Free Demon's Daughter: A Cursed Book by Amy Braun

sometimes I wondered.
    Miles scrambled to get away from my father. We were probably going to get a complaint or another angry call from parents, but Dad would deal with it. He always did.
    He watched Miles run home awkwardly, then glared at the neighbors. None of them had come out to help me. He turned and rushed over to me, taking me by my shoulders. Any rage that might have been in his eyes before was replaced with concern.
    “Are you all right, Constance?” he asked.
    I nodded, stopping when it became too painful. I held back tears from the throbbing pain in my skull. Dad twisted so he could see the back of my head. I felt him gently peeling strands of my hair away. He cursed under his breath, not thinking I would hear him say “shit.”
    “Daddy?” a soft voice called from the house. “What’s wrong with Connie?”
    Dad kept his hand on my shoulder, starting to push himself up. “She got hurt. Stay with her. I’m going inside to get a first aid kit and call Mommy.”
    Dro was at my side before he’d even finished giving his instructions. She gasped when she saw the blood in my hair and on my face. Her eyes glistened with tears, her lower lip starting to tremble.
    Dad put his hand on her back. “Constance will be okay, honey. Just stay with her and keep her awake until I come back.”
    She nodded, putting her arms around my chest. Dad got up and ran for the house. Dro tucked her head into the crook of my shoulder, starting to sob. I clutched her hands.
    “I’m okay, Dro. It’s just a headache.” A very, very painful headache.
    “You’re bleeding,” she whimpered.
    “Yeah,” I said. A grin twisted my lips. “But you should’ve seen what I did to Miles.”
    I tried to make Dro laugh, but all she did was cry more. She pulled away from me suddenly, staring at me with tears streaking down her face.
    “I want to fix it,” she said. “It’s my fault.”
    “No it’s not,” I told her. “Miles was just being mean. It had nothing to do with you.”
    “He came here because of me, didn’t he?”
    I said nothing. Dro’s ability to know things like that freaked me out.
    She sobbed again, then pressed one of her little hands on the back of my head while the other covered my mouth. I was about to push her off when I felt a weird tingling in the places she was touching. A pins and needles feeling that buzzed along my nerves. I jumped back, away from Dro.
    My little sister stared at me with wide eyes. I was about to ask her what had happened, but then I noticed the pain in my head was gone. I wiped my lip with my fingers. They came away bloody, but I hadn’t felt the cut. I pressed a hand to the back of my head. My hair was still matted with blood, but I couldn’t feel a gaping wound anywhere.
    “I wanted to fix you,” Dro whispered across from me.
    I looked up at my sister, whose touch had healed me. It didn’t make sense. People didn’t just randomly touch others and heal their injuries. That only happened in movies.
    But Dro had done it for me.
    I sat there and stared at her, not knowing what to think. She was on the verge of tears again.
    “Are you scared of me, Connie?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper.
    I shook my healed head slowly. “No,” I said, hoping I sounded convincing.
    When Dro started crying again, I knew I hadn’t done a good job. I crawled across the pavement to sit next to her and hugged her tightly to my chest.
    “I’m not scared of you, Dro. I promise.”
    She clutched my shirt in her tiny fist and sobbed. I kept holding her, but my mind was racing. Dro had known about Elizabeth’s stolen doll. She had healed my cuts with single touches. How had she done it? Why had she been able to? What else could she do? Mom and Dad and I knew that Dro was special, that she was different. But this was something else. Something I hadn’t expected, and couldn’t understand.
    She was still my sister though. I loved her and would stick by her side. Dro had been abandoned before,