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“About what?” I feign nonchalance.
I know exactly what.
“About Lily fucking Dean.”
I turn my back to him and keep drawing. My jaw is so tight that it hurts. A piece of chalk snaps in my fingers.
“You know the situation,” Brooks continues. “You can’t get close to her—”
“I know the situation,” I whisper and close my eyes.
We have to finish this job and get out of here. The full moon will arrive in five nights’ time, and I need to be far, far away from Lily Dean when it rises.
I’m the reason everything is fucked up. I’m the mess that Brooks and Jackson had to give up their whole lives to fix. I’m the danger we’re trying to protect Lily from. And now she’s found her way back to us, and I can’t bear the thought of having to run from her again.
I never even got to say goodbye.
I can’t stand being in the room with Brooks and his angry-dad energy a moment longer. He acts like he hates Lily, like this is all her fault. He should be angry withme.
I finish scrawling the final symbol and run out of there. Brooks yells after me, but I ignore him. He can brood in his own nonsense like a Byronic villain for all I care.
I make my way next door to the suite that Jackson and I are sharing. It’s a small, less Tunnel-of-Love version of their room. The beds, thankfully, are oblong-shaped.
I flop down in a chair beside the window, trying to get my hands to stop shaking. I need to stop thinking about her running around this hotel, so alive and perfect andhere. I need to not believe there is hope…
I pull my laptop out of my bag and read over the research on the case one more time, even though I know the details by heart. I check the ingredients in our ghost-hunting kits. Ghosts are easy to deal with, although it’s been a while since we’ve dealt with one that had quite this much power.
Ghosts usually can’t hurt people directly. If they’re very, very powerful, they can move objects. What they do is terrify people until they hurt themselves. They scare the old woman into falling down the stairs or haunt the guilty father until he throws himself out a window.
But this kind of ghost—a poltergeist—is different. It’s a spirit that’s so full of malevolent rage that it’s crossed partway back through the veil between our world and the world of the dead. It can toss heavy objects around a room. It can hurt people. But in a way, that’s good for us. It makes him easier to kill.
With a normal ghost, we can’t reach it. It’s on another plane of existence. Dad used to say they were “beyond the veil.” With those kinds of ghosts, you have to help them complete whatever “unfinished business” keeps them tethered to this world, and then they just fade away.
But a poltergeist is in our world, which means they can be banished with some holy words and grave dirt.
I pull a jar of dirt from my bag. We stopped at a cemetery on the way, so we’re sorted.
All we have to do is wait for the ghost to bite. Hopefully Lily and Brooks in the room tonight will be enough to tempt him.
Lily and Brooks.
Together.
The thought of the two of them sharing that heart-shaped bed makes my stomach twist. I love my brother, and I don’t want to think ill of him, but ever since he came back into our lives five years ago, he’s had it out for Lily, and I don’t get why. I don’t understand why he’s so determined to drive her away when she’s practically a sister to us.
Fuck.
Not a sister.
The thoughts I have whenever I’m around her are certainly notbrotherly.
My phone rings. Jackson. I click it on.
“Did you find Lily?” A part of me wants to reprimand him for stalking her the way he is, but the rest of me is too curious to really be upset. I’m just as obsessed with Lily Dean as he is.
“I did.” Jackson’s voice wavers. “She isn’t alone. She was in a hot tub with another guy. She hid when I got close to her.”
My heart stills.
