AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Get…out.”
Clamping his mouth shut, he bowed his head and nodded. Then he silently started toward the door. I glared after him the whole way until he was gone and the lock clicked quietly behind him.
Completely ruined, I wilted onto the couch and sobbed as hard as my body would let me.
32
OAKLYNN
Iwas so upset with Damien and his lies and betrayal that I think I cried for a good hour before I remembered I was alone in a notoriously haunted brownstone.
I was alone in the home where someone had been brutally murdered.
A shiver went up my spine as I recalled the screams and begging and choking sounds that had come from Thalia’s room. That was how she’d sounded when she’d died.
And the door to her room was probably still standing wide open at this very moment.
The air around me seemed to grow charged with an eerie silence. I hugged myself and glanced left, then right. Everything looked completely normal, yet my breathing started to escalate. I wanted to leave, but I had nowhere to go.
Damien’s place was absolutely out of the question. Jaylani would never believe my story. She’d call me crazy and probably try to have me seek professional help. I didn’t know Raina well enough to unload something likethison her.
And honestly, I was too frozen with fear to even move.
Hell, I was almost scared enough to call Damien and make him come back to get me. He’d been rocking enough guilt when he’d left; he’d probably do just about anything for me right now.
But honestly, my phone was upstairs, and there was no way I could go up there right now.
I was gearing up to have an epic meltdown when a muffled voice from above called, “Oaklynn? Is that you?”
I gasped, jumping clear out of my skin because it was Thalia’s voice.
Thalia who was dead.
It couldn’t be a live human impersonating Thalia either. I’d seen her empty room; where the hell would she have hidden this whole time? The police officer had just searched everything up there, too, and hadn’t found anyone else on the premises.
Footsteps landed on the stairs. “Girl, what’re you doing up at this time of night?”
When she appeared, she was wearing an overly conservative, button-down pajama top with little sloths on it and matching flannel pants. Yawning, she scratched the back of her mussed hair as if she’d come straight from bed, and she trudged barefoot toward the couch to slump down on the other end.
I gaped at her for the longest second, wondering what was wrong with me. Maybe I had a tumor in my brain, and all this was in my head.
But she looked so freaking real. And nothing else in my life felt muzzy or off. It was all clear and normal.
When she stopped fussing with her hair and dropped her hands into her lap to give me some sleepy-eyed attention, I cleared my throat, realizing I needed to speak.
“I, uh…sorry if I woke you. I just… I couldn’t sleep.” She was acting as if I hadn’t just yelled at her to leave the lights alone and that she hadn’t just awoken me from a dead sleep with her screams of terror.
So…maybe she didn’t remember the other stuff we’d gone through tonight. Hell, maybe she didn’t know she was…
Dead.
Going with that theory, I decided to just treat her like my roommate. Like a normal, living roommate.
“I had a fight with my boyfriend,” I admitted.
Thalia sucked in a sympathetic breath. “Damn, honey. I’m sorry. Did he cheat?”
Wiping residual wetness off my cheeks, I shook my head. “No.”
