Came Back Haunted (Experiment in Terror #10) - Karina Halle Page 0,71
to me.
“What are you doing?” Dex asks, peering over at me.
“I’m texting Ada again.”
“She still not talking to you?”
“She is, but only one-word answers,” I tell him, blowing a loose strand of hair off my face in frustration. “I can’t get anything out of her, and the more I pry, the more she clams up. I know she wants to deal with this alone, maybe because she feels stupid, and believe me, when her pride is wounded, she gets rabid.”
“Oh, I know.”
“So maybe it’s for the best, but still. She’s been there for me through all the awful bullshit you put me through.”
His brows furrow. “Hey. No cheap shots. Dex 1.0 had a lot to learn.”
“Does Dex 2.0 have to talk about himself in the third person?” I ask. He rolls his eyes. “Anyway, I just want to help. I hate the idea of her alone in that house.”
“She has your father.”
“You know he’s not doing well, either.” I sigh, resting my forehead in my hands. “God, there’s so much to keep track of right now. I can’t keep my head on straight.”
Dex gets up from the desk chair and sits next to me on the bed, forcing the dog to move over an inch, to which he loudly complains through various snarfs and snorts. He puts his arm around me and I rest my head on his shoulder.
“Let’s just focus on one thing at a time. That works better for me and probably works better for you. So, Samantha is the main problem right now. We deal with her first. Then Max. Then Ada. Then your father.”
“And the baby?” I whisper.
He moves his head back to look at me. “There’s no problem there. That will happen when it does. Don’t you worry about that, okay?”
I sigh, grateful to at least push that concern out of my head. He still wants that for us, no matter what’s been happening.
“We’re going to find Atlas,” he says. “That will happen.”
“And Max?”
“We’re going to help him too, the best we can.”
I raise my head and look at him, our faces close. “Isn’t it crazy? That he’s here? Maximus?”
He swallows audibly and nods. “Yeah. To be honest with you, it still feels a bit like a dream. Like he’s not really there. Like I imagined it all.”
“I felt the same way the first time. Now it feels more real.”
“And we’re sure it’s not the house fucking with us?”
I shake my head. “I definitely think it’s fucking with us, but after confirming with Jacob, I know it’s real. That he’s real.”
“It would have been a hell of a lot easier if Jacob had just finished the job. What happened to him being all powerful?”
I think back to what he told me, about restoring order. “That’s the thing. I don’t think he has all the power in the world. I think he can only do so much, whatever his role allows him to do. Which means he probably answers to someone else.”
“Fucking ginger conga line.”
“Either way, at least he brought Max back this far. I really never thought I’d see him again.” I pause. “I wouldn’t have gotten a tattoo of him otherwise.”
Dex laughs sharply. “He probably did this on purpose.” He exhales, running his thumb down my arm. “I will say, I’m relieved to see him again. I just…I don’t know if I can really relax just yet. What does this even mean? If we bring him out of the house, is he still a ghost? Is he human again? A Jacob? Where does he go, what does he do? How the fuck does someone go to Hell for years and then come back and be as right as rain? I just don’t know. As much as I know we need to help him, that we owe it to him, I think it makes sense to keep our guards up.”
I don’t want to agree with him. The Maximus in the house was the same that I remember. A bit of a dick, living to piss Dex off, overly casual until he’s not. Also surprisingly selfless. But Dex is right. We don’t really know what happened to him (not to mention he might not either), nor what will happen if we pull him free.
But I guess we’ve both committed to making it happen anyway.
It’s been four days since we learned that Harry died.