Page 116 of Dance With A Devil

My arms wrap around my waist. The ache returns.

“What’s worse than remembering your own father molested you?” I whisper. “What’s worse than knowing your guardians helped him erase it?”

The silence after that is brutal.

And loud.

Fred speaks first. “Athens… is that true?”

“Yes.” My voice is barely there. “The journals confirmed it. The dreams tried to warn me, but I didn’t know what they meant.”

Ryan leans in. Her eyes, usually lit with venom, are full of steel now. “Who else knows about the dreams?”

Everything inside me trembles.

But I answer.

“Wyck.”

And for the first time since this night began, the air turns dangerous again.

Like something wicked just woke up beneath our skin.

And it’s not going back to sleep.

“Wyck, Karter, Josie, and Gaia,” I say, eyes fixed on the ceiling like it holds the rest of my fractured answers. “But Wyck and Karter don’t know what happens in the dreams, just that they get worse when the weather turns to shit.”

Ryan raises a brow. “Okay, first of all, who the fuck are Josie and Gaia? And second… what’s the deal with dream demons and thunderstorms? You got some kind of psychic barometer shoved up your spine?”

Before I can answer, the door creaks open.

Maeve enters first, flanked by two of the masked staff, moving like shadows, each carrying silver trays and dark-glassed bottles. Another figure rolls in a black table, slick and glinting under the low amber lights like it was built to hold bodies, not snacks.

Maeve’s eyes find Ryan first. She slides her a small velvet pouch. “This is a limited stash,” she says, voice low and thick with that gravelly Irish rasp. “Enough to get you where you need to go. No more.”

Then she turns to me.

Pulls me into her arms without asking.

Her breath brushes my ear, warm and aching. “I’m so sorry that happened to you… Tell me he’s dead.”

I nod, a cold fire in my gut. “Josie killed him.”

Her eyes spark. “Good. Tell her I said thank you.”

One final squeeze, and Maeve vanishes like smoke, taking the staff with her.

The room shifts instantly.

“Oh,fuck yes! Now we’re talking.” Ryan’s already tearing into the pouch like it’s sacred loot from a dead king’s tomb.

When she opens it, the scent hits, damp moss, pine sap, and smoke laced with something ancient. It smells like sin. Like secrets buried in blood-soaked soil. Like Wyck.

I want to hate how comforting it is.

Ryan holds up a joint like it’s Excalibur. “Ladies, ready to get higher than the Elder Prime’s ego?”

I hesitate. “I’ve never smoked before.”