Page 26 of With All My Haunted Heart

“Too late, girlie.”

My body lunges forward, catching Elle around the waist, drawing her deeper into my room. She struggles against me, and in my head, I’m screaming. Begging her to grab the Taser. Begging Xander to hear the commotion. I’m vaguely aware of my fingers pressing against her lips, holding back her screams. That low chuckle reverberating in my chest. I fight like hell to surface, to regain control of my body.

Elle jams her elbow into my stomach, and the flash of pain loosens my hold. She scrambles away, but instead of escaping out the door, she dashes deeper into the room.

That dark chuckle wheezes out of me again. “Good,” the ghost says with my voice. “I love a challenge.” Heavy footsteps clomp after Elle. Unhurried. Hands flexing into fists. I can feel the spirit’s bloodlust. Can feel all the ways it wants to hurt Elle.

It grabs her hair. Yanks her back.

Elle comes willingly. There’s a flash of silver. The clicking buzz of machinery.

Then electricity tears through me. The ghost and I scream in unison, the pain infiltrating the possession to affect us both. Each tenth of a second stretches for minutes. White-hot agony. The spirit loses control of my body as its essence is torn apart and destroyed by the arcing current.

I fall to my knees when Elle finally removes the Taser from my stomach. The last of the ghost’s influence fades away. I’m vaguely aware of footsteps in the hall. Xander rushing into the room. I glance up at Elle, a strangled thank you passing my lips before my body gives up completely.

Unconsciousness consumes me like a blanket of dark.

Chapter

Nine

Everything hurts.

Before I open my eyes, I’m painfully aware of every inch of me. Even my hair aches. My fingernails. My lungs. It feels like I was run over by a bus, tossed into a blender, and then digested by a giant human-eating plant. As I surface to full consciousness, bits of memory come through in fragmented flashes.

Pulling into the manor.

Elle in my room.

The flash of light.

My body no longer under my control.

I groan, muscles protesting as I shift in my bed. How did I get in bed?

“Take it slow, Pip.” Warm fingers brush hair out of my face. “Easy now.”

When my eyelids finally manage to flutter open, bright sun burns my retinas. I flinch away from the light. “What time is it?” I try to sit, but my stomach rebels. Muscles trembling. Nausea churning.

Xander checks his phone from his place perched on the edge of my bed. “A little after two in the afternoon. On Sunday.” He presses his wrist against my forehead like he’s checking for a fever. “How are you feeling?”

“Like death.” I force myself into a seated position, gritting my teeth as my head swims. “Which makes sense, since I was briefly possessed by the dead.”

“But you’re okay now, right?” Xander leans forward and adjusts the pillows into a makeshift throne behind me. “No ghosts squatting inside you?”

“It’s just me in here.” Exhaustion tries to pull me back into unconsciousness, and with my defenses down, I find myself disappointed that Elle isn’t here. It hurts, in a way it absolutely shouldn’t, that she’s missing. “And then there’s you out there.”

“How did this happen?”

“It was my fault,” a new voice says, and I spot Elle leaning against the doorway, looking utterly miserable. Large sections of her hair have fallen out of her ponytail. Dark circles settle under her eyes like bruises. “I’m so sorry, Pippa. You warned me not to touch your things. I should have remembered.”

“Maybe this haunted B&B thing was a bad idea.” Xander reaches for my hands and rubs his thumbs across my knuckles, the gesture soothing and familiar.

Elle looks like she might cry, but whether from guilt or the suggestion that her business venture is about to fail before it begins—that whatever personal reasons for the haunting won’t come to fruition—I can’t tell. Either way, the grief on her face presses on my bruised heart. I want to fix it.

“Don’t give up because I made a rookie mistake. Either of you.” I squeeze Xander’s hand, but my gaze is fixed on Elle. “I mean it. I never intended for a ghost like that to live here, and I shouldn’t have left the crystal out where you could bump into it.”

“You didn’t—”