Came Back Haunted (Experiment in Terror #10) - Karina Halle Page 0,109
closed, but I have no doubt that there’s only a fraction of him beneath them.
I know, he says, hearing my thoughts.
Of course, when he’s like this, he can hear everything.
I can’t seem to be in two places at once, he says. It’s like my body is sleeping if I’m in here. I don’t know if this is an ADHD thing, but I can’t split my focus.
I laugh. Not everything is an ADHD thing I remind him. And certainly not possession. There is no guidebook.
No? You seemed to know a lot of shit about this. You sure you don’t have a guidebook tucked away somewhere?
No, I tell him. But you should probably get back in your body because you still need to pull out of me.
Whoops.
And just like that, I feel him leave, kind of like when he gets out of bed before I do. The space he left is still warm, there’s still an imprint of where he was.
His eyes flutter open and he looks at me, taking a moment to focus.
Then the most beautiful smile spreads across his face, causing my heart to leapfrog. “Hi,” he says to me.
“Hi,” I say, grinning right back at him.
We spend a while just staring at each other, smiling like idiots, unbelievably happy. Then he remembers to pull out.
And we set about getting ourselves cleaned up.
He helps me off the counter, my legs shaking, and while I can still feel his presence inside me, it’s so faint, like a shadow. It’s enough to know that he’s there, that he can come out at any time and take over.
That he can protect me.
We make our way over to the shower, and for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel afraid anymore.
He turns it on and we take a moment to look at the absolutely bloody mess that we’ve made of each other.
“All those times you wouldn’t let me go down on you when you had your period,” he says, shaking his head. “Baby, we were missing out.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” I warn him.
We get in the water and rinse ourselves clean.
Twenty-One
When I married Dex, I always knew that he’d be mine, body and soul.
What I didn’t know is that he would eventually be inside my body and my soul. Sharing that space. Not just in the metaphorical way but the metaphysical way.
I wanted him to possess me, to make me his.
I didn’t think he’d actually come inside me and take over.
But that’s exactly what happened.
The sex magic worked.
The blood magic worked.
I invited him inside me, to possess me, and he did.
He did so that he could protect me, so that he could save me. No one can take over my soul if it already belongs to someone else.
For the first few days we made it work.
He stayed in the background of my mind and we were alert and watching for Samantha, waiting for her to show her face with her demon in tow, waiting to do battle. Dex would always win, I would always be safe.
But those days turned into a week and she still didn’t show.
I’d been texting with Lana since right after the blood ritual, telling her what happened (leaving out the more intimate details of course). She said to keep our guards up, to stay aware.
But, eventually, after Samantha started to seem like a memory, Lana told me that we were probably safe. That Samantha would be able to sense now that taking over me was impossible. She’d probably been watching me from inside the Veil, probably knew that Dex was in complete control at the drop of a hat.
She said it was okay to revert back to normal.
For now.
So I gave Dex the boot.
I have to praise the poor guy for not taking it personally. I think for him it felt a little off-putting to always have this extra shadow, which is how he tried to explain it, that feeling of being outside of yourself. Even when he was fully in his body, there was that small part of him inside me and it was exhausting him.
So I kicked him out and he gladly went. Besides, I don’t think it’s healthy to have your spouse know every single one of your thoughts, no matter how close you are. I mean, when he was inside, he had to deal with life looking through my eyes, in my body, and that’s pretty fucked up if you ask me. Handy in some ways, but overwhelming in others.