Page 3 of The Witch's Pet

The inside cover always baffled me—some verse written in another language, maybe Latin, and not even in her handwriting.

Hic anima tenetur vincta

Donec victima libens

Se tradat toto corde

Vinculo quod infernum facit

Sic somnus frangetur.

The love poems overshadowed it, so I never asked what it meant. Probably meaningless decorative text, and anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore.

I fold my arms across the book, holding it to my chest. “I should get to bed. I’m exhausted.”

Dean nods. “Call me if you can’t sleep. We can watch a slasher movie or whatever you want.”

“Thanks.”

He strides over and wraps me in a hug, and I stiffen, not ready for the contact.

When he pulls back, he has that worried expression I’ve been seeing a lot lately. “You sure you’re okay? I can stay.”

“I’m fine. Just tired.”

He hesitates, then nods again.

I should be grateful he came over to support me through a breakup, but I just want to be alone. Opening my heart to other people never seems toend well, and I’m not particularly interested in doing it again, even for my best friend.

The moment he leaves through the side gate, a tear slides down my cheek like it’s been waiting there all evening. I wipe it away angrily.

I have to stop getting abandoned. If I keep letting people matter this much, if I keep giving them the power to destroy me, eventually there won’t be anything left of me. I should’ve learned this lesson two years ago when my parents chose traveling over their daughter, but here we are.

Never again. Nobody is allowed to make me feel this weak and vulnerable anymore.

I hold the journal out over the flames—these poems that meant the world to me.“Promise me you’ll always keep this close, no matter what,”Riley had said.“Even if we fight. Even if you’re mad at me. I know it’s just poems, but…they’reourpoems.”

Fuck that. Maybe Dean is right that this book could mean something again one day, but right now, all it represents is an emotional tie I don’t need. Once I get rid of it, I’ll be free from her. I can move on and become a new person, and I’m never going to make the same mistake again.

Drop it. Just do it.

Every memory of her has to go. Every picture, every video, the smell of her clothes, the taste of her chocolates, the inner workings of her brain that she poured onto these pages.

“Good riddance,” I mutter, as if the words are an incantation that will sever whatever still connects us.

My hands shake as I hold the journal over the flames. The leather is warm from the fire’s heat, just like Riley’s body used to be when she’d curl against me.

“I love you so much it scares me,”she said one night that wasn’t so long ago. “I didn’t know I could feel like this.”

A sob bursts from my throat before I can stop it, raw and ugly in the quiet night.

I suck it back, holding my breath like I’m about to jump off a cliff…and drop my last and most meaningful piece of Riley into the fire.

It lands on a crumbling log with acrack. The noise echoes, filling the sky. Through a haze of ash and flames, I swear I see dark wisps of smoke curl around it like ghostly fingers rising from the earth.

And the fact that I’m now hallucinating is definitely my cue that it’s time to pack it in.

I rub my tired eyes and toss the empty box after it, waiting for the relief and freedom to hit me.