her over pretty shamelessly. He went to his knees in front of her, running his hands down her arms. Poking her just below her collar bone. Pulling down her cheek to peer into her eye. He even opened her mouth and shined his small blue flashlight down her throat.
She rolled her eyes through it all, but he didn’t seem to care. Then she remembered that she was no longer real to him.
Her cracking teenage heart wasn’t real to either of them, and yet she could almost hear it fracturing, like ice being dowsed with warm water.
“Why do you feel normal?” He sounded like a chatty seven-year-old.
“I have surface tension. Like drops of water drawn together, the stuff I'm made of struggles to stay together. The rest of it is illusion.”
“And what does a Host look like without the container?” There was nothing seven-year-old about his question. He’d tried to make it sound like an innocent question, but he failed; his voice cracked slightly, and he blushed all the way to his blond roots.
“Nothing.” She hoped her firm tone might discourage him.
“Nothing? Invisible?”
“Kind of. We are, but we aren't. It's hard to explain.”
His brows went up. “You took your clothes off before. Why?”
She had hoped he’d have forgotten that detail after being handed all her secrets on a silver platter, but apparently the thought of a naked girl standing behind him wasn’t an easy thing for a seventeen-year-old to forget.
“I thought I could get out the door without you seeing me. But you locked it. I wouldn't have taken off my clothes if I thought you might lock me in with you.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“So, take your clothes off again.” He blushed, but managed to look her in the eye.
“You know? I'm going to pass.”
“Oh, come on. You can't really expect me to believe all this stuff about the Final Host if you can't prove it.”
“I read your mind.”
“Not good enough. Aliens can do that. Probably Vampires too.”
All right. So he wasn’t completely gullible. But apparently she was, since she found herself stripping for him—after she’d made him turn around, of course.
***
Jamison tried not to get too excited about Skye taking off her clothes. She wasn’t a real girl so it wasn’t the same. She might be fifty years old. She might be a hundred...or seven. Either way, it was nothing to get excited about. He was only making sure he wasn’t out of his mind, believing his neighbors were a bunch of harmless angels and not a cult of murderers, when everything he’d seen thus far leaned toward the cult thing. Turning his back on her might not even be a good idea.
“Okay, you can look now.” She sounded embarrassed.
He reconsidered for about a hundredth of a second, then turned.
Holy crap, she was gone.
He took a couple of deep breaths and realized he was the only one breathing, so he tried not to breathe so loud. She wasn’t in any of the corners and not under the Indian blanket, since it was puddled on the box. His only company was the heater in the middle of the floor, making crackling noises as it kicked on again.
When you were alone, in a room lit by a candle and a dinky flashlight, and the shadows start moving, it made you sincerely wish someone was there with you.
“Skye?” His whisper sounded silly, but what else could he do? Speak reasonably to an empty room?
“Yeah?” She sounded close.
“Where are you?”
“Right here. In front of you.”
He reached out, but his wrist was caught by an invisible hand. There really was nothing there. His skin was a little bunched up where she held him. That was all.
Wow.
“Keep your hands to yourself, Jamison.”
“I can't see anything. I just want to know what the real you feels like.”
“Can’t you feel my hand?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Yeah but nothing. I feel the same as I did when you could see me. The container is still here. I just reflect what you expect to see.”
“But I expected to see you.”
“I meant, if you didn’t know I was here. You see what you’d see anyway. But that reminds me; what did you think you saw, up in the trees, when Sheriff Cooke pulled you over?” She released his hand and he could sense her moving out of reach.
“What do you mean?” He put his hands in his pockets, for his own sake, as much as hers. When there was someone invisible standing in front of you, you just couldn’t help wanting to reach out and...define them.
“It