Wish Upon A Demon

23.

CHAPTER - TWENTY THREE

January 31st, 2002.

“I can hear someone knocking, mommy,” I say, trying to block out the haunting sound. “It’s nothing, Faye, go back to sleep.” My mother cooed, smoothening my hair, switching off the bedside lamp, tucking me close to her. “Okay.” I murmured, wrapping my tiny hands around her warm frame. It was in the middle of the night when I felt my mother slip out of bed. As she silently closed the door, I tiptoed out the bed and followed her. My grandparents were visiting, and I was surprised to find them downstairs, awake.

“What do we do, Matilda?” My grandma asks my mother. “I don’t know. But we can’t let Fredrick ever get to know of this. Faye has to be protected.” My mother says. I want to run to her. I want to hug her. I want to go to sleep with her by my side, listening to her heartbeat. But something in that tender heart of mine told me that my mother was never going to come back. “They’ve called us. So for now, the only choice we have is to meet with them, and come to a negotiation.” My grandfather says. My grandmother nods and my mother grabs her keys.

“Faye...” I hear her murmur.

“No time for that now, Matilda. Faye will be fine, Fredrick is in the next room and I have people watching securing the house, let’s leave now.” My grandmother says sternly. But even her voice wavers in between, and I can fear in her eyes. I can see the fear in all their eyes. My mother nods in agreement, “Okay, let’s go.” She casts a glance upstairs, and I hide behind the wall. I watch them walk out the door, closing it silently. I turn around, walking back to my room when I see it.

The set of deep violet eyes fixed on me through the darkness.

January 31st, 2015 [PRESENT]

I wake up with a gasp.

Those violet eyes haunt me. They’ve been appearing quite frequently, turning my dreams into nightmares. Oddly though, it feels like I know whom they belong to. It feels like those eyes that have watched me when I was little are watching me even now, just in a different color. Maybe, now they’re in a particular shade of hazel.

“How old are you?”

I ask demon boy as I arrange my bookshelf. It was like my own, little library. I wasn’t a fan of mystery and thriller, but my newest novel The Perfectionists was making me reconsider. “You don’t need to know.” I roll my eyes at his response. Of course, he would say that. According to him, I already knew more than I should have, so leave it to him to completely shut me from any source of information. “Above four hundred years old.” I hear a quiet murmur from behind me.

I turn around, eyes wide.

“So, wait, my first kiss was with a four-hundred-year-old demon?” The words tumble out my mouth before I can stop, but I don’t take them back and instead, wait for his response. “Talk about a pedophile.” I quietly add, a second later. “Pedophile?” A laugh tumbles out of demon boy’s mouth. “Says the woman who forced me to kiss her.” He adds on, a second later. “I did not.” I deny, even though I knew that I was the one who pushed him onto that damn bed, I was the one who straddled him and I was the one who kissed him. “I think we both know the real answer to that.” Demon boy rolls his eyes as he speaks. I don’t say anything further and arrange the book correctly, making sure none of them are tilted and kept straight.

“So tell me some more perks of being a demon,” I say to the demon boy.

I didn’t like throwing temper tantrums or any tantrums at all, which is why I decided to live with it. Being a demon wasn’t something I liked or wanted, but I was made into one and there was no reverse option that would turn me back human, so it was better to live and adjust to it, rather than moan and whine about how I loved my life better when I was a human and mortal. “Well, you automatically develop powers.” I turn around at demon boy’s answer. “What?” I ask. Having powers would make it even better and easier for me to like demon Faye. “You can’t just make gestures and power shoots out of you or something, but with time, you’ll learn how to channel it out and use it, control it.” Demon boy explains, playing with a string of loose thread from my comforter, which he probably pulled out.

“Oh, cool,” I’m back to arranging the books. “So, if I like concentrate, can I teleport like you?” I ask the demon boy, a few moments of silence later. “No.” His reply is immediate, short, curt and to the point. “Why not?” I ask, pulling a face. “Because abilities like that are developed over time.” He says, still playing with the string. “Oh,” I say, turning to the books again. The words said by Dawn Rose Michaels pops into my head once again. I can’t help but think about her words again and again. Get yourself out of the game before it’s too late, Faye, her words echo in my head, over and over again like a song that’s heard once and cannot be forgotten. It’s bothering me.

The expression on her face, the fear in her eyes, everything about Dawn Rose Michaels was mysterious.

She had popped up out of nowhere, turned out to be in the family of the boy who had been tormenting me at school and had offered me advice. What she didn’t know that by now, it was probably already too late to get out. I was a demon now, just like her. Except I didn’t fall in love with a demon and leave my family for him or anything, but I feared that there might be a time I would do anything for him considering on how the transition heightened my feelings for the demon, making him stay constantly on my mind.

Like I didn’t think of him before.

I observed him. He was too childish for someone who had lived for over four hundred years. And four hundred years he lived as a prince. From what I knew, demon boy was an only child, which meant he was next in line for the throne, so the biggest doubt was why they never crowned him king? Did he not want to be king? Or was there something else? No, there was definitely something else. And that voice inside my head began whispering again. ‘It has something to do with you.’ The voice whispered. I knew it had something to do with me and that something was the reason why Verona King had dropped a drop of her son’s blood into the drink she had sent me.

But why?

There were so many unanswered questions. There were so many different theories, which could be right or wrong. I didn’t know which one to choose, or which was would provide me with the answers I needed. In my mind, it was all, ‘somehow’, ‘probably’, ‘maybe’ and ‘why.’ I needed all these four queries to be answered. And when they were answered, I wanted it to be the complete truth. My phone began ringing. I reached out for it and lifted it from my desk. UKNOWN NUMBER flashed the screen brightly. I lifted the call, stopping the loud ringtone, and was met with a few gasps and loud breathing.

”Faye?” I heard a soft, sweet sound call out. Alexandria Monroe, the girl I always bumped into. “Hi, Alexa,” I said out. It was better calling her by a nickname instead of using her original one.But what caught my attention the most was not the fact that she managed to obtain my number even when I never gave it to her, but the loud sounds, clanging of metal, harsh breathing, moans of pain and slight male laughter from the background. Like she managed to find her voice, she muttered a few words, before the line went dead and she was cut off from me.

“I need your help.”