Page 44 of Love at First Fright

Like I’d imagined the whole thing.

Was this part of his sick game? Another prank, more elaborate than the spider? Push me to the edge and then gaslight me about it afterwards?

Or had I actually imagined it?

Maybe the head injury was worse than I thought. Maybe I had hallucinated the whole thing—Brad’s tenderness, his concern, the way his thumb had brushed my cheekbone.

Maybe I was so desperate for human connection, so pathetically lonely, that my concussed brain had invented a version of Brad that didn’t exist.

God.

I was an idiot.

An absolute idiot for letting myself believe, even for a second, that Brad Harrington might be capable of kindness.

And I was an even bigger idiot for caring.

For lying here on this disgusting dust-ridden sofa, pulse racing, replaying the phantom sensation of his fingers in my hair.

I groaned, pressing my palms against my eyes until colours burst behind my eyelids.

Stop obsessing about Brad, you freak.

It didn’t matter.

None of it mattered.

Because ghosts were real.

And they could bite you.

Or drive you slowly insane until you couldn’t tell the difference between reality and nightmare.

And probably a lot of other stuff too. A lot of horrible, dangerous stuff that Ted’s useless training session hadn’t even begun to cover.

And I was stuck here, in a manor full of them, with a psychopathic colleague who couldn’t decide if he’d rather kiss me or kill me.

Oh dear.

I really was royally fucked.

seven

Bat

Ihovered near the ceiling, wisps of my form barely holding together. Every attempt to solidify made my edges blur further. Like trying to grasp smoke.

Empty.

Completely and utterly drained.

In all the years of being dead, I’d never pushed myself this hard. The cat had been one thing. I’d managed to maintain that small, feline body for several hours. Watching Charlie sleep, the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Staying curled against him through breakfast, feeling his fingers scratch behind my ears.

But Brad? Possessing a full-grown human? That had taken way more energy than I had left by that point.

I’d barely lasted ten minutes before I felt myself unravelling, my consciousness tearing at the seams. One second, I’d been brushing Charlie’s wonderfully soft and fluffy golden hair behind his ear. The next, I’d been ejected from Brad’s body like a cork from a champagne bottle.

Now I could barely maintain a visible form.