Page 126 of The Devil May Care

I don’t answer. She has no idea what she’s talking about.

The book slips in my sweaty hands. The spine is already cracked; I’ve read it so often. It’s one of my favorites. I wish I could fall into the story instead. Into a world of centaurs and fairies and unicorns and magic. Then something moves. A blur from the ceiling of the car. I don’t notice it at first. Just a twitch at the edge of my vision. Then I glance up and freeze.

The spider is black. Long-legged. Hanging from a silk thread. It lowers itself onto my lap. My body reacts before I do. I scream. High and shrill and sharp enough to split glass. I jerk violently to the side, back arching off the seat. My knee kicks the back of my father’s seat. My book goes flying, pages fanned wide. It strikes the gearshift and my dad startles, twists the wheel. His eyes meet mine in the rear-view mirror.

“KAY!” he shouts.

Everything tips.

The tires screech. The car lurches sideways, swerving hard across the road. My mother’s scream pierces the air. The seatbelt locks tight across my chest. I bite down hard on my tongue as blood and bile fill my mouth. Sour, copper, foam. Metal crunches. Glass explodes like rain.The world flips sideways, then again. Someone screams. Maybe me. Everything is spinning, colors and sounds bleeding together until I can’t hear, can’t think, can’t stop. We keep rolling. End over end. My stomach heaves. My ears ring. Something warm splashes my cheek.

And…stillness.

It feels wrong. Too silent. Too final. Even as inertia keeps my belly pitching. I blink. Taste the blood in my mouth. I try to turn my head, but my neck screams in protest.

“Mom? Dad?”

I’ve been here before,I remind my adult self, steadying my breath.Maybe not in a cursed demon ruin, but close enough. I’ve been here before and made it through.I tighten my jaw.You want to see pain? Fine. I carry it. Every day etched into the marrow of my bones.

The silence after the accident is unbearable. No sirens. No voices. No answer, just static on the radio. Just the soft hiss of something leaking and the clink of broken glass falling like tiny bells. I’m upside down, still strapped in. The seatbelt cuts into my collarbone. Sweat drips into my eye. Everything smells like oil and dirt and smoke overlaid with a hint of copper, thick and sharp in my nose. I don’t remember climbing out of the car. I don’t remember the EMTs. Just flashes—hands on my shoulders, bright lights, my own voice repeating my name, my age.

The image around me shifts.

White sheets. Bleached air. The smell of metal and antiseptic. A dull ache behind my eyes. I wake in a sterile room, tubes in my arm, the rhythmic beep of machines ticking beside me like a metronome for my heart.

The walls are pale green. The ceiling is tiled and cracked. My hands are bandaged. They itch under the too tight wrappings. I don’t know where my parents are, but I’m alone. I sit up too fast and pain lances through my ribs. It reminds me of sparring with… the thought bleeds out of my brain, seeping from my consciousness. Voices drift from beyond the curtain. Soft. Unaware.

“I heard she screamed and threw something. Poor dad couldn’t correct in time…”

“She’s just a kid.”

“Can you imagine? Causing that—and surviving? Poor thing just killed both her parents.”

Their words don’t register all at once. They’re like an intravenous drip. A slow poison.

Causing that.

Surviving.

Killed both her parents.

Those words are the ones that will slice deeper than the crash ever could.

I swing my legs off the bed. The floor is too cold. My hospital gown flutters. I can’t even worry that people will see my days-of-the-week undies. My feet are bare, but they hold my weight. I lurch down endless halls that stretch and bend in ways they shouldn’t. Every door looks the same, every nurse turns away. I shout, and no one hears me. Or they choose not to. My face is wet. Salt on my lips. I round a corner. Her room is there, it’s not really a room, a curtain in a busy corridor. My chest aches, my heart throbbing inside the clutch of my battered ribcage. I just need to see her. My mom. She can’t be… they can’t be…I couldn’t…

I yank back the waxy green curtain. It rattles on metal bearings, and I wince but don’t slow down. I need my mom….

She’s alive.

She sits upright on the bed, rosy-cheeked and smiling like we’ve just come back from the grocery store. Her hair is brushed. There’s no blood. No bruises. She’s packing a small suitcase, folding clothes with familiar precision.

“Sweetheart,” she says, looking up. “There you are.”

I freeze in the doorway, and she opens her arms. “Come here.”

I do. I run to her like the little girl I was, burying my face in her stomach, breathing in the scent of rosemary shampoo and the old leather of her jacket. She isn’t even in a hospital gown; her hair still piled on the top of her head with a pencil securing it in place.

“I thought…” I hiccup past a sob, “They said… the car…. I killed you.”