Came Back Haunted (Experiment in Terror #10) - Karina Halle Page 0,79

goes to the other side of my face, holding me. “I could show you if you let me. I could show you everything that you can be. Don’t you want to know what it’s like? To have the world at your fingertips? To make people love you?”

People do love me.

She frowns at that, then laughs like music, pressing her fingers into my cheekbones harder. “They do. I forget about that. That you’re already so lucky. Almost seems to be such a waste, for someone like you to have everything to begin with.”

I swallow thickly, my nerves icing over. I didn’t always.

“No, you didn’t,” she muses with a smirk. “Don’t you wonder how that was? How you went from having nothing to having everything?”

I don’t want to mention all I’ve lost along the way, but she knows I’m thinking it anyway.

“We all go through loss, Perry,” she says. “But what determines who you are inside is what you do with that loss. For people like me, like you, like us, we can use that loss to make us stronger.”

A wash of sadness comes over her eyes, her fingers trailing down to my lips where they rest gently. My eyes go round. I suck in a cold breath.

“Maybe it’s not too late for us,” she says. “Maybe there’s still time.”

Time for what?

She just smiles and leans in.

Oh my god.

She fucking kisses me.

Her lips send shockwaves through my skin, liquid nitrogen filling my body, seconds from cracking like ice.

Samantha pulls away teasingly, glancing up at me through her dark lashes.

“Don’t you want your baby to be safe?” A grin slowly spreads across her face.

Then she vanishes into thin air.

I’m too enraptured and confused to move, to make a noise. I feel my brain come back online, feel the cold burning away from my skin, my muscles twitching.

“Fuck! Fucking hell!” Dex yells from the bedroom, and before I can move, there’s a crash, and then he’s throwing the door open and running out in his underwear, his hands at his head.

I’m still too stunned to react, everything feeling underwater.

“Perry?” he says to me, looking up just as a crow flies out of the bedroom toward us. “Holy fuck,” he swears, ducking just in time. “There’s a fucking bird in here!”

I just stare wide-eyed at the crow, even as Fat Rabbit wakes up and starts barking.

Without thinking, I head to the balcony doors and open them.

The crow flies right on through into the rainy night.

I watch for a few moments as it flies away, then I close the windows.

Dex is watching me uneasily.

“Did you know? I woke up and you were gone and there was a bird in your place,” he says. “The fucker looked at me and then started flying around the room, trying to peck my damn brains out.”

“I…” I begin, feeling everything drain out of me like I’m losing my dream. “I got up to get water and…” I try to swallow. “I think Samantha was here?”

He goes still. “Are you serious?”

I nod, pressing my fingers to my lips.

Did she fucking kiss me?

Dex comes over to me, grabbing my hand. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“I don’t know I…I think she was trying to talk to me. She wasn’t trying to scare me. She looked…younger.” I close my eyes, trying to concentrate but it’s impossible. It just vanishes like dust. “She looked beautiful.”

His eyes narrow at that. “Was the demon with her?” he asks in a low voice.

“No. I don’t think so. It wasn’t as…scary.”

He’s studying me closely, trying to see through any lies.

I give him an empty smile. “I’m not trying to downplay it. I just know she didn’t hurt me. She didn’t want to hurt me. That’s all.”

He gives his head a shake, putting his hand at the back of my neck. “That’s all? Baby, this is already too much. First the gym, now she’s in our fucking apartment? This is Abby all over again.”

“No, this is nothing like Abby.”

“Maybe not this time, but what about next time?”

“I think maybe Atlas is right, that she doesn’t want to hurt me. She just wants something from me.”

Or something for me.

But I don’t voice that last part.

“I don’t fucking like this,” he says, practically growling, his grip growing protectively tight. “I should have been able to protect you. You should have woken me up.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“But you have to next time, okay? You have to. Promise me.”

“I promise.” A beat passes, my chest growing tight. “You think there’s going to be a