Night Kissed (Chosen Vampire Slayer #1) - Mila Young Page 0,76

if I spoke to them?

There was no time to waste worrying about it. Although Logan hadn’t specified a time frame, the pressure mounted steadily. Five feet away from the nearest ghost, I stopped. It pivoted toward me, its movements eerily mechanical.

“Were you killed here two nights ago?” I asked. The question seemed to grab the attention of the others, and before I knew it, they had crowded around me. The air chilled by about ten degrees. I tried to look for Logan, but the spirits blocked my view.

One of them attempted to speak. A dark void opened up on its countenance, morphing and changing with each garbled word.

“Yes,” it mumbled. “I am…sad.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” I took a deep breath and did my best to calm the tension in my nerves. Pure instinct had me prepped for the worst; I’d heard tales of ghosts looking to reclaim the souls of the living and things like that. What if the rest were angry rather than sad? Or spiteful? “I want to help you,” I added, “but I need you to tell me what you know. Did you see who caused your death? Any of you?”

A low murmur made its way around the circle.

“I was the first,” declared a different ghost. “But I only saw a large shadow behind me. It happened…too fast.”

My heart started to sink a little as I saw a ripple of agreeing nods. So, whatever it had been, there was only one monster and could be anything kind of creature in reality. Many beasts hunted alone.

“All I saw…were the dead,” said the next specter gloomily. “Fresh corpses…lined up so neatly.” It paused, apparently thinking. “And then…I became one of them.”

“Nothing?” I gazed in a slow circle at each androgynous face. “None of you saw a single thing that could help identify a murderer? What it looked like? Did it make any sounds?”

They shook their heads in unison. “Death is…funny. Our memories…like fog in rain.”

It’s been two days! I wanted to grab their noncorporeal shoulders and shake them. But already, I could feel whatever sense Logan had given me was beginning to fade. The ghosts flickered unsteadily. They started to back away. Within moments, they were completely gone, and colors were seeping back into the world.

I ran back to Logan. “No good. Any way I could get an extension?” He gazed down at me as if he’d spent the last few minutes under heavy hypnosis. “Hello? Logan? Can you do that again?”

“What? Kiss you?” He ran his finger underneath my chin, stroking my bottom lip with his thumb. “I guess so, if you wanted.”

I rolled my eyes. “What I want is to see dead people for like five more minutes. Yes or no?” The second kiss was a welcome fringe benefit, but I wasn’t about to let him know that.

“Let’s find out.” This time, he held my face in his hands and unexpectedly kissed me so deeply I was almost lifted off my feet. The sparks that shot from my lips to my toes were pure electricity. I tingled all over.

Nothing else happened. The forest was the same afterward, if a little hazy. We stared at each other.

“Damn.” The word came out soft and awestruck. “It didn’t work.”

“Then it won’t, for a while.” Logan gave up a small, apologetic smile. “Sorry.”

“I mean…” I chewed my lip. “Maybe there’s a placebo effect?” Instead of waiting for him to respond, I stood on my toes and kissed him once more. He drew my body close against his. The intrinsic coolness of his energy slowly turned to low heat.

There was no placebo effect, as it turned out. But I didn’t pull away as his hands moved to explore. And I didn’t stop him.

Chapter 26

Orion

I had known from the start that Veronica was not about to be an easy conquest—that was part of her appeal. But the reality of not being able to access her whenever I wanted needled at me especially with the thought of sharing her. That still sat on my mind like a mountain. Where was she? What was she doing? Who was she with?

That last unknown was the worst.

When the knock came at the door, I practically flew to answer it, craving a distraction from my own one-track mind. But the face that greeted me wasn’t any better than Veronica’s maddening beauty. The vamp sneered at me, his thin lip curling over jagged teeth. “Good evening, Clanmaster.” The words had a mocking lilt that I did not like