Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73252 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73252 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Devon pulls Mabel’s notebook from a kitchen drawer and flips to the last page. She drew a stick-figure army of eleven demons standing in front of Vaelric. Devon crosses one out.
“We know for certain we’ve taken out one of these guys. We don’t know if any others were killed before now, and at the moment, we don’t really have a way to find out.”
I hear the question in his voice, and I cradle my head in my hands. “The more we try to figure this out, the more desperate it feels.” I lift my head again. “We keep talking in circles. Going over the same information again and again. It doesn’t change the facts. We’re not suddenly going to have some miraculous realization that the answer was sitting in front of us all along.”
I sigh. “Because it isn’t. And then there’s…” I stop myself. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Okay, you can’t leave me with that,” Antonio says.
“There’s a notebook.” I close my eyes for a second before continuing. “It has names in it. Witches the Order has been using.” Antonio’s expression changes. “My name was in there. I found it at the warehouse with the vials of my blood and a vial of someone else’s. Most of the names are crossed out, which makes me think those witches are dead.” I swallow. “But not all of them are.” Neither of them says anything. “And I can’t let it go.”
The admission feels heavier than I expected.
“I know none of that matters compared to everything else going on, but I keep thinking about them. What’s the point of rescuing witches from the Order if the world is going to end because I freed a demon who’s going to bring about the apocalypse?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Devon says, holding up a hand. “He’s not actually going to end the world, is he?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I reply honestly.
“We’ve faced a lot of demons over the years,” Antonio says, trying to reason with me. “None of them brought about Armageddon.”
“Yeah, because we stopped them.”
“Look, Wren, as much as I’d love to give us all the credit in the world, I don’t think the world ending is a realistic possibility.” Antonio sounds confident when he starts. But by the end, even he doesn’t seem entirely convinced.
“I think I’m gonna go upstairs and try to get some sleep,” I say, fully knowing I’m probably going to end up doom-scrolling on my phone or watching reruns of Gilmore Girls. I put my plate in the dishwasher and head upstairs. I climb into the large, empty bed, wishing there were a TV in here.
Xavier doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who watches much television, let alone someone who would lie in bed and watch reruns of an old sitcom. I remember reading a study once that said bedrooms should be reserved for sleeping and sex, and that putting a TV in the room could be damaging to a relationship. I thought it was an odd study at the time. Not that I had a relationship to put to the test. Or even a bedroom without a TV in it, really, because I spent almost an entire year on the road after reading that article. I don’t think having a TV in our bedroom would dampen anything between Xavier and me, but as I prop my phone on the nightstand to watch something mindless, I can see how the idea has some merit.
I don’t even make it through the opening credits before I feel too restless to stay in bed. With a sigh, I get up, turn on the lamp beside the bed, and pull the leather notebook from the nightstand drawer. It feels silly keeping it hidden away like some sort of secret diary. Though, in a way, I guess that’s exactly what it is. I flip through the pages absentmindedly while I think. There are no dates written beside any of the entries. The ink doesn’t look faded. And up until I was sold to the Malus family, I was still very relevant to the Order. Hell, until literally yesterday, they were still trying to figure out exactly how to free Vaelric.
If this notebook contains relatively recent information, then there’s a chance some of the names that haven’t been crossed out belong to people who are still alive.
Alive and trapped by the Order in one way or another.
The thought makes my stomach twist. And sitting around waiting for Vaelric to strike is going to drive me insane. Possibly quite literally. I get up and grab the laptop Xavier gave me when I first got here. Then I open the Notes app and start typing out the names. There are seventeen names in the notebook, including mine.
Only three aren’t crossed out.
Is that because they’re still alive? Or because whoever was running these experiments never got the chance to cross them off? I stare at the list of three uncrossed names until my vision starts to blur.