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Before Mikkel could tell him that they weren’t really there, Teddy was running towards them. Mikkel followed.

“Guys!” Teddy called.

All three of them turned to face him.

“You killed us,” one said.

“You were going too fast.”

“Now we’re dead.”

Teddy crumpled and Mikkel caught him. Teddy’s head rolled back, whispering a single word through cracked lips. “Sorry.”

The moment Teddy lost consciousness, the three vanished.

It was a hallucination—a brutal projection of the guilt Teddy had been carrying around like an anchor. But the precision of it terrified Mikkel. The voices, the synchronized accusation… It was as if Teddy’s mind wasn’t just breaking down, but actively trying to destroy him from the inside out.

Mikkel knew how he felt because once upon a time, he’d done exactly the same thing.

Chapter Three

Teddy could feel a heart beating under his ear. Mikkel had him. He was safe. If being carried by a demon was safe. He wished he could laugh but he couldn’t. He felt himself being lowered down and panicked when he was released, but he was on something that felt soft under his hands. He didn’t want to open his eyes.

“You can open your eyes now,” Mikkel said.

No, he didn’t think so. Just a few more minutes of feeling safe, then he’d face reality.

“Open your eyes, Teddy!”

He didn’t want to disobey that order. So he opened his eyes, blinked in confusion, then gulped. What the hell? Who was sitting next to him? It wasn’t a demon. Except it had Mikkel’s voice.

“Mikkel?” Teddy whispered.

“Yes.”

But…he was a man. He looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, with short black hair. His eyes were dark brown but flecked with amber. Oh. He’d never seen eyes like that before. If he hadn’t been struggling to come to grips with the craziness that was his life—er…death, he’d have thought how lucky he was to be sitting next to someone so gorgeous. So Mikkel had two forms, this one and the demon one. Was it strange that Teddy liked both of them?

He tore his gaze away from Mikkel and registered that he was in a small, normal-looking room. There was a kitchen on the right and stairs leading up on the left. A log-burning stove had a fire blazing behind glass. Curtains or blinds had been drawn over every window. It made him feel safe, not to be able to see the outside, not to be in The Drift but…

“Where… Where are we?” Teddy whispered.

He pressed his fingers into the seat beneath him, rubbing them on soft, worn leather.

Mikkel leaned back against the arm of the couch, stretching long legs out toward the hearth. Jeans, not the black leather Teddy had seen him wearing.

“This is your place for as long as you need it. Far enough away from where you were to give you a moment to breathe, a chance to sleep.”

Teddy looked down at his hands, instinctively tensing, expecting to see blood- stained knuckles. But they were clean. Spotless. He blinked hard, squeezing his eyes shut, waiting for the thunderous crunch of twisted metal and shattering glass to echo through his skull again. It didn’t come. The silence in his head was almost deafening.

He swallowed past the lump in his throat and looked back at Mikkel. “I don’t understand. You were… back there, you were—”

“A monster?” Mikkel offered a wry smile, though his eyes remained intently focused on Teddy. “A creature of shadow and sharp edges? I am what I need to be, Teddy. Right now, I’m just making sure you don’t pass out from shock.”

Mikkel stood up in one fluid movement and walked towards the kitchen. He came back with two glasses of water.

“I’m dead but I can drink?” Teddy whispered.

“Yes. You can do almost everything you did when you were alive.”