Skaydal - Demon's Forever

Eyes in Darkness

✦Dolly✦

I lasted another seven minutes before I stood up. Not because I wanted to leave. I didn’t. The festival still glowed around us, filled with laughter, music, smoke, and lights. It should have felt normal. It almost did. Until I looked toward the lantern post again, and the stranger was gone. That was worse.

“Dolly?” Elias asked from across the table.

“I need to go home,” the others stopped moving. Mila lowered her fork.

“Because of him?”

“I don’t know who he is,”

“None of us do, but you know that the festival brings strangers…but that wasn’t what I asked,” Mila said slowly. Aria glanced toward the edge of the square, searching for the man.

“I can tell my dad,” she offered.

“No,” I said too quickly. Her eyes snapped back to mine. I forced my fingers to relax against my thighs. “No. It’s probably nothing. I’m just tired,” Cassian looked unconvinced. Rowan looked ready to break someone’s arm.

“I will go home with you,” Elias offered. I wanted to tell him I didn’t need a guard. But I was already looking over my shoulder. So, I said nothing. Not only that, but the others backed off. Relieved that I wouldn’t be left alone. What they were so afraid of, I wasn’t sure. We said quick goodbyes, though none of them seemed happy with it. Mila made me promise to text her when I got home. Aria hugged me a little longer than usual. Cassian told Elias to call if he saw the stranger again, and Rowan only watched the crowd with narrowed eyes. Elias and I moved away from the table, slipping between families and stalls. I kept my eyes forward, but every part of me listened behind us. Still, my steps refused to slow down. Near May’s Diner’s stall, Felicia waved a coffee cup at me.

“Leaving already?”

“Too much festival,” I replied. Felicia gave me the kind of look adults gave when they knew you were lying but were too kind to say it.

“Tell Amani I saved her some cinnamon twists,”

“I will,”

“And tell Josiah not to glare at anyone while collecting them this time,” Elias laughed under his breath.

“No promises,” we had barely made it another few steps before Carmen called out from the Techno Café booth.

“Dolly! Elias! You two better not be escaping before the game tournament!”

“Family emergency,” Elias answered. I glanced at him, and he shrugged. “Our family is emergency-shaped,” Jett, who stood beside Carmen with his arms folded, smirked.

“That sounds like Josiah,”

“It is mostly Josiah,” I muttered. Carmen pointed at me.

“Tomorrow. You owe me one round,”

“Fine,” I agreed, and we kept walking. Past the flower stall, Sierna stood with Grayson, her hand tucked into his arm while she spoke to Martha. She smiled when she saw us, soft and warm, like I wasn’t something strange. Like I was simply Dolly.

“Heading home?” she asked.

“Just tired,” I said again. Grayson’s gaze moved over my face, then to Elias. He didn’t ask anything, but that somehow felt worse. Alphas didn’t need questions to make you feel seen.

“Walk straight home,” he told us.

“We will,” Elias replied. Only when we were out of the square and on the quieter path toward home did I breathe properly. Or at least, I tried to. The festival noise faded behind us. Lights thinned. The road curved between trees and dark lawns, past houses where porch lights glowed, and windows spilled yellow squares onto the ground. I hugged my arms around myself. Elias walked beside me, close but not crowding.

“Do you want to tell me what you felt?”

“I don’t know,”

“You keep saying that,”

“Because it’s the truth, Elias…I just…don’t know…that man…” my voice trailed off because I had no idea how to explain it. Elias walked silently for a moment, and then he touched my arm.

“Was he a demon?”

“No,”

“Hunter?” I stopped walking. Elias stopped too.

“Why would you say that?” I asked curiously.

“I don’t…” he shook his head, and somehow the feeling around us intensified. A breeze moved through the trees, carrying the distant sound of music from the festival. It should have made me feel silly. Paranoid. Dramatic. Instead, I looked back. The road behind us was empty. No stranger. No footsteps. No pale grey eyes. Still, something moved beneath my skin, old and dark and restless.

“I feel like we are being followed,” I whispered. Elias glanced past me, his expression tightening. He looked like Mom when he was worried and like Dad when he was deciding whether something needed to die.

“I don’t hear anyone,”

“Just because you can’t hear them, doesn’t mean it isn’t true,” I hissed.

“True,” he agreed. We started walking again, quicker this time. Our house came into view at the end of the road, windows warm, garden shadows stretching across the path. The place Dad and Mom had built after everything.

Home.

I should have felt better the moment we stepped onto the porch. I didn’t. Elias unlocked the front door, and I slipped inside first. The house smelled faintly like vanilla, herbs, and the wood polish Mom liked. Somewhere upstairs, a floorboard creaked.

“See?” Elias said softly as he closed the door. “Home. Safe,” I looked at the lock. Then the window beside it. Then the dark shape of the garden beyond the glass. “Dolly,”

“I know,” but I didn’t know. Not really. “I’m going upstairs,” I said.

“Text Mila before she sends Zack,” that almost made me smile. “She would,”

“She absolutely would,” I agreed before I went up to my room and closed the door behind me, then locked it even though I hated myself for doing it. My room was quiet, familiar, filled with books, dark blankets, little trinkets from my family, and the carved wooden wolf Elias had made me when we were children. I pulled out my phone to text Mila. The screen lit up before I touched it. It was a text from an unknown number. I frowned as I opened the text.

✉Unknown Number: Why did you run?

My blood turned cold. The phone slipped from my hand and landed on the carpet. I stumbled back from it, staring down as if the words might crawl out of the screen. He had my number. He knew I had run. And somehow, impossibly, he had followed me home.

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