Page 25 of Some Kind of Haunted

“What the hell is going on here?” he demands of Jack. He sounds mean and suspicious, the way he usually only does in court—and, now that I consider it, in the knitting shop yesterday.

I have to lean to one side to see around Logan’s tall frame so I can see Jack.

Jack’s expression is no longer even slightly soft. Maybe that was a trick of the light. The dream light, I remind myself. Believing my dreams has never done anything but cause problems. No matter how real they feel, I cannot give in to the imagination that whispers this could be true.

It can’t be.

“You tell me,” Jack says, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Me? I just got here and my sister is bloody. What the hell are you doing?”

I look down at my feet and sure enough, they’re still bleeding. It makes me a little woozy, so I look away. Back to where my brother stands like he’s my personal bodyguard between me and a man who . . . confuses me.

But then, Logan has always been my bodyguard. In his own way.

“Your sister—” and I feel that Jack makes that sound like a curse word “—probably shouldn’t be wandering around town in the middle of the night barefoot if she wants to keep her feet from getting cut, but again, that’s got nothing to do with me.”

There’s enough accusation in his words that even in my dream state, I’m offended. “Yes, because that’s a cognizant choice I made. I thought, I know, let me traipse around a creepy little village in the dead of night and make sure it hurts.”

He flicks me a glance—and it’s just a glance, so I don’t know why it makes my chest feel tight—but his green eyes immediately shift back to Logan. “If you two don’t know enough to lock your damn doors and protect yourself at night, I don’t know what to tell you. Not my circus, not my monkeys.”

“You’re out here, too,” Logan points out. “Alone. In the dark. With my sister, who is bloody while you seem perfectly fine. I should call the cops.”

Jack’s expression is somehow more grim and even more furious than before, but there’s also a new kind of exasperation under it. “Didn’t Amelia find a way to tell you two anything?”

That brings us both up short. Our grandmother? What was she supposed to somehow tell us? How to keep ourselves locked away in the sort of small town that surely contains those people who claim they haven’t locked their car or house in the whole of their lives? I thought that was the point of small towns.

Logan looks back at me. He slips his arm around my waist, wordlessly encouraging me to lean against him so I can take some of the pressure off my feet. I’m happy to do it.

Jack looks openly frustrated with us, so I’m not surprised when he turns away from us and starts stalking off toward the street. Like he’s going to leave us here in the shadow of a flood wall that feels more and more threatening—I swear it’s looming at us—the farther he gets away from us.

“Are you coming or not?” he growls, not bothering to look back at us, though he’s stopped some yards away.

I stare at his back. He’s mostly in shadow. And he hasn’t done anything to me. In fairness, neither has the slurping or the flood wall. The pain in my feet is from walking around barefoot, I assume, so Jack isn’t wrong when he says it’s kind of my own fault.

“Are we coming where?” Logan demands. He’s still propping me up and I’m relieved that someone here is on my side—and is in their right mind—but I don’t feel safe.

I can’t imagine I’ll ever feel safe here.

“Do you want answers or do you want to play the ignorant asshole tourists wandering around in the middle of the night?” Jack demands.

And he doesn’t wait for an answer. He keeps on walking.

Leaving Logan and me standing in the floodlights that are aimed at the wall. I’m not sure what I want—but then I hear that awful dream slurp coming from somewhere in the shadows. I reach out for Logan’s arm and get a grip on the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

“We have to go after him, Logan.” I look at him and nod when he shakes his head.

Because even if it’s a dream, we have to go. Jack is offering answers.

And we don’t have any of those. Maybe dream answers don’t really count in the light of day, but they’re something. They’re better than more questions.

Especially when the main question I want to ask—but won’t—is whether I’m right to think that just before Logan got here, Jack was going to pick me up.

As in, up into his arms.

Like a princess, not a problem.

And the real problem is I wish he had.