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Then he gathers me against his chest and pulls the blankets over us both. His heart is still racing under my cheek.

I lay my palm flat against it. Feel it beating. I watch his fingertips, where they rest on my arm. I watch for the gray. I watch until my eyes get heavy.

He murmurs something into my hair that I don’t quite catch. He is still warm when I lose the fight. And I have one last coherent thought before sleep takes me.

If this is what happens when you fall for a cursed grotesque, I really should have inherited a haunted mansion sooner.

chapter

eleven

“I would endure a lifetime of curses again and again to end up here with you,” I say. I’m pretty sure she’s already asleep, but I mean every word. This woman is everything to me. I don’t even know how it happened so fast.

But when you’ve lived as long as I have, you have a particular certainty about things.

I wake to the sound of rain. For a moment, I don’t understand what I’m hearing. The soft patter against the windows. The distant rumble of thunder. The steady, quiet rhythm of someone breathing beside me.

Then I become aware of something else. Warmth. Not the peculiar sensation of April’s touch bringing me back to life. Actual warmth.

A body curled against mine beneath the blankets. I open my eyes.

April. Her pink curls are scattered across my pillow, and one of her legs is draped over mine. Her hand rests on my chest, directly over my heart, as though she fell asleep guarding me.

She’s sleeping, and I’m pretty sure I was sleeping. Like actual sleep, not whatever mythical unconsciousness I’ve experienced periodically over this last century.

I glance over at the electronic clock April placed on the nightstand. The bright green numbers declare it to be 6:45. I have slept an entire night. And I am still a flesh-and-blood man.

For nine nights, the granite has come for me before dawn. I have felt it creep into my fingertips while she lay warm and drowsy in my arms, and I have sent her away so that she would not wake beside a statue.

And for one hundred and forty-three years before that, night and day were meaningless distinctions. Darkness came. Darkness went. I remained exactly where I was, unable to close my eyes or escape into dreams.

But tonight—last night, I slept. I actually slept. Beside the woman who has stolen my heart.

The same woman who is currently drooling on my chest.

I smile. I can’t help it.

April makes a small sound and burrows closer.

My arm tightens around her. I should wake her. Tell her what has happened. We should celebrate. But I find myself reluctant to disturb her.

Instead, I lie there listening to the rain and enjoying the simple pleasure of holding her.

Until a persistent need makes itself known. I am stunned when I realize what it is. I need to relieve myself. I never would have believed I’d be this bloody excited about the need to urinate, but here we are.

I carefully extricate myself from April and the sheets, then pad into the bathroom.

I’m fairly certain it’s the flushing of the toilet that wakes her, because suddenly she’s standing in the bathroom doorway.

“Holy shit.” April is staring at me.

I smile. “Good morning.”

“Holy shit!”

“You’ve said that already.”

“Gabriel!”