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Chapter Five
The steaming water was heavenly. It soaked into my body, into the soreness and exhaustion of my muscles. I’d added a fizzy bath bomb, so the water had turned a light blue and had tiny, dried flowers through it.
I wasn’t a girly girl, but I loved my hot baths. I’d lie there until the water turned cold, until my fingers and toes turned pruney and the scents and bubbles made me feel like a delicate fucking flower myself.
I’d draped my arms over the sides of the tub, and for one moment, my gaze settled on the white scars that covered both my forearms in swirls and almost-beautiful designs. My stomach dropped as it always did when I spotted them, when I had to remember they were there.
It was funny that I could go so long without noticing them. I chalked that up to a mixture of long sleeves and a wonderfully stubborn mind.
The creaking of a door drew my attention away and made me groan at yet another potential interruption.
“Whoever it is, I suggest you go away. I’m armed.”
I wasn’t armed, of course, and even if I were, I wouldn’t have a clue what to do with an actual weapon. It was just the sort of thing people said bravely into the darkness when they had nothing else going for them.
Which was about where I was.
Not that I really thought anyone was there. Sure, I’d ended up on the radar for a couple vampires and a werewolf neighbor, but that didn’t mean anyone else was looking for me.
Another sound brought my attention back to the moment. I sat up as I scolded myself for freaking out when it was the house settling—nothing more. Old houses creaked like old men.
It certainly wasnota killer vampire.
I got out of the bath slowly then pulled my robe around me—my good old penis robe, freshly washed after the whole corpse-mud ordeal. The tile chilled my bare feet, and I stepped slowly so I didn’t slip.
I’d never forgotten the spirit from a few years back who had died after a nasty shower fall. Spirits wore whatever they had on when they died, and it had been an awkward couple of weeks as he’d visited me every day in all his naked glory.
I refused to go out the same way.
A strange sensation came over me, something I couldn’t place. It was cold, like that void that had been inside me, like the mist I traveled through to try and find the woman’s spirit, like my dreams. Except, this didn’t frighten me.
It was deep, and cold, but somehow familiar.
I took the stairs carefully, gripping the railing as I went, trying to peer into the darkness of my living room.
Was it Kase? Had he decided he didn’t care for a human telling him what to do or where to go? Or perhaps Troy figured waiting until morning for something between an apology and a lecture was just too far.
Except, Iknewit wasn’t them. I could feel it deep in my bones, the way I knew when the sun rose without looking outside, the way I knew when a predator was staring at me.
Whatever was here wasn’t anything as trivial as a vampire or werewolf.
And what sort of fucked up world did I live in where vampires and werewolves weretrivial?
When I reached the ground floor, that chill worsened. I struggled to breathe, and the darkness wasn’t run-of-the-mill, as if someone forgot to turn on a light. It was deeper, as though light wasn’t just absent but devoured. Something was there inside it, shifting,staringback at me.
My wrists burned, as if fire licked along the edges of the scars there. It crept up my arms, searing me, and when I would have screamed, something closed over my mouth.
It muffled the sound, kept it from escaping.
“Trust me. You don’t want it to hear you.” The voice took a moment for me to recognize.
Hunter?
Still, the shadows in the mist swirled as if agitated, shifting enough that a breeze blew through my hair. It moved in a circle, like a small tornado, before leaving.
It didn’t go through a door, didn’t dissipate. It just disappeared, leaving a vacuum in its wake.
Still, Hunter didn’t remove his hand from my mouth. It made me realize he was also entirely pressed against me, and despite it not being possible, he felt better than he’d looked. His skin was warm, even through my robe.
