Simon's point of view
Waking up in the mornings is the hardest part, because it always feels like I'm losing her all over again. The first few seconds after opening my eyes, the world still feels the same as it did a month ago. I yawn, stretch myself out and let the bond expand, checking to see if Demona is up yet.
That's when the hard part begins.
Demona isn't awake and I can't even feel her presence anymore. It's like she disappeared. Instead, I find only Eros on the other end of the bond. And he is always awake. Ever since he carried her out of his room, he has been by her side, hardly ever leaving. I worry about him almost as much as I worry about her.
Once I remember that I already know all of this, that Demona has been in a coma for a while now, I get up, dress, brush my teeth and head down for breakfast. The first day back was the hardest. Two weeks ago, I decided I was no longer going to spend all my time in the hospital. It was doing nothing except making me depressed. When I walked into the cafeteria that weird first day back, I didn't even know where to sit for breakfast. Dylan was gone, living in a motel nearby the hospital after the end of his transition and spending almost as time at Demona's side as Eros, who hadn't set in foot in here after driving off after the ambulance.
I ended up sitting with my old roommates. Will and Antwan had a way of making me feel like I belonged, even when the world felt like a strange and hostile place. The sense of normality hadn't lasted long, since everyone kept asking me how she was.
One by one, they asked me the same question. Every day. This morning was no different.
"How is she?"
I looked up to see Eve looking down on me with a worried expression on her face. I sighed and prodded my breakfast cereal with a spoon. Eve meant well, but she was the fifteenth person to come up to me this morning, and I'd only been sitting in the cafeteria for approximately ten minutes.
"No changes so far," I told her, somehow managing a smile that hopefully looked genuine. "She's stable, but there are no sings to indicate she'll wake up anytime soon."
Eve sighed and sunk down on the chair opposite me. "I miss her. A lot."
I made the milk in the bowl in front of me swirl around like a tornado, afraid to look up into Eve's eyes. I was having a bad day and if I saw anyone looking at me with sympathy or sadness, I might break down into pieces. I'd sworn to myself I wouldn't do that – with Eros falling apart every other day, there was simply no room for me to go through some kind of breakdown as well.
"I'm sorry," Eve said softly when I remained silent. "I know things are a lot worse for you than they are for me, with her being your best friend and bondmate. I guess I just wanted to..." She fell silent again and I was surprised to feel her soft hand on mine. "If you need anything, Simon, anything at all, let me know, okay?"
Finally, I looked up and was relieved not to see the kind of sympathy I had gotten so used to lately. The kind that said 'I wonder when you'll finally break down'. Instead, she just seemed to want to connect to me, to let me know that I wasn't alone, that even people who weren't bonded to Demona missed her. It was strangely comforting.
"Me and my friends are planning on having a Guitar Hero battle," Eve told me. "We'd love it if you would join us."
"We kinda need you to teach us how to beat Dem's ass when she finally comes back to the land of the living," Paulie said, joining us mid-conversation. "We can't let ourselves get rusty while good old Dem gets her much-needed beauty sleep."
For the first time in days, I laughed. It was refreshing to hear someone talk about Dem's coma like it was just a normal thing, something you could joke about. Unexpectedly, I found myself thinking about Dylan. He and I had never really been friends – he had just kind of been there. He was Eros' best friend and Dem's friend and cousin, but I had never been sure what he was to me. Fact was I wished he hadn't turned yet and was still at school with me. I could have used his temperamental banter and his easy-going and quasi-pessimistic outlook on things. Lately, he had become one of the only people I could stand to be around for longer than an hour or so. Aside from Paulie, he was one of the few friends – if I could call him that – who could still manage a joke about Dem every now and then. He hadn't stopped loving and hating her at the same time, hadn't stopped being a loyal friend as well as her biggest critique.
"So, what do you say?" Paulie asked, nudging my arm and causing me to spill milk all over the table. "You up for it, fairy-boy?"
"Why not," I said with a shrug. "Guitar Hero it is."
"That's the spirit!" she praised, doing a little dance that reminded me so much of Demona it hurt. "Bring your roommates – we need all the help we can get. When Dem wakes up, I'm gonna kick her but so hard she'll be able to tell me what the moon looks like by the end of our battle."
