Page 116 of Some Kind of Haunted

But when he speaks, his voice is flat. “Harrison is dead.”

I feel my own ache then. A kind of grief for the man I thought Harrison was, but more, for Jack. The man I love. Losing someone in this way.

I know he feels too many things to sort through. I can tell that it means something that he didn’t call him Grandpa.

“Oh, Jack.” I don’t have words, so I just wrap my arms around him, and he wraps his arms around me right back. It’s cold sitting here on the damp ground, but Jack is warm.

“You did it, Lexi,” he whispers to me. “We were thrown into the shadows after the explosion, but look at you. Nothing happened. No demons came for you. The flood wall stopped closing. The clock never struck midnight. You stopped the Feed.”

He pulls me back and searches my face, and then he lifts a hand to trace the line where Harrison cut me. It’s scabbed over and there’s definitely mud in the mix, but the bigger issue is that it stings. I pull away.

“Hey.” Jack’s voice is serious enough that I can’t help but look at him. “You need medical attention. Really.”

I shake my head. I’m not leaving his side. Not again. I still haven’t gotten over going to jail after our night in the diner. I have a lot of processing to do, and I can’t imagine that a hospital will help with that.

“I’ve got a hard head and strong constitution. I’m okay.” When he frowns, I shake my head at him. “Besides, what are we going to tell people? I exploded a rock, ended a demon deal that’s kept this town creepy for two hundred years, and maybe hit my head a little in the process?”

He sighs, but I can tell he knows I’m right. Especially when he helps me to my feet, though he does study me as I test my balance. We’re deep in shadows. Logan and the police are just little specks, but I can feel Jack’s worry.

“For flying off a rock and doing a face dive into the mud, I feel fine,” I tell him.

I do. Steady and good. More steady and much better than I could have expected.

Maybe that’s some harbinger power. Maybe now that this crisis has been averted, I can use my dreams for less creepy, terrifying shit. Maybe I can be the harbinger of good stuff for a change.

I’d like to start with this, right here. Me and this man I’m in love with, though we haven’t even gone out on anything that could be construed as a date. Or done anything without demon overtones.

I decide it’s my harbingerness that tells me I’m going to get to work on that.

“Besides, you flew through the air the same as I did. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he mutters, and wraps his arm around my waist like he’s not sure I can stand or walk—or maybe he just wants to be close to me. And we stand like that, close together, breathing the same air and letting our hearts beat at the same rate, while Logan finishes talking with the police.

The police tape off the area, and Logan waits for them to go back to their cars before he steps into the shadows and walks toward us, nearly on the riverbank.

When he approaches, he doesn’t stop where we are. He keeps walking, so we follow. Down along the riverbank. Away from the rock. Until we are well and truly hidden by the rise of the hill, so no matter what the police investigate, they can’t see us.

There’s some light from Midas shining well enough to allow us all to see the state of each other. Logan’s gaze is assessing as it moves over me. He doesn’t like the slash on my cheek any more than Jack did, I can tell. And he’s not a fan of the state of me, clearly, so that tells me I must be exactly as bedraggled as I think I am.

The good news is that has to mean that Jack . . . just likes me after all.

Loves me, even.

Dreams and mud and demon shit and all.

That makes me maybe a little too giddy when we’re standing here, in the aftermath of holding off the demons. Stopping the Feed.

Surviving the betrayal that is Harrison.

If I feel a mix of disbelief and grief, despite what happened in that clock tower, I can’t imagine what Jack feels.

“They found a note on Harrison,” Logan tells us as he draws near. “They wouldn’t come right out and tell me, but they think it was a suicide note. Like the man somehow ravaged his own body from the inside out, leaving him basically emulsified—”

He stops. Looks at Jack. “Sorry.”

But Jack only shakes his head.

Logan continues. “It looks like the demons beat him to a pulp, but sure, he stopped in the middle of that and wrote a careful note.”