Page 50 of Some Kind of Haunted

She smiles at me and grips my hand, moving it off hers. “Trust me, Lexi. I’m a native. I know what I’m doing. And I’ve got your cell. I’ll text you when I’m inside with the door locked. Three minutes tops. Okay?”

I don’t like it, but she knows more than I do. This is her world. So I give a nod. I let my hand fall. She steps out into the night and I have to close and lock the door behind her before I start imagining slurping sounds.

But it’s not my imagination, is it?

“You’re not going out there,” Logan tells me shortly. “If she says she’ll be fine, she’ll be fine.”

I think there’s something tense and weird about the way he says that. Just like there’s something off about the way he goes and sits on the couch, hands clasped together like he’s holding himself back from chasing after her.

“Logan . . .”

My phone chimes. I read the text. Home and locked up tight. Get some sleep!

I blow out a slow breath to settle my nerves, then send a response text. You too!

When I look back at Logan, he’s staring straight ahead, hands still clasped.

“We can still go,” he says to me. It almost makes me laugh since it was not all that long ago that I was making that case to him. “Back to New York. Back to sanity. We don’t have to listen to them or believe them or go along with this. Hell, if we get out, we probably won’t even remember it.”

He’s not wrong. But the if is the problem. I’m not sure Midas will let me go, like Harrison said. Of course, that doesn’t mean we couldn’t try. Though Nora’s story about Cleo’s mother makes me more concerned about what Midas might do to me.

Still, I don’t have to believe in demons and deals or decide whether or not to fight them. I have a choice.

I realize that it’s important that I have that choice. I take a moment to appreciate that.

But I shake my head. “I make sense here.”

He looks up at me and I see real concern there. “What the fuck are you talking about, Lex?” There’s no heat there, just that concern, and that makes my chest hurt. “You’re in danger here.”

“Maybe.” I’d like to deny it, but that’s not really possible, is it? “But even if Midas lets me out, and even if I could forget like Dad must have to some extent, it won’t change what happens.”

I can’t know what’s going to happen and still walk away from it. Even if there’s amnesia on the other side, how can I be the kind of person who does that?

I can’t. I won’t.

Logan lets out a slow sigh and I know he feels the same—and wishes he didn’t. He glances at the mantel with all the pictures, and his voice sounds almost raw when he speaks. “There are still things they’re not telling us. We’re still outsiders.”

“We’ve been here all of seventy-two hours so, yeah. Probably a shitload of things they haven’t gotten around to telling us. So what?” I shrug. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

“That’s not usually your MO. You like being an outsider.”

I blink, a little surprised he doesn’t understand. “No, I’ve felt like I have to be the outsider because I’m a freak,” I say starkly. “I don’t like it. Who likes it? If I was that cool with it, you wouldn’t be my best and only friend in the world, would you?”

He looks a little hurt by that, but it’s true. If he wasn’t the only one who didn’t make me feel like a walking psychotic break, even at nearly thirty, wouldn’t I have found some meaningful relationships, not just social acquaintances? If he wasn’t literally the only person outside Midas I didn’t have to pretend for, wouldn’t I have made real friends who got me, too?

I never have.

But I can be somebody here. I can be myself. These people like me, mostly, or at least see some value in me. I think I can even be important.

“I think we can stop this,” I say, without lapsing into the cringe of it all. “I think that if our grandmother had to die to get us here, and I’m this harbinger, and everything they’re saying is right—I might be the key to stopping something evil. How can I turn my back on that?”

His gaze is grave and he holds mine for a long moment. “You don’t need to fight demons to be important, Lexi.”

And I want to believe him.

But I don’t.

Chapter Sixteen