I’ve given you CPR twice in one day. It’s going to take me some time… Dastien said through the bond. So, no. It’s not just your fear.
Wait, what? Twice?
The last couple of minutes, you weren’t breathing. And the phone was dead. I wasn’t sure if the spell worked and if you’d… His fear blossomed again. The shaking stopped all at once as it hit me. If I hadn’t been breathing, then that meant I’d almost died. Or kind of had died. Again.
My teeth chattered again, and the shakes returned full-force. “What are we going to do?”
I don’t know.
That was enough sitting around. I couldn’t just stay here swamped by fear.
I groaned as I sat up. Every muscle throbbed. It took everything I had to reach for my phone on the coffee table. When I relaxed with my back against the couch, a sheen of sweat covered my body. It took me three tries to unlock my phone, and then a few more to call Claudia.
The ringtone filled the living room before her voicemail picked up. “Hi! You’ve reached Claudia. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you when I can.” I waited for the beep and started talking.
“Freaking out over here. Thank you so much for helping. Are you okay? Also, I need to know how to break a demon tie. Call me back.” The phone slid out of my grip and clattered to the ground
. “Shit.” I wasn’t sure if I’d hung up, but I was leaving it.
“Claudia’s fine.”
He felt pretty confident, but why? “How do you know?”
“Because Lucas’ bond is still among the pack.”
That was excellent news. If Lucas was okay, then Claudia was okay. Or at least alive. She was probably doing the same thing we were—recovering. That had to be why she hadn’t answered.
I wasn’t sure what kind of demon he was, but I knew for sure he was stronger than me. When would he come back again? I had to pray that if I were this drained from the whole experience, he had to be at least a little exhausted from it. Maybe that meant that it’d take a while before he showed up.
Taking me over like that had to have been a massive power drain. I wasn’t sure why he had so much power at his—
Damn it.
Do you really think so? Dastien asked.
The timing… Muraco had been drained by something with Luciana-esque magic, and then not a few hours later, the demon who helped Luciana drain me of my magic and power took over my mind. It can’t be a coincidence.
Merde.
No. This could be good news, actually.
How could this possibly be good news?
Because it means that he doesn’t have that much power at his disposal. So theoretically, we should have time to regroup. Unless he drained someone else of power, we should be okay. For now. If I was right.
I was under no illusion that he wasn’t coming back. It was only a matter of time. And when he did, we had to be ready.
For now, that meant we needed food. I’d burned a lot of calories pulling all that power. At this point, the shaking in my limbs wasn’t exclusively fear-based.
“You pulled enough power from me that I’m useless, too.” His voice was a little slurred. “But you’re right. We’re going to need food.”
“Know any djinn that can magic us some?”
Dastien huffed. “That would be handy, but even if I did, you wouldn’t want to mess with a djinn. They’re tricksters.”
I filed “djinn” away as something to ask about when we weren’t so weak. “I guess I’d better get my ass up.”
He gripped my hand harder. “You don’t have to. I’ll get up in a second. I swear.”