I glance over my shoulder at the kitchen cabinet mounted on the wall behind my head, expecting to see a ghost, or maybe Griffin with a baseball bat, because that’s the only thing I can think of that would cause that reaction, but there’s nothing.
“What—” I start, but Nico has already dropped his hands from me. He wrenches his shirt back on inside out and shoves the ice cream back in the freezer with the energy of someone who just remembered they left their kid at a gas station forty miles back. “Nico, what did you see?”
He storms out of the kitchen.
CHAPTER 31
He was already in their blood. It was only fitting he should be in their stomachs, too.
—Interview with Marianne Keller, on why she fed her husband to her children, 1969
Guess who had the most INSANE kiss of her life???
I bite on the pad of my thumb. What am I doing? Tori’s not going to care about this. She still hasn’t responded to any of my messages. I’m glad Donny didn’t end up murdering me. Tori would’ve been no help at all.
I try again:
I kissed someone and it was the best kiss of my life but then he ran out and I’m so scared I messed it up
Sure, becausethatdoesn’t sound pathetic.
I need to tell someone. Keeping this inside is making my ribcage feel too tight, like all these feelings are going to burst out of me like a ruptured abscess. DJ is the only friend I have who might care about this, which is depressing considering I’ve only known her for a week, but something stops me from running across the hall and knocking on her door. She’s known Nico and Griffin for so long, and she explicitly warned me about Griffin.She’ll hate me for kissing them both in one night. I can’t blame her.
But nobody has ever looked at me like Nico did last night. It made me feel wanted in a way nothing with Dylan ever did, in a way nothing in my entire mess of a life has since before my family died.
I need to stop texting Tori. She doesn’t care about me unless I can do something for her. I bet if I texted to say I’d won the lottery, she’d miraculously see my messages and respond right away.
I shove my phone under my pillow.
“Under no circumstances will Griffin or Eden leave the house,” Donny says during our team meeting the next morning.
All of us except for Griffin are crammed into Donny’s office. DJ and Zoey are sitting in the chairs, and I’m leaning against the back wall between Nico and Benji.
“I don’t care if you’re going to the bathroom,” Donny says. “Someone must know where you are at all times.”
I glance at Nico, who’s staring ahead at Donny like he’s carved from stone. He hasn’t looked at me all morning. Not when I walked into the office. Not when I said hi to everyone and got a smile from DJ and a wave from Benji. The longer he avoids my eyes, the more sure I am that the reason he ran out last night has nothing to do with ghosts and has everything to do with me.
Did I come on too strong? Did I misread everything?
Being contaminated with ectoplasm is not unlike being drunk. Could he have seen it as a drunken mistake?
The thought that Nico might have felt the way I did when kissing Griffin keeps shoving its way to the front of my mind. Imay have thought I wanted Griffin, but I never could have kissed him the way Nico kissed me last night, making those sounds, moving with me.
I tilt my head down, not wanting anyone to notice how flushed I am just from remembering last night. I find the hair tie on my wrist and snap it once. Nico twitches.
I’ve pretended to be into men before when I wasn’t feeling it, but it would be impossible for me to fake the amount of passion Nico and I had last night. Nico had to have wanted me. He couldn’t have been pretending. What reason would Nico have to pretend with me, anyway?
“Right now, we’re waiting,” Donny continues. “Monitoring the news cycle for a similar crime that matches Morrow’s M.O.”
“Could we set a trap?” I ask. “If he wants Griffin and me for his next trial, then we could use us as bait.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Nico says, still staring ahead.
“Or you could send me back to the apartment,” I tell Donny, ignoring that Nico already shot down that idea. “I know you and DJ tried scanning for the residual energy, but I can sense things that the scanners can’t.”
“Did you listen to a single word Donny just said?” Nico snaps his head around to glare at me. “I already told you no, but clearly, you don’t listen to me either.”
Donny flinches. DJ twists around in her chair to glower at Nico with an expression that says, ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ I try to force my face to stay neutral, so he doesn’t see how much that stung.
