Page 18 of Mending Mayhem
“What does it feel like?” I asked.
“Nothing yet.” Ash turned down a side street, and I followed.
“Sorry. I’m talking to the demon in my head.”
She laughed. “Now I know how you felt.”
A low growl rumbled between my ears. “If I knew how to name it, I wouldn’t have asked.”
“Physically, I mean.” I tapped my temple when Shade cut his gaze to me. “Mortals are complicated creatures. Lots of emotions.”
“It’s pleasant. Your chest feels full. Your lips curve upward, but you’re not quite smiling anymore. It seems to be directed toward your sister.”
“I’m proud of her. If you’d met her before everything started, you’d see how much she’s grown.” The full feeling in my chest and my smile were also the result of having him back, but I didn’t dare say that out loud.
Yeah, okay, fate had brought us together. I believed it now, no matter how badly I wanted to deny it. After summoning him without his skull…all by my lonesome, apparently…fate was the only explanation. It wasn’t logical in the slightest, but logic was Ash’s jam.
Action was mine.
Chaos stopped abruptly and grabbed Ash’s hand. “I sense a rift.”
“As do I.”
“Mayhem does too. Where?” I reached into my jacket, wrapping my fingers around a dagger.
“To our right.”
“This way.” Chaos turned down the street, and we strode toward a massive red brick church with a white steeple.
A four-by-three-foot gash in…the veil?…hung to the left of the building, its edges rimmed in glowing orangish-red.
“Whoa.” I stopped and rubbed my eyes, expecting it to vanish from sight, but it stayed there, suspended in midair.
A ripple darted from right to left, and a six-foot-tall beastie with goat horns and the face of a hyena barreled toward it. Four witches gave chase, one of them hurling a blue ball of energy toward the ripple. He missed—fae soldiers were fast AF—and hit the metal fence surrounding the churchyard, electrifying it. It sizzled and popped, raining sparks to the ground before going out.
Thank the goddess nothing caught fire.
“Why are they doing this in broad daylight?” I picked up my pace. “Do they not have a shadow witch?”
“Doing what?” Miles asked, matching my strides. “I don’t see anything.”
“You don’t see the giant rift right there?” I swung my arm toward it. “And the witches trying to fight a fae soldier and a hyena man?”
“I can see through shadows,” Chaos said. “She must be channeling Mayhem’s power to see through them as well.”
“That is precisely what is happening.”
“We have to help them.” I jogged toward the fray.
“How? We can’t see them.” Miles ran to catch up.
“I can,” Shade said, matching our pace.
I cut him a sideways glance. “Since when?”
“It’s an active power. I have to focus to use it, but now that I know there’s a shadow here, I can see through it.”
“And you never bothered to share that bit of information?” I made a mental note to take inventory of everyone’s hidden talents if I ever had the time.