Page 6

I shuddered and tried to focus on something else.

My hair was arctic-fox white now. Even after I’d exited what I was calling my ghost form. It hadn’t returned to my brown color, and maybe it never would. My body was solid again, the translucent halo surrounding it was gone, and my senses felt more… human?

Less overstimulated, and more normal.

Everything was strange and absurd, and I had no idea what to do.

Sabine had left me alone in a cozy room within a massive Victorian-style house.

The decor matched the old feel of the place. Dark wallpaper lined the walls, and three grand fireplaces stood throughout the house. Crown molding, jewel tones, and velvet-lined furniture filled the rooms. A gramophone even sat in the living room, or at least I was fairly certain it was a gramophone. I’d seen it on my way up the stairs.

A faint smell of old wood and dust hung in the air, and somewhere near the heart of the house, the floorboards creaked as if someone or something were walking on them.

If you had told me I’d died and gone back in time to the Gilded Age, I would have believed you.

At least Sabine had left me alone in a bedroom because I didn’t trust her one bit. In fairness, I didn’t trust anyone anymore, and I likely never would.

But Sabine was creepy. You know those historical ghost movies where the beautiful woman barely moves but stares at you with hawk-like eyes—examining you like she was the witch from Hansel and Gretel?

Yeah, that was Sabine’s general demeanor—Victorian ghost.

I sighed. At least she matched the house. Was that like when people matched their dogs?

I swallowed and ran my hand along my hairless legs. Did death shave my legs?

Shock ran through me as I rubbed them. No scar tissue remained where a bullet had torn through it. The memory brought me back to New York and my time with the Bratva. I got the bullet scar at twenty-one when I was caught in a botched mission with Severin. But now my skin was perfect and unmarred.

Fuck.

Even in the afterlife, my mind was cloaked in thoughts of the man who betrayed me and gave me over to the Order.

Get rid of her.

The phrase that had haunted every waking moment of my life for the past three years.

A sudden, horrible fatigue hit me, and I yawned. My eyes grew too heavy to keep open. The exhaustion was so strong I barely managed to do anything. Except another yawn escaped my lips as I crawled into bed and under the covers, not even taking off the blue dress before I crumbled and passed out.

I woke up crying and grasping at the mattress, feeling the sheets and comforter under my fingers.

I had no idea what Sabine would do with me, or if she was my newest monster. But I was in a bed. A real bed that I didn’t have to share with a man who wanted to fuck me. No one touched me. No restraints bound my arms and legs down, and no man stood above me, moments away from exposing his cock and having his way with me.

I was simply in a comfortable four-poster bed—too comfortable.

Yes, I’d had a bed during my year with Blackwood, but I never saw it or woke up alone in it. I never once truly felt safe in it—that bone-deep feeling where you know you’re okay.

I never felt that until now.

And I had no reason to feel safe now. Sabine was creepy, like a painting from the Haunted Mansion, and she'd barely said anything to me. All she'd done was bring me to this house and show me to this room.

But, for the moment, no one disturbed me. No one assaulted me, and I was surrounded by pillows and a feather-down blanket. So I let the tears fall, and the screams escape my mouth.

No one stopped me or checked on me. But I didn’t want them to. I wanted to be alone.

I wanted peace.

But I would never have it. How could anyone ever know peace again after what I’d witnessed and had done to my body?

But despite her absence from my room, I knew Sabine was keeping an eye on me. One time, I heard the wood creak outside my bedroom and saw her shadow beyond the door, but Sabine never came in.