Page 98 of Some Kind of Haunted

But the thing is, I agree. This is different. It’s not only happening to me, for one thing. Cleo is dead. Nora is in jail. We have to figure everything out for both their sakes.

It’s just us. We’re the only thing we have.

We have no choice but to succeed.

I lean forward and press my forehead into Jack’s shoulder, and his arms come around me. We sit like that for a long while. His sturdy form holding mine, his steady heartbeat a comforting rhythm.

Then he sighs and pulls back. His green gaze hooks into mine. “I love you, Lexi.”

The words are so unexpected that they don’t really penetrate. I can’t make sense of them. Love? In my experience that takes . . . time. Months. Maybe years. Carefully blending lives and making rational choices together. Something I’ve never been able to do or feel.

What with all the unstable.

But Jack doesn’t respond to my dumbfounded silence in any way I might have predicted. He starts to laugh.

“Why are you laughing?” I demand, almost as baffled by that as love.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. My whole life I thought this was some kind of curse. Knowing I was meant for someone.” He gets serious then. He takes my hand and holds it in his. “But it’s you, it’s always been you, and there’s no curse in that, Lexi. It’s a gift.”

I want to believe that. With my whole heart, I want to think I could be a gift. But the truth of the matter is that something terrible happened when I got here. And last I checked, that’s my entire purpose. “Cleo’s dead.”

He nods, swallows. I see his eyes go bright. “That’s not on you.”

“How do you know?” I whisper, aware that my heart is kicking at me, like it’s trying to kick its way out. “I know the demons did that to her, but what if she was trying to help me? Save me from something?”

Jack considers that, and something inside me goes soft, because that’s what he does. He considers everything. He pores over details and researches everything. He’s methodical and dependable. Everything I’m not and never have been.

“Let’s say Cleo was trying to help you,” he says after a moment. “Your mom helped me. She saved me and she died because of it—a choice she made. I’m pretty sure you didn’t like the idea I might blame myself for that?”

I roll my eyes a little, but mostly to keep from crying. “You were four.”

He runs his thumb under one of my eyes, then the other. “Does it really matter? People help each other. That’s what we do. Maybe Cleo saved you. Maybe there was some other reason she was out there. But it wasn’t you who did that to her. You didn’t hurt her.”

“I don’t believe that I did,” I say, whispering, and I can’t look away from him. “But Jack. I could be wrong about that. What if they got to her . . . through me?”

“That’s still them, Lexi. You’re used to being wrong because you’re not used to being here in Midas,” he says, and there’s that curve in his mouth again. “But you make sense here.”

That lands in me, because I have felt it. Wanted it. Doubted it. But if Jack thinks it? It must be true.

“You’re a harbinger,” he continues, that gaze of his on me like he’s daring me to look away. I don’t. “You see things. You are the herald of things. You are a tool in helping us survive whatever is coming because you tell us it’s coming. You help us get ready. What you don’t do—because no harbinger in two hundred years ever has—is start killing people. When I tell you I believe you, that I know you had nothing to do with Cleo’s death no matter how much blood was on your body, I mean it.”

I can’t breathe. Because I’ve always wanted people to believe me. Being believed here in Midas has altered me in cellular ways, I’m sure of it. But to believe me and mount a whole defense? I don’t know if this moment is survivable. My chest is tight. My head is spinning and empty of anything but him. This.

And the fact he said he loves me.

“You need to hold on to that,” Jack says, very seriously.

“I want to,” I whisper, and I don’t know if I mean the love part, or the believing I’m not a killer part, or maybe I mean all of the above.

“Then do it,” he says, like it’s that simple.

Then he leans forward and presses his mouth to mine, and I can’t deny the fact that he sure knows how to make things feel simple.

“Jack.”

Jack pulls away and we both look at the doorway of my little makeshift room. Harrison is standing there, leaning on his cane with an apologetic smile on his face. “Braxton says there’s a bit of an emergency in the kitchen.” He looks at me. “It seems the lack of scotcheroo on the menu has caused a commotion.”

I put my hand over my heart. “You actually took it off the menu?”