Page 54 of Wicked Believer

I find one of her scuffed Louboutins.

My jaw clenches tight enough to spark pain as I take the abandoned shoe into my hand.

If anyone has so much as laid a hand on her, I will burn down this whole bloody city without a second thought.

With a furious roar, I slam my free fist down onto the pavement, the full weight of my strength opening a massive fissure in the earth. From the hole in the concrete, dozens of large black serpents begin to escape, my lowest demons, summoned to serve me.

“Find her,” I hiss to them, watching as they scatter about the city. “Find your queen.”

Chapter Nineteen

Charlotte

I wake with a start sometime later, something damp and cold across my forehead.

“It’s all right. Breathe,” a calm voice says to me.

I inhale a sharp, sudden breath, jerking upright, but that only causes my vision to swim. I weave unsteadily.

“Easy now.”

I clutch something hard to steady myself.

There’s a ... tingling sensation at the back of my skull, and my lips are chapped and cracking.

“Here, drink this.”

Someone pushes what feels like a Dixie cup full of water into my hand.

I take it, the waxy paper wobbling as I bring it to my mouth. Once the cool liquid hits my throat, I down it, my vision starting to level out as I take in my surroundings.

A church. I’m inside a cathedral that, based on the high-vaulted ceilings, the stained glass windows, and the nearby altar full of votive candles beneath a small statue of the Virgin Mary, must be a Catholic sanctuary. I reposition myself from where I was lying, half propped on a pillow on top of a wooden pew, so I can lean against its side.

My eyes fall to the Black man positioned beside me, who’s wearing a staunch white priest’s collar. “Maria here and one of my parishioners saw you collapse,” he says. “So, they brought you inside.”

“Here. Have another drink,” a second, newer voice says, and I look up to see a young Latina woman, a nun in her habit, who appears to be around my age, passing me another cup of water. Maria apparently.

“Thank you,” I rasp, sipping it.

My stomach feels as if I’ve swallowed a whole mound of rocks, and my forehead is clammy. She smiles warmly at me, muttering something in Spanish to the priest, before leaving the two of us alone.

Olivia,my mind hisses, the thought causing me to jerk upright.

“I have to—”

“We said a prayer for her, for your friend.” The priest nods. “It’s already on the news.”

My friend?

Which means it’s likely been at least an hour since I went missing, maybe longer.

I nod uselessly, my pulse slowing. There’s no point in correcting him, I guess.

Olivia wasn’t my friend, but only because I ...

I swallow.

Because I didn’t allow her to be.