Page 91 of How I Met Your Murderer

I tried to vanish, to let myself become pure energy again for a few moments, and in the stillness nothing happened but a clamor of continued noise from my actual, living body.

It overwhelmed me for a moment to the point of panic, and I rolled onto Raff, clinging to him like a terrified cat being rescued from water.

“I have a pulse!” I yelped when he opened his startled eyes to peer blearily into mine. And then I added, because I could, “And I love you.”

He didn’t waste any time feeling the life pulsing through my wrists, my neck. Pressing his ear to my chest and listening to the heart that beat there, strong and real.

Only after several moments of this did he try to speak, head lifting a little to meet my eyes only to return to my chest and that fast-beating organ. Adrenaline chased most of the tiredness from his voice as he demanded, “Is this some kind of—what did you call it, a magic trick? You’re alive? You’re real? Are you—?”

“Yours, and alive,” I told him, kissing his face as it crumpled and he started sobbing, wrapping his arms around me. “It’s real,” I assured him softly as he clung to me and shook. I stroked his back in a repeated motion, hoping it would help calm him. “I think, because of that spell we did, I got to choose, and I wanted to stay here with you. To fight stupid evil Gary together and free the other ghosts if we can, and . . . be your boyfriend . . . and try your mom’s colcannon . . . and—”

“Move in with me,” Raff said suddenly, kissing my face and getting us both wet with tears. I loved the feel of his care all over my cheeks. “Will you?” As I nodded, he laughed and groaned, “I live in that fecking van! It’s yours now, too, of course, but we should get a flat.”

“And a dog and a cat,” I reminded him sweetly. “We’ll figure it all out later, but right now I just—needed you to know I’m not going anywhere. As long as you want me, I’m yours.” I smoothed his hair back from his damp brow and caught his lips with mine.

I might have needed to breathe now, but we didn’t come up for air for a long time.

He rolled me on top of him and ran his hands through my hair, down my back, over my sides and my thighs. Like he needed reassurance that I wouldn’t fade or something. The good news was, I had the rest of tonight and every night for the rest of my life to give it to him.

“You’re too good to be real,” he murmured fondly beneath me, a few stray tears still glistening at the corners of his eyes in the soft moonlight. I kissed them away, and he added, “I love you beyond sense, Eric. I’m mad about you. I had so many dreams for us and now we’re going to get to make them real, and I just feel like the luckiest—”

The rest of his words, though I understood them, were drowned by a high, keening cry that shuddered past the window. The notes were so sharp they made my head throb.

Raff held me tighter as if in answer to the sound, and I held him back with all my newfound human strength. Both of us quieted our breathing and lay very still, listening even though doing so was painful.

It was a cry of mourning.

A cry of danger cloaked in deep sorrow. A threat of what was to come.

For a moment, after the ear-splitting shrieks reached a crescendo, the night was as silent and tense as a tightly pulled bowstring. Still, the sound seemed to echo in the spaces between our heartbeats.

Then the wailing came again, this time welling up from the heart of the castle.

Followed by Caoimhe’s raw, much more human scream.

twenty-six

All That Glitters

Raff

Pressing what remained of our black salt jar into Eric’s hands, I staggered out of bed as quickly as I could and pulled on my pants and overalls. There was more salt in that jar than there was in the pendant around my neck, so I hoped that meant he would be equally protected or better from whatever tricks the elemental was up to now.

Of course, Caoimhe wasn’t. She needed us to hurry.

Glancing at the time on the nightstand’s digital clock, I saw it was just after three in the morning. She must have fallen asleep in her office while working late.

I grabbed the PolterPulse and Eric’s hand, and together we raced downstairs to the foyer, where the chandelier was flickering like a bulb was about to burst.

We had only reached the landing when I saw the reason Caoimhe had screamed, the reason she was currently cowering in a corner of the room behind the armchair I’d once fallen asleep in. The elemental had used blood—a fox’s, I hoped, rather than a person’s—to paint a large, sloppy message across the foyer wall:

YOU’RE ALL MINE.

“If I die again,” Eric said bravely, squeezing my hand, “I want it to be with you.”

We ran the rest of the way to Caoimhe as the wailing started up again, at first seeming to come from the hall. Then from above us. Wrapping around the room, a chorus of sound so all-encompassing it made my eyes water and left me with nowhere to point the PolterPulse.

With an unseen enemy that was clearly here to take a stand.