Return to the Darkness - Ripley Proserpina Page 0,26
up the phone, lifted his gaze to mine, and raised his eyebrows. “So. Yeah. I’m going to get him. Do you want to come? Or wait here?”
I thought it was probably a better idea if we sprung my undead, time-traveling self on him inside the apartment. “Here.”
“Okay.” He took out his keys and jiggled them. “Stay here, okay? Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t.”
He stopped to look at me. “So you know Oliver, too? In this future time. The thing we were sort of starting to do, it happened? All of us dating you?”
He’d clued into that. I’d been dropping hints, certainly not hiding it when I’d referred to us. I swallowed. “In my time, I put Erdirg to sleep and took off. Long story. I was sort of delirious. Went to Alaska. You guys found me there after ten years.”
His eyes widened. “Oliver and me?”
“Thorn and Colton, too. The four of you cultivated a relationship that had nothing to do with me. Became family when it came down to it. Now I’m back in the midst of it, and somehow it’s working.”
He winced. “Really? With Thorn and Colton, too? Oliver, I can wrangle, but I have no way of getting in touch with the others unless we accidentally stumble upon them.”
I could. I ran a hand through my hair. It wouldn’t be the easiest thing to do, but in this scenario, they’d gone to California and come back for me. That had still happened. Running into me when I should have been dead would still get their attention.
And if Colton was working with his dad, I knew where those stables were. Still, I’d let Aaron get Oliver first. One step at a time. I had to figure out what I was going to do.
Aaron and Oliver were the ones who were supposed to know what was going on. Not me. I was the one who had to deal with the paranormal that wanted to mess with my life all the time, but I wasn’t the member of our group who knew how to do research or to use magical objects. I tended to throw myself into scenarios and hope that it turned out okay.
I guessed I was going to be doing that again.
This time dragging four guys who I wasn’t yet sleeping with into the fray with me.
Good times with Lacey Madison. I should start a blog. Call it that.
Aaron left me standing in his apartment, and after he left, I cracked a window, hoping to air out the cigarettes. It was too much like my grandmother’s. I had no good associations with that scent. My stomach grumbled, and I made my way to the fridge to see what he had. The answer proved to be not much. Looked like he drank a lot of Diet Coke and beer. In terms of food, there were frozen dinners and some Chinese food that he really needed to throw out because if the smell was any indication, it had seen better days.
It would be wrong to clean his house, but… he was doing me a favor, so maybe I could return it by at least washing the dishes.
I went about cleaning his house like Snow-fucking-White, minus the humming. By the time I heard keys jingling in the door, I’d put the dishes away, aired out the house, dusted, and straightened. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be pissed.
“Now you just need to trust me,” Aaron was saying as the door opened to reveal Oliver.
His dark eyes met mine, and we both froze.
Oh god. He looked… This was not Oliver. He was broader than I’d ever seen him, like he spent a lot of time lifting weights, or he had to do a lot of manual labor. He wore a short-sleeved shirt, and his arms were covered in tattoos. Even his fingers were tattooed.
His eyes were bloodshot and his face darkened by a slight beard. Not one of those designer scruff looks, but like he had no reason to put himself together every day. His hair was long and shaggy and fell into his eyes.
“I haven’t taken anything.”
His words confused me. “What?”
Frozen, only his gaze went to Aaron. “I haven’t taken anything. So why am I seeing a dead person?”
“I’m not dead.”
“She’s not dead,” Aaron said helpfully.
“You’re a ghost.” He took one step to me. “And you wait ten fucking years to appear? What the fuck, Lacey? Why are you here now? Are you a portent? A harbinger? What’s going on? Who’s about to die?”
I held out