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He pulls me up, and I fall into his chest. Luckily, I save my cup from spilling. I have a feeling I’m going to need it after this conversation. “Yes. Real talk.”
“Excellent,” I say, though it doesn’t come out that way at all. My tongue is thick and buzzing. I shrug to myself, taking another drink.
Without looking back, I walk in the opposite direction with Sean. Nathan, I’m sure, will see where we’re going. If we’re going to have a real talk, I’ll definitely be asking him about Gayle.
I shift my cup to my other hand as we start for the tree line. With my free hand, I pull out my phone and bring up a recording app that Nathan made me download for occasions such as this. He thinks he’s a ninja or something.
I laugh, and Sean peers over at me. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” I say sweetly before I put my phone back in my pocket.
As soon as we enter the forest, it’s like we walk into another realm. My shifter sight instinctually takes over. I search for my wolf, but I’ve no doubt drank her into a numb silence. If I push away the cobwebs, I can feel her anxiety over being away from Nathan—something that’s definitely not supposed to happen.
The further we go, the more it feels as if someone is tilting the ground this way and that. The edges of my vision start to blur, and I shake my head. I didn’t think I had that much to drink. Enough to feel it and probably puke tonight, sure, but my feet are so heavy, they can barely move.
“Mia?”
I try to answer Sean, but when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. He scoops me up and I close my eyes. I assume he’s taking me back to the party to sleep it off, but the next time I’m coherent enough to understand my surroundings, I’m lying in a clearing with tall grass swaying in the moon above me. “Wha....”
“Don’t worry, Mia. I’m here. I’m going to fix everything.”
The voice is all wrong, though. It’s Sean, not the man who will actually fix everything. I try to get up, but my hands won’t come apart. Peering down, I find a disgusting, smelly stain down the front of my shirt and rope binding my hands together. Panic crashes inside me. “Sean?”
My gaze flicks up to find him pacing in front of me, sucking on the pad of his thumb. “I said don’t worry. I’m handling this.”
“What’s going on?”
With how fuzzy my brain is, I’m not sure if I’m actually talking or not. Hell, I’m not even sure that what’s happening is actually happening.
If the smell on my shirt is evidence, I don’t want it to be.
A low drum begins. I peer backward, trying to find the source, but it makes the ground move again, so I snap my head forward and wait for the earth to stop tilting. The drums don’t stop, though. They reverberate around me and are joined by a female voice humming in a language I don’t understand. Either that or it’s just a constant stream of consonants and vowels.
When it doesn’t feel like I’m going to throw up anymore, I slowly open my eyes again. Before Sean, a woman in a petite, white dress chants. With her free hand, she wafts smoke over him that’s coming from a charred clump of sticks. “Did you bring her hair?”
In the moonlight, I see him hand her a few strands of purple hair. I have no idea how he even got that.
“Your blood?”
“What the fuck?” My voice echoes in my pulsing head, making me moan.
Sean takes a dagger out of the woman’s hand and cuts his palm. Crimson spills over his fingers. “Fuck,” he hisses.
She holds out a bottle, catching some of it. “Now, your hair.”
He grabs a handful of his hair and yanks, sliding the strands into the glass bottle with the drops of blood.
“Lie down next to her,” the woman instructs. Her tone is ethereal, so soft and feminine—a contrast to the instructions she’s giving. The chant and the drums pick up again as Sean lies next to me.
“What are you doing?” I hiss.
“Ending this.”
Fear settles over my chest. “You’re killing me? What the fuck?”
“No,” he snaps. “I’m ending this torture.”
My head is still filled with cotton as I glance around the area, realizing this is all real. I puked on myself. I blacked out for God knows how long…. “Did you spike my drink?”