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4
ADDIE
The shower washed away the events of the last few days. It was hard to believe that’s how long I’d been gone. For me, it’d felt like only a few hours. For Maddox, it’d been a lifetime.
I’d wanted to ask him to stay while I showered, but he’d planted a quick kiss on my forehead before slipping out with the promise to come back with food. He claimed he had some calls to catch up on for work, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I really smelled that bad.
At least I was clean now. I yanked a pair of butter-soft leggings from my dresser and peered at the selection of tops.
“Go for that cute green crop top,” a familiar voice said in passing.
I shuddered at the surprise arrival, but there was no chill of a ghostly presence. Still, Perse appeared, lying on her stomach on my bed, her head in her hands and her legs in the air behind her. She offered me a grin as bright as sunshine before reaching over to scratch the top of Potato’s head. The dead cat, raised by another Reaper, leaned into Perse’s touch.
Something about her had changed. Her bathrobe was gone. Instead, she wore a simple off-the-shoulder sweater dress in soft pink. Since when could ghosts change their wardrobe at will?
She nodded towards my dresser. “That mint-green top all the way in the back. You bought it, crammed it away, and never wore it. You should definitely give it a try today.”
This was about as much of ahelloas I’d come to expect from her. That was nothing new. Yet, something was still off. It might have had something to do with the questions I still had lingering in the back of my mind.
The world outside had returned to normal. There were ghosts aplenty, around every corner. I could hear their incessant chatter everywhere I turned. Today would be a good day for a hat, my substitute for a psychic veil. I got the feeling that I wouldn’t be able to turn Perse’s volume down with a psychic veil, though.
As she suggested, I reached for the crop-top shoved into the far reaches of my dresser. It was a tight top that’d made me feel self-conscious when I’d first tried it on. Now, I yanked it over my head and admired myself in the mirror.
When I turned back to Perse, she smiled and gave two thumbs up.
“How did you reach me through the closed veil?” I asked without pretense.
Vince, the soul-torn shifter, had an aura that severed fate threads. It’d broken the connection between the world of the living and the afterlife, trapping ghosts in the afterlife where I couldn’t hear or see them.
Somehow, Perse had been able to cut through it and reach me in my time of duress. The only people that had been capable of ripping their own hole in the veil had been those with divinity in them. Hel had done it several times. Maddox used my arcana to do it once.
How the heck had Perse been able to contact me?
She rolled off the bed, came over to cup my cheeks, and changed the subject. “I’m so proud of how far you’ve come! You’re not the same girl anymore. I think that Maddox has been a huge help for you.”
Twisting my lips to the side, I studied her in an attempt to figure out what was going on by myself. If she wouldn’t talk, then I would pretend that I was Maddox. If I was a detective, what kind of clues would I look for?
There was a tightness to Perse’s lips that made me wonder if she was holding something back. Her eyes glimmered with secrets that I couldn’t access. I wanted to slap myself upside the head when I realized I was overlooking the most important part.
“You’re touching me.”
Perse smiled and laughed. Ghosts shouldn’t have been able to make contact with my corporeal form. I’d never had one do anything more than move through me before. Right now, I could feel Perse’s warm skin on my own.
She flashed me a wink, said she was proud of me one more time, and vanished.
“What the actual fuck?” I asked Potato.
The cat yawned, showing all of her teeth at once. Of course, the dead cat didn’t have an answer for me.
Maddox
All I could thinkabout was sex. The moment that Addie climbed out of bed and came to me, my mind succumbed to the singular urge. Though the room had been full, I’d envisioned the many ways I wanted to throw Addie down and claim her as my own.
Without her, I’d been starved for arcana. Now that she was back, another hunger hit me out of nowhere. I tried again and again to clear my mind, but nothing worked. Even her scent had been overwhelming. Though we’d teased her, she hadn’t smelled bad. If anything, it’d only brought out what I’d already loved about her smell.
What was I thinking? Why was I so horny for asmell?
Addie had been soft and pale beneath my shirt. I’d wanted nothing more than to slide my hand up her thigh and feel the wetness between her legs. I’d wanted her to lean into me and moan as I touched her. It’d taken everything in me to keep my hand where it’d been, on the back of her lower thigh.
