Damned If You Do by Alex Brown

Author:Alex Brown [Brown, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Page Street Publishing
Published: 2023-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

IN WHICH I THROW A WISH IN THE WELL

I NEVER THOUGHT I‘D WILLINGLY LET DUSTIN JONES drive me anywhere. But here I was, sitting in his car for the second time today, barely making it through yellow lights as he raced toward The Coffee Spot.

“You doing okay?” Dustin asked, breaking through the comfortable silence that I’d allowed to form around us.

I startled in the passenger’s seat. “What?”

“You look like you’re gonna throw up.”

“I’m not.”

“If you do, roll the window down and stick your head out of the car.”

“Wow.”

“What? It’s easier to clean it off the outside than the inside.” He said it like he’d had experience with this. I wasn’t gonna go searching for that story.

I groaned as my phone rang. Veronica was calling me. A wave of nausea rolled through me as I stared at the name on my screen.

“You gonna answer that?” Dustin asked.

“No,” I replied.

“You sure?”

“No.”

Dustin whistled as we breezed through another yellow light. “Okay then. Anything you wanna talk about?”

Well, that was a loaded question. We could discuss how complicated things were between me and Veronica, and how they got even worse with what Jesse did at rehearsal. Or Fred’s radio silence when I asked him for help. My father rising up from Hell to torment me, even though I got my soul back. The aswang that was still around. And the freaking demon I needed to trap in a Precious Moments Maleficent.

I crossed my arms, staring straight ahead. “You said it best yourself. We’re not friends.”

He swallowed. “No. I guess we’re not.”

“Why do you care, anyway?”

“I don’t.” He sighed as he finally met a yellow light that he couldn’t beat. “But, if I did, I’d wonder how you got involved with the whole demon thing in the first place.”

“What can I say?” I shrugged. “I watch a lot of horror movies.”

“Right. An aswang just wrecked the ground floor of my house after you found a random number that my brother—who’s always thought that our family did make a deal with some demons to create our town—just hid in his room and that’s the best you can do?”

“Yes.” Part of me wanted to talk to him about it. But the rest of me still wasn’t sure I could trust him with it. This was the same guy who’d gotten his parents to buy his way into the lead of every show so that he could spend more time with Veronica. He’d ambushed me in the woods a few days ago and spilled my coffee without remorse.

Sure, we were chased out of his house by an aswang and made it out of there alive. But being through one scary thing together didn’t mean every shitty thing he’d ever done was wiped away.

Whatever was left of Dustin’s good mood fell away a little at my non-answer.

“You can’t do that,” he said, pulling into The Coffee Spot’s parking lot.

“Do what?”

“Use me to get into my brother’s room and then throw me away. I want in on whatever you’re doing.

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