Page 147 of Off the Rails

My heart thundered in my chest, hard enough to drown out most other sounds. Still, I took careful steps, resting the mallet against my shoulder as I stalked through the Haunted Manor.

Wouldn’t want to make a noise and scare off my Sweet Lamb.

I was trying to stay open to the possibility, but I doubted that Tess was in my section. I just didn’t feel it during the draw.

But I wasn’t convinced she was in any of our sections for that matter. Maybe it was a hunch. Maybe it was some higher power whispering into my psyche. Or maybe it was just basic fucking probability.

I kept my eyes low as I moved through the manor, peering under dusty Victorian tables and trying to ignore the false ghosts shifting behind the vintage mirrors.

If I had to guess, Tess would be safe for the first six hours at least.

And after that?

My heart rate picked up speed. I took a deep breath, forcing it back down.

I’ll just have to find her first.

I might not be as obsessive as Cyrus or as dogged as Blade, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have a few sick, Tess-centric fantasies of my own. Just the thought was enough to send a jolt of electricity crackling through my chest.

Six hours would be plenty of time to introduce her to what I had in store. No more getting cut off like the last time I caught her, no more having Blade steal the win from under my nose.

I need her alone. I need to hear her scream my name.

I’d spent plenty of sleepless nights imagining it. It was far easier, more attainable, than the other fantasies that I had about her: that she might want me the way I wanted her. That she could see beyond our past and into a future together.

It’s not an option. Not as long as Cyrus feels the way she does.

The thought stung like a shard of glass in my stomach. I lost focus, bumping Trixie against one of the mirrors and cracking it.

Fuck. This is why I don’t think about this shit.

But what should have been a bad omen might just have brought me some luck. Across the room, I heard a scuffle behind the old, curved counter of the antique bar. Something startled by the sudden crack of glass.

Bingo.

Hefting the mallet back over my shoulder, I strode across the room with renewed vigor and hopped over the bar. “You’re mine now, Tess.”

80

CYRUS

The time is here.

I swept over the pathway like a storm, churning with a decade of pent up fury. Tonight, everything would be released.

I want her to feel all of the pain that she’s put me through. I want her to admit her sins. And then, I’ll make her pay.

I didn’t see how else this could end — how I would know any peace until she knew what she’d done, stopped looking at me with those innocent, brilliant blue eyes.

Now that I’d had her in my reach, I couldn’t live knowing that she was out in the world somewhere. And I couldn’t survive having the salt of her rubbed into my wounds every day.

It’s the only way.

I’ll take my revenge and then she’ll be gone. Forever.

At least that’s what I told myself to quiet the twisting guilt deep in my gut. She’d earned her fate. The others would forgive me. They had to — we were all each other had.

Or at least we had been, before she stumbled in and ruined it all again.