it,” I muttered, sipping burnt coffee.
The doll didn’t answer. Obviously. But the hairs on my arms rose, the air for thick and bumming like s
