Page 47 of Some Kind of Haunted

I get the impression that Logan is both surprised and interested in how much she knows.

Then it occurs to me that Jack and I are alone at the table.

“No sleepwalking,” Jack is saying, and now all that brooding green is on me again. I can feel it rush through me, like his gaze is a physical thing. “If you dream, you write everything down when you wake up and bring it to the collective. In fact, I want you to write out all the dreams you’ve ever had. We’ll go over them together.”

“Together,” I agree. Or I mean to agree, but my voice comes out a little . . . husky.

Jack’s gaze darkens. For a moment it’s like the hangar collapses all around us, and there’s nothing but us, our eyes locked together, and the way I’m more sure than I’ve ever been of anything that if I reach out and put my hand on his chest I’ll find out our heartbeat is doing the exact same thing—

Cleo and Logan laugh at something. Nora makes a noise over by the kitchen.

Jack clears his throat. “We’ll—ah—look at your dreams and see what fits into the history, into what we know. We have to use whatever tools we’ve got.”

I’m nodding along, hoping I look like an agreeable little soldier on the outside while inside I’m shaking. Because of the moment that I guess we’re pretending didn’t just happen, but if I can push that aside, at the idea that my dreams—this horrible malady that has held me back my whole life and ruined too many things to count—might be a tool, a key to ending a centuries-old demon deal?

I’m having a hard time believing it all.

Also, I really wish I’d tested my little theory and put my hands on him.

I guess I’m glad I didn’t when everyone drifts back to the table a moment later, because that would be awkward.

But my palms twitch slightly, like they’re complaining.

“There are no secrets here,” Jack says. Not just to me, who he’s kind of keeping secrets with, if we want to get technical. To everyone. “You see anything weird, anything off, you tell the rest of us. We work together.”

“How am I supposed to stop her from sleepwalking when locking all the doors and sleeping in the damn living room of that tiny house doesn’t stop her?” Logan asks, but he doesn’t sound annoyed for a change. He sounds worried. Like he’s genuinely seeking an answer.

Jack looks very patient then, which I can see Logan takes against. “The locket my grandfather gave her should help. Nora?”

“When we get back to town, I’ll come into your bedroom and show you the routine,” she tells me in her usual kind way. “It’s easy once you get used to it.”

I try to look grateful, except all my life I’ve been given routines and medications and interventions and nothing has ever worked for more than a short period of time.

But Nora is like me, and this routine works for her. So maybe it’s possible. I decide I’ll hold on to that.

There’s that hope again.

Suddenly, there’s a noise, kind of like a bang.

I’m not the only one who jumps.

We all look toward an interior door with a window at the top. There’s suddenly a face in the window, white and ghostly. And when a hand comes up and slams against the glass, I nearly shriek, but Cleo stands up from her chair again.

She puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder as she passes. “That’s just my grandma. I’d introduce you, but she clearly isn’t feeling well. I’ll go take care of it. You guys be careful on your way back. Stay in the light.”

She strides off toward the door, then disappears through it and into the room on the other side.

I’m working to get my breathing even again.

“Did you know about Virginia?” I hear Nora ask Jack softly.

His response is a rumble, unintelligible, but I get the feeling whatever is going on with Cleo’s grandmother was a secret from everyone.

When Jack just warned us about secrets.

Chapter Fifteen

“The curtains all have to be closed,” Nora is saying, moving around Amelia’s house with an ease that tells me she’s been here a lot. That gives me a pang, but I don’t want to indulge it. “Even that tiny window in the bathroom needs to be covered.”