Demon kissed: demon kissed

Chapter 19

"So. What happened?" Sister Al held a cup of hot tea in her hands.

"You were wrong!" I said hysterically. "The bond is bad. Like way bad. It's gonna kill me!" I didn't make much sense when I first got there. My hands were flying, my heart was ready to explode, and words were pouring out of my mouth in incoherent ramblings. Sister Al's remedy was to shove a steaming drink in my shaking hands.

"Hmm," she said. "I coulda been wrong. Cause you didn't tell me everything. What'd ya leave out, Ivy? Anything—important?" She looked calm, and pursed her wrinkled lips to blow on her hot tea. I shifted in my seat, and made an argh noise as I pulled my hair a little. Sister Al kept talking, "Anything about, I don't know, saying bad words? Lying? And stuff like that? I've heard dirty words before, ya know. Nuns got ears, girl."

My heart hammered in my chest. I couldn't stand it anymore. She beat me down. She won. I simply nodded and said, "Yup. Stuff like that."

A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth, and she put her cup down. "It's about time. Do you know how hard it is to think of metaphors for being what you are? Pies. Bah. I was down to nothing with that one. So spill girl. I swore to protect you—I don't lie. I will protect you no matter what words fly outa your mouth right now."

I looked around the room. Only one thought kept me from spilling everything right then. "What about Julia?"

Al straightened in her chair. "Julia means well, but she ain't here. And she ain't my boss. My boss hasn't been seen for over two hundred years. And no, I didn't see that coming." She laughed at her own joke. "I'm as high up as you can get in my branch of things. And no one is above me. So, what I say goes. And I say you have my protection. So you do."

I paused, looking at my teacup. "Julia scares me. But I need help. I'll be dead tomorrow if I don't get it. Julia will kill me the next day if she finds out." I paused. My face was pained, but I couldn't hide it anymore. "I'm tainted. I was marked as a Martis. It was blue that first night." I took a huge breath and blurted it out. "But now, it's not. It turned purple." I pulled my comb from my hair and pushed back my hacked off bangs, showing her the mark.

She lowered her cup to the table and said, "Oh my. I had no idea," totally deadpan.

I tried not to roll my eyes. I suspected she knew, but I wasn't sure until then. "You knew this whole time, didn't you?"

"Of course I knew! I'm old, not stupid." She smiled, taking a sip, and returning the smoldering drink to the table. "And when I saw you, I knew you were the girl in my visions. Dressed in solid black with a hole in her heart the size of... something really big. Of course it was you."

"Why didn't you tell me that you knew?" My thundering heart started to relax, since I wasn't going to die right then. "I thought you'd want me dead. I heard Eric and Julia talking about the prophecy and that they had to kill the girl in the painting—me. Eric doesn't know. I've been lying to him. I hate lying to him. And the bond. The bond!" I yelled as tears ran down my face. "It's linked me to one of them."

She snorted. "Well, he's really not blue then, huh?"

"It's not funny! How can you laugh? He wants to kill me." I wiped the tears off of my face. "The bond keeps throwing us together, and it's pushing us to do the one thing that will kill me. I don't want to die, and he doesn't want to kill me. The only reason I got away from him tonight was, because I gave the bond what it wanted—a kiss, but on his cheek. The cords that held me to him snapped, along with his self-control. So I ran. If I wasn't just a little bit faster, he would have killed me! For all I know he's waiting outside." I rubbed my hands over my eyes. "What am I supposed to do?"