His breath hits my cheeks. Like he’s a living person.
Long fingers cup my face—warmer than I ever imagined a ghost could be. His other hand curves around the back of myneck, and what begins as a tentative, ghostly touch deepens into a confident, possessive hold.
I didn’t meanthis. I didn’t meanme.
Didn’t you?that pesky inner voice asks.
E bends down to kiss me, and unlike the strange energy coming from the lantern—thrilling in a distant, unfocused way—his touch is vivid.
I performed this ritual and the last under the pretense of getting into the attic, but I got caught up in E’s ghostliness along the way. I was desperate to summon him and get answers.
And summon him I have.
Maxine Bloodsinger, you’re engaged.
I can’t be kissing a ghost.After a split second, short enough to ease my shame, I try to shove him back, but my fingers collide with a broad, hard chest.
E’s chest.
I’m unravelling.
I freeze at how solid he feels, my mouth parting in surprise, and he takes it as an invitation. The fullness of lips that haven’t touched or been touched in decades rattles me, the brush of his tongue melting my insides. It isn’t smooth or soft like in the dreams. This isn’t some blurred, imaginary man drifting among weightless clouds under a sunny sky.
This kiss is anything but safe. It’s a blood-pumping, nail-dragging, mouth-devouring catastrophe.
E drinks my soul through this cursed, impossible connection as though I’m a maiden he dragged to his lair and refuses to surrender—as though shattering my senses and driving me to betray every promise I ever made could somehow bring him back to life.
I let out a wounded moan and grip his shoulders, finally tearing myself away. “Stop!”
I’m terrified by the cravings he’s incited in me in so short a time. A shard of my soul has come loose, a chasm opening inside my body, a hollow space I’d boarded over and forgotten about. This dark crevasse inside my heart is desperate to kiss him back, to throw it all to hells and feel something true.
He called me little fox, which confirms he’s also been invading my dreams. I stumble backward, out of the circle, and the magic snaps. The ethereal light that was still visible through my closed lids vanishes as I turn away from him, away from the delirious current of energy thrumming between us. I need to sever it now, before it swallows me whole.
“I— I have to go.”
“Max, wait!” His voice is urgent but dark. Hungry. “Max! Come back!”
He gives chase, but his presence fades as I reach the outside, running past the front door and beyond the iron gates.
Cold spreads through me as I flee, the sun rays filtering through the clouds, unable to warm my skin. It feels like punishment from some higher power for running away, but I couldn’t stay.
There’s no denying it anymore. I don’t know how it started, or why I haven’t stopped it before now, but I’m developing very real, immensely inconvenient feelings for someone who isn’t my fiancé. For a ghost.
Chapter 14
The Death of Peace of Mind
MAX
The flat is empty when I get home, and rightly so. Lachlan is a social creature, and he wasn’t expecting me, so there’s no reason for him to be waiting by the door. I grab my laptop and catch up on work emails, going over questions and discussions about the patients I had to hand off.
When sunset comes, I wait for the mist, retrieving a knife from the kitchen, and sit in front of the sliding patio door.
I wait for the windows to fog and the cold voice from that night to echo in my ears. I wait for death to come knocking, ready to spit in its face.
The moon is already shining bright in the sky by the time Lachlan comes home. I’ve set the knife aside, but I can’t bring myself to move from this spot. I’m putting us in danger, gambling with our lives just by being here, but I was more afraid of myself, and my selfish impulses, than the monsters.
I’m either going to have to tell him the truth or dig myself into a hole of lies. I couldn’t confess that I kissed my cousin, because that wouldn’t even be a fair assessment.
