Page 32 of Some Kind of Haunted

That doesn’t make it demons, mind you. I know what people think when I start mentioning things like that, even as a joke.

Cleo pulls the door open and holds it for me. Nora gives me an encouraging nudge inside.

I’m getting serious you were mentioned in the group chat energy now, never my favorite. There’s a kind of pity in the way they both look at me. A carefulness to how they’re talking to me that’s different from yesterday.

I want to panic, because my God, I know what that means. The careful looks and underlying pity. I don’t want it. Not here. Not anywhere.

Don’t overreact, I caution myself. You know what happens when you overreact.

Logan is sitting at the same booth as yesterday. There’s an empty plate in front of him, but a full mug of coffee. He is, shockingly, not on his phone or his computer. Instead, he is staring across the booth.

To where Jack stands, arms crossed, of course, leaning against the end of the booth seat.

I want to believe they’ve become fast friends this very morning because Logan is forever finding easy friendships with whoever he comes into contact. It’s one of his most irritating qualities.

But they are frowning at each other. Not very friendly. Not very Logan Darling, Esq., Golden Boy of him.

Nora moves around me and slides into the open seat across from Logan. Cleo slides in next to her, leaving me to sit next to my brother in a communal diner booth wondering what the hell we’re all doing.

Logan glances at me as I settle in next to him. He nudges the full mug of coffee toward me. I want to pull a typical Lexi and complain bitterly about any number of tragedies that have befallen me since I opened my eyes, the worst of which being the continuing situation, but I need the shot of caffeine too badly. I take the mug and a sip and am devastated to discover that it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever had. Even without the sort of doctoring I would normally do if faced with drip coffee.

I don’t intend to share that with anyone.

There is a hushed kind of silence around us, but in this odd moment, I can feel us all shift our gazes toward Jack. Like he’s called this little gathering, and more than that, is its leader. A general surveying his soldiers.

Hilarious. I’m almost cracking myself up.

The waitress, Marleen, appears with a tray full of plates and glasses and mugs and she says something in low tones to Jack. They share a little laughter, which is fascinating. Jack . . . showing humor.

I think she might sit down with us, since she’s apparently friendly with Jack. But she hands off the tray to Jack and then she’s off again in quick strides. And I don’t have time to consider Jack’s friendliness with everyone else alive—okay, except maybe Logan—as Jack delivers the plates to Cleo and Nora. They must have a usual order, I realize, and he must have known they were coming.

Why does everything feel so weird this morning? Jack continues to stand there while Nora and Cleo dig into their meals.

“We need to discuss protections,” Jack says, sounding as grim and serious as ever. “For everyone.”

His gaze, when it deigns to land on me, is too close to accusatory for my taste.

And still entirely too green.

But the word protections is echoing through me so I can’t really lean in to how unfair it feels that he’s looking at me that way.

“What do we need to be protected from?” I ask, trying to laugh. It sounds deranged even to my own ears, because . . . It was a dream.

But they all look at me like I’ve gone completely insane. A familiar reaction, all in all, but it doesn’t make sense. Usually, this happens when I talk about my dreams like they’re real and discover—again—that they are just mine.

“Where were you last night?” Jack asks, a bit acerbically for my taste. “Because I was out following your bloody footprints all the way to the flood wall and taking you to see my grandfather. Ring a bell, princess?”

I’m not sure I can take this in. Bloody footprints. Like he was there. And it was . . . real.

I look at my brother. My touchstone for all things real. His expression is grim.

“But it was a dream,” I whisper at him. Desperately.

The grimness in his expression softens, but only for a moment on me before he turns his gaze back to the women across the booth.

“Much as I’d like it to be a collective hysterical nightmare, apparently all this stuff is a real concern,” Logan says, and I don’t love his tone. It’s the one he usually uses when he’s managing me—but that’s another indication that my dream last night was fucking real. He gestures toward Jack, then Nora and Cleo. “And these people are all in on it.”

“We aren’t in on anything,” Nora mutters under her breath. She smooths out her frustrated expression when we all look at her, but I get caught on the fact that she can actually get frustrated. That she’s not always so nice. “The Feed happens to all of us. Whether we like it or not.”