Hex Girl | The Dark Child Prophecy Series

Chapter Eight: Girl On Fire

I leaned down to grab my music player and my jacket, heading for the door. I needed silence. Maybe, if I got a few minutes alone back in the apartment, I could meditate and put my mental guards up again like Avalon had once taught me. I hadn't even been aware they were down.

I'm so tired of wondering all the time if there is a ghost out there who is touching me, reaching out in hopes I can see and hear them...and help them find peace, I thought as I sighed.

For a few years before coming to the coven, I could see and talk to most ghosts and spirits. Even though no one else could see them, I could. I could hear them, feel their cold skin, and smell the scent of death on them. It had scared me. Sensing my powers of what it would mean to be a witch who could speak to the dead and wield magic, Avalon had taken extra precautions to be sure I was protected mentally as a child. Some things are not for a seven-year-old to handle.

I had been grateful at first, until the night my parents' ghosts appeared to me. I couldn't really remember what had happened. It was as if my memories had been erased by their visit. Instead, all I was left with was a handprint burnt into my skin on my back. The mark of a medium: the witchcraft of gypsies and demon familiars. If Luce and AJ hadn't been down the hall, James wouldn't have been able to get help. In the separate dimension, I thought I was following them back towards our home in Raleigh. In reality, I had opened the large window and was standing on the window ceil, ready to fall and plummet to the ground from eight stories up. All because I was following the direction of our dead parents.

Avalon had decided that it wasn't ghosts that were speaking to me that night, but more likely that it was a demon. Demons had a thing for witches to do all of their dirty work as a familiar of choice, especially when there was no access to any other supernatural species that could help channel energy from one source to another.

But now that I was seeing a ghost again, did that mean the demon who had tried to trick me into the afterlife was back again? Or did I forget how to keep my mental guards up after killing the Italian man?

I headed down the hallway and then hung a right to head back towards the main concourse. I kept close to the wall, my eyes down as I hurried towards the wing that held our apartment. I didn't want to be seen or stopped. My mind was still on what had just happened. Only a few others were in the Grand Concourse area as I cut through; they were mainly foreign diplomats in town for meetings and the second quarter's global summit. Coven houses' elite councils would be arriving in droves over the next week, each house represented by its leader and their seconds- and thirds-in-command.

Unlike my friends, James and I would go into "invisibility mode" during the preceding. While there were plenty of humans on staff and within the coven's political landscape, James and I preferred to stay out of it, for now. Marcus was of a high bloodline and social standing, but his family's elders didn't think he should make the whole society aware of his human wards. And that was a stipulation I was fine with.

I cut up through the second level's maze of halls to different meeting rooms and conferences that were mostly empty before crossing into our wing and headed up the stairs. Once I had gone up a few flights, I walked past the line that separated the royalty from coven members and stayed on my side of the tapestry carpet. The royalty wing was only for Mezdor blood. I was allowed in, just like James, but I always had to flash my key-card badge as proof, even though the guards knew whom I was.

I turned the corner and went down the hall towards the American section of our wing where each major house from the United States had apartments. Most of them were empty now; but when I had first come to the Capital, American Shadow Stalkers came and went quite frequently.

Once I got to our door, I swiped my card and stepped in. I pushed the door shut behind me and discarded my music player on the buffet table just inside the door, leaving my key-card with it. I sighed and tugged my hair down from its ponytail. "Marc?" I called, wondering if he was here.