Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 108376 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108376 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Peter didn’t say anything for a long while. Then he reached out and stroked my cheek. “You’ve got a good heart.”
No, I don’t, I thought to myself. If my future was to be believed then I was going to leave Peter at some point, and that made me a horrible, awful person. The worst. “I’m not that good,” I replied quietly, my hand going to my chest where I felt the mark alive and pulsating. Why hadn’t it been like this before? Spending time with Vas had activated it somehow. “His demon mark is inside me and it’s permanent. It makes me want to…go to him. Save him.”
Peter fell silent. He drew away and ran a hand through his hair. I watched as his eyebrows furrowed. “What makes you believe it’s permanent?”
“He said it was,” I replied.
“Well, that might not be true. There might be a way to remove it. There could be a spell.” I saw his mind working while the mark vibrated angrily. It didn’t appreciate talk of removal, and strangely, neither did I. There was a moment while we’d been trying to break through the prison wards when the mark came alive in a way it hadn’t before. It made me feel strong, my magic bolstered, and I was certain it had been why Vasilios finally managed to break through the wards. His magic and mine joined up. We’d been stronger together.
Peter clearly saw the conflict on my face because he pulled me to him. “Let’s not talk about this now. I just want to enjoy having you home and safe. We can deal with everything else tomorrow.”
I allowed him to hold me, trying to rid my mind of worries so that I could rest. Somewhere along the way, I fell asleep. I wasn’t sure how much time passed when I woke up briefly. Peter was leaving.
“Where are you going?” I asked groggily.
“I have to get home and pay Mrs White for babysitting. Go back to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning,” he whispered. “I love you.”
“Love you, too,” I whispered back but I was so exhausted that it didn’t take long for me to fall right back asleep.
In my dreams I wandered to a faraway place, one where it was hot and humid. There was an oppressive quality to the air like it was weighing down on me. The sky was grey with patches of fiery orange and red. The air smelled sharp, tinged with sulphur. I was there but not there, at once struck by an intense feeling of the place, but I couldn’t see any people, couldn’t interact. I saw tall metal gates and then a doorway that led down, down into the depths of the earth. The sound of gears grinding and a flash of a mine shaft, the image quick and bright. Clink, clink, clink was all I could hear then, the sound growing increasingly louder before I woke on a gasp.
Light filtered through the curtains. I glanced at my alarm clock and saw it was only mid-morning. Normally my parents would still be asleep but I could hear them downstairs pottering about. The comforting aroma of bacon and pancakes filled the house and my stomach gurgled. I hadn’t eaten in what felt like forever and I was ravenous.
I went to my dresser and put on a T-shirt, a hoodie and some leggings before throwing open my bedroom door. I didn’t expect to find Belinda standing there like she’d been about to knock.
“Um, hi?”
“Your mum asked me to come wake you for breakfast,” she replied in her usual slightly touchy tone. It was like interacting with me was such a chore, even though she’d decided to make her ghostly self at home here in my house with my family.
“You were about to knock,” I pointed out and she looked at me like I was an idiot.
“Yes, that’s generally the polite thing to do.”
“What I meant to say is, you can knock on doors?”
She let out a sigh. “I told you already that I can do some stuff, like moving small objects and such.”
“Right, but you were going to use your hand to knock on the door. How can you do that when your body isn’t solid?”
“I can make parts of myself solid for a few seconds at a time, but it takes a lot of energy so I try not to do it often.”
“Oh, that’s cool,” I observed, a small smile touching my lips. If Belinda could become solid at will then that made her a little less dead, which alleviated my conscience greatly since I was part of the reason she died.
“Close your mouth and come on. Your food is getting cold.”
I followed her down the stairs, but where I walked step by step, Belinda merely glided. When we entered the kitchen my parents were both by the cooker fussing over breakfast. I always found it endearing when my dad tried to cook since he only consumed blood and was clueless about human food. At least, he had no idea what tasted good to non-vampires. So yes, cooking was one of the few things he didn’t excel at, except if you liked extremely rare steaks.