The Demon's Half

Chapter 48

My bloodied palms hit the floor hard enough to sting. I was back to my old house.
Somehow, this rotting, burned-out shell was back, and yet nothing about it felt familiar. The ground was gritty with ash and grime. It smelled like mold and smoke and forgotten things.
This was home.
Or had been.
Now, it just felt like a long dead corpse I used to live in.

The color had drained from the world. Not just visually, not just because we weren't in the In-Between anymore, but viscerally.
My eyes scanned the room, clinging to the pieces of a life that no longer belonged to me.
Mia's height chart still scarred the living room
wall in uneven pencil marks. The kitchen counters were warped and blackened; the stove was just ashes, the cabinets had melted into drooping wooden fangs. The back window, still cracked and jagged, opened onto a yard choked with weeds. This disgusting excuse-for-a-house was back because he was gone.

Bo sat slumped against the wall, breathing like it hurt. The black sludge from the cauldron had eaten straight through his boots, his bare feet were a horror show of burns and blisters. He tried to heal himself, but couldn't. His eyes darted like a cornered animal's. Jade knelt beside him, pressing a filthy strip of cloth to the gash in her thigh. Blood soaked through, and the skin around it had already started to puff and redden. Infection was a guarantee if we didn't figure something out.
Her body looked wrecked, bruises layered over bruises, scrapes, bite marks, like she'd been used nails and teeth to survive.
A few feet away, Odysseus, Daniel, and Alilla looked like they'd been scraped out of a grave. Alilla was smeared with dried blood, her skin marred by cuts, her golden hair tangled and darkened with filth. Her bare feet, delicate and now shredded, barely held her upright. She swayed slightly, her expression vacant, as if she'd clawed her way out of hell only to find there was no heaven waiting. No one said anything.

I stared at my hands, still slick with his blood, and felt the weight of what I'd done sink into my soul. I looked down, I was still wearing his shirt, it smelled like him. And my eyes couldn't hold it anymore.  No one seemed to notice. So I quickly dried my eyes.

Solange and Camille stood next to the couch, whispering quietly to each other. Somehow, they looked almost untouched. Solange was now healed. Clean. Drusilla appeared in a cloud of smoke with another woman at her side, demon, most likely, given the subtle wrongness of her.

It was surreal.
Here we were, in my childhood home. Crumbling walls, stained floors, bug carcasses littered like confetti. I should've been mortified, but shame felt so distant it might as well have belonged to another life.

"The dagger!" I gasped, as I scrambled upright. "The dagger—his soul's inside! I don't have it, I—"

"Relax," Jade cut in. She lay sprawled next to a dead cockroach the size of a hamster, barely bothering to lift her head. "I have it."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the dagger, tossing it toward me like it was nothing. I caught it one-handed, my heart skipped a beat at the feel of it because— Gods. It felt Incredible.
The second my skin met the blade, a quiet delicious calm unfurled inside me. As if someone was threading their fingers through my hair, whispering that it was okay. That I wasn't alone.
...Estoy bien pinche loca.

"Hold on," Camille said, eyeing me like I was a lunatic. "His soul's there?"

"Morgan." Odysseus stepped forward. "Why isn't your soul complete?"

"I couldn't do it," I looked down. "I just—"

"So this was all for nothing?" Drusilla crossed her arms.

Camille gave a sharp little laugh. "Brilliant."

"I couldn't just take him."

Bo's growl made me jump off my skin: "What the fuck just happened?"