I swallowed hard when I watched her skip to the cereal buffet to get some coffee. Somehow, that crazy werewolf kept saying and doing things that Demona would have if she'd been here.
"She'll be back," Eve told me, her voice warm and sure. "Trust me, there's no way Demona Hollow will stay dormant forever."
I desperately hoped she was right. As much as I forced myself to live like she might wake up any minute, I wasn't sure I believed it anymore.
***
Guitar Hero was the worst idea ever. I couldn't play that game without her, I just couldn't. When I held a plastic guitar in my hands for the first time in a month, I felt like I might just throw up. The fact that I was in Demona's dorm didn't help either. It was like she could walk in from her bedroom any minute, jump on my back and demand me to carry her around. Like if I walked into her room, I might catch her and Eros making out in bed. Or see Demona sitting on the floor, playing with her bunny Rupert. Part of me kept thinking that it had all been a cruel joke and that she was still here, hiding, waiting for the perfect time to jump out from behind the couch and scare me senseless.
Instead of trying to act like I was alright, I threw down the guitar and excuses myself. There were the looks of sympathy again. Everyone stared after me like they were afraid I'd crumble in front of their eyes any minute now.
I headed to the library, where the librarian, Mr. Sage, gave me a nod of recognition when I sat down in my normal seat on a windowsill in the back. The books from the night before were still there. The librarian didn't even bother shelving them anymore, knowing I'd be back for them soon enough. I'd spent pretty much every day here since I came back to school.
Research kept me busy and calm, but it didn't give me any answers. In her letter to me, Demona had mate it perfectly clear that she counted on me to wake her back up again. "Remember back in they day when Sheila and Eros were still dating?" she'd written. "He compelled her by accident, making her wish she was me. That was when he first worked as a team, the three of us, saving her. You did most of the work and I remember that there was a book I got for you. You told me about the curse of Sleeping Beauty and how the fairies had helped her by reversing her wish."
I remember that night well. It had been the first time I used magic, something that only very few fairies could manage. On my lap was the book Demona had gotten from my room that night. I opened the page Demona had been referring to and traced the picture of the girl with the blonde hair, laying on a bed covered with rose petals. She had reminded of Demona back then, but I had been in love with her, so everything reminded me of her back then.
The book stated that Sleeping Beauty wasn't just a fairytale. There was some truth to the story. Sleeping Beauty was a human who was compelled too often of too people by a vampire, trying to get her to turn against her parents, the king and queen of a land log forgotten. She had ended up in a compulsion-induced coma, much like Demona had. The way to wake up the comatose girl, the fairies – in the fairytale, they serves as the fairy godmother, of course – had channeled their powers into her to wake her up.
That wouldn't work on Demona. We had already tried everything we could think of, but her energy stream seemed unable to connect with anyone or anything. Not even Eros and I managed to get anything off her. Sometimes, I feared that it was just a fluke that she was still breathing, that she was slowly slipping into a gentle death.
The book didn't help much. It was just a dusty old storybook, explaining the supernatural truths behind some of the stories humans had written down over the years. What I needed was an instruction manual, telling me exactly what to do, or at least give me a clue.
Back when Eros had compelled Sheila, she hadn't been as far gone as Demona was now. She'd just gotten stuck in her wish to be Demona, simply because Eros had been thinking about her while kissing Sheila. I had managed to reverse Sheila's wish and wake her up. The trouble was that Demona barely seemed to alive. She wasn't wishing anything, so there was nothing to reverse.
All of this meant that there were two options.
One: Demona had made a mistake and Sleeping Beauty wasn't the answer to all of our problems. She'd tried to convince herself that there was a way I could wake her up, but had failed to do the proper research, as always.
Two: Demona had been right and I was the problem. She had discovered something that she'd failed to mention in the letter and I was letting her down by not discovering the solution.
To be honest, it pas probably the first option, but I knew I had to keep up my research anyway. I couldn't live with myself if I just gave up.
I wanted – no, I needed to get my bondmate back.