"What the hell is wrong with you?" Coco asks as I lean my head against the dining room table.

I'm aware of almost everyone's eyes on me, but I couldn't care less; the excruciating pain in my skull is enough to make anyone pass out.  "Just a headache," I groan, attempting to play it off.

"Either sit back up or have Ms. Mead give you a medical examination," Ms. Venable states from the head of the table.  "You're disrupting dinner."

I sigh as I force myself to sit up.  "I'm fine," I insist as I rub my temple.  This pain has been torturing me for the last hour, ever since not long after my heat-of-the-moment kiss with Michael.  God, if he caused this, I will not hesitate to snap his neck.

Everyone turns back to picking at their gelatin cubes as Coco leans towards me.  "Seriously, Valentina, you don't look good," she whispers. "Your face is losing color by the minute."

"I just need to go lay down," I state as I stand up.

"I did not excuse you," Ms. Venable says as she glares at me.

I sigh as I slip into her mind.  "Ms. Venable, I just need to rest," I insist.

"I suppose that is fine," she replies nonchalantly.  I probably could've done a better job at making our interaction feel more natural, but my head is hurting too much to do anything besides simple mind control.

I quickly exit the room, pushing through the pain as I speed-walk toward the hallway where my bedroom is.  I need to get to my room before I collapse.  However, as I pass Michael's room on my way, I realize my pain peaks as I pass his door. I slow down, then take a few steps back until I'm standing in front of his door. My pain is definitely worse here than it was a few feet past the door. Fuck, so he actually has something to do with this.

I knock on the door harshly three times. "Michael, it's me." My tone makes it quite clear that I'm unhappy.

I wait a few seconds, but there is no movement on the other side of the door.

"Michael, I'm going to open the door myself in five seconds if you don't answer," I state as I knock again. 

As promised, I wait (impatiently) for five seconds before slamming the door open. As I step into the room, I realize Michael isn't in there. Suddenly, without me willing my body to do anything, my feet start moving towards a door at the side of the room.  My hand lands on the locked doorknob, but I unlock it with a simple tilt of my head.  I push the door open and gasp at the scene before me.

Michael is sitting naked in the middle of a pentagram made from his own blood, blood dripping from his arms as snakes slither around him.  His eyes flash black as he looks up at me.

"What the fuck are you doing?" I seethe.  "And are you the reason my head feels like it's about to implode?"

He sighs, his eyes flashing back to their normal blue.  "Took you long enough to figure out that I was the reason." As he puts a pause on whatever weird ritual he's doing, the snakes disappear from sight (thankfully).

I realize that my pain is increasing tenfold, and I lean against the doorframe to stabilize myself. "Why the hell would you do that?" I ask in annoyance, my pain visible on my face.

"I didn't mean to," he sighs apologetically.  "I was trying to communicate with my father, then I started thinking about you, then I accidentally cast a spell that would cause you torturous pain before eventually killing you."

"How the fuck do you accidentally do that?" I scoff.

He rolls his eyes.  "It's not hard to do when you're feeling extreme emotion towards said person."

I sigh as I rub my temple.  "Just make it go away."

"I can do that," he nods as he stands up.

I quickly turn my head, casting my gaze into his bedroom.  "Put a damn towel on while you're at it."

He rolls his eyes as he raises his arm and a towel flies into it.  He wraps it around himself as he walks toward me.  "You're going to need to get in the circle."

I turn back toward him with a scoff, my attitude choosing now of all times to act up. "If you think I'm going to do some Satanic ritual with you just to get rid of a headache, you're dead wrong."

The pain intensifies out of nowhere, and my vision goes blurry. I double over while trying to fight against the blackness overtaking my vision. I attempt to stabilize myself by grabbing the thing nearest to me, Michael's bloody arm, but it slips through my grasp as I fall to the ground.

"Is your vision starting to go blurry now?" he questions.

I begin coughing on the ground while waiting for my vision to refocus. I put my hand to my mouth to realize that a liquid is coming from it. My vision returns for long enough for me to look at my hand and see that the liquid is blood.

"And you're coughing up blood," he observes.  "Next, blood will begin to fill your lungs, then you'll drown slowly in your own blood."

I pull myself up to a sitting position. "Fine, let's just get this over with," I sigh.

He smirks smugly as he hooks his arms under my shoulders and drags me over to the pentagram.  "I can do that myself," I protest as he releases me.

"Not in enough time for me to perform the spell," he scoffs as he drops to the ground next to me.  He takes a knife off the ground next to him and grabs my arm.  I wince as he roughly drags it down my arm, not bothering to do it neatly.

He drops the knife and it clatters to the ground.  He quickly takes the blood running from my arm and mixes it with his on the ground.  He mutters incantations, but I can't focus on them over the pounding in my head.

My vision begins fading in and out of view, and before I realize what's happening, I fall over.  Michael quickly catches me, and I soon realize that my head is pressed against his shoulder. One of his hands is holding onto the back of my head to make sure I stay upright while he murmurs encouragement to me.  "...only a little longer...just hang in there..."  I can barely hear what he's trying to say to me.  

God, my stupid ass should've come to Michael earlier. Protecting my pride wasn't worth all of this extra pain I'm going through right now. I can only hope that he'll be in a good enough mood to bring me back if I die again.

A gust of wind rushes through the room, and the pain disappears just as quickly as it came.

The hand on the back of my head gently turns my head to the side. "Valentina?" Michael asks cautiously.  "Are you still there?"

"I think," I sigh, not bothering to try to sit up.  I am completely and utterly exhausted.

He chuckles, seemingly relieved, as he strokes my hair.  I hate appearing vulnerable to him, but he seems to not be trying to take advantage of it, which is a first.

After a few minutes of silence, Michael speaks up.  "I'm sorry."

"What?" I ask, my shock evident in my voice.

"I was in a rush and my carelessness was the reason I accidentally cast that spell on you.  I didn't feel like having to redo this whole ritual, so I just decided to finish my attempt to communicate with my father and hope that you came to me before it was too late.  You almost died, and that's on me."

I push off of his shoulder so I can sit up and look him in the face.  He appears to be entirely sincere, so I just stare in shock, not knowing how to respond.

He chuckles.  "You seem to not believe that I'm actually apologizing.  You have pretty bad trust issues."

"Forgive me for not being quick to trust the Antichrist," I retort.

He smirks, but it's not in his usual condescending manner.  "Listen, I know that you don't want to be allies, but I want to make one thing clear; it is essential that we learn to trust each other if we want to make this work."

I look into his eyes, trying to figure out why he is saying all of this.  He is never sincere.  I slowly back away and stand up, my strength coming back to me.  "No, I see what you're doing," I state.

"What?" he questions, standing up as well.

I ignore the small towel covering him as I speak.  "That spell was no accident.  You were speaking to your father, and he came up with this whole plan of how to make me vulnerable through that spell, then get me to trust you after you heal me.  I'm not stupid; your tricks aren't going to work on me."

He shakes his head as he steps toward me, a disbelieving look on his face.  "God, do you really not trust me that much?"

"You've given me absolutely no reason to trust you," I state defensively.

He sighs sadly as he continues walking toward me.  "Valentina, I would never do something like that," he reassures me as I back away.  I back into the doorframe, and he grabs my jaw before I can open the door, forcing me to look at him.  "Look into my eyes," he states.

I begrudgingly turn my gaze to his piercing blue eyes.  "Not even I, the goddamn Antichrist, would manipulate you like that.  If you really have this little faith in me, we've got a long way to go if we want to be allies."

I swallow nervously before putting on my confident facade.  "Michael, I need to rest," I state.

"Valentina-"

Too physically and mentally exhausted to argue with him, I push him away.  He watches in shock as I turn the doorknob and slip out of his room.  I can feel the disappointment emanating off of him as I slam the door, leaving him alone in his bloody towel.

Well shit, maybe he wasn't manipulating me and I really just fucked things up.