Whispered Darkness by Jessica Sorensen Page 0,28

sticking up everywhere from when I grabbed his hair hard. It’s really sexy, and I want to bask in the moment, which makes me even more pissed off that Beth ruined it.

Of course, after a few seconds tick by, I realize how selfish I sound.

“Yeah, it is,” I grimace, fiddling with the hem of his shirt. “She’s standing in the corner, watching us like a creeper.”

“I know,” he whispers, his eyes widening as he looks back at the corner of the room. “I can see her.”

“Wait …” My lips part in shock. “You can see her?”

He bobs his head up and down, his gaze skating back to mine and his lips parting. But Beth speaks first.

“Yes, he can see the dead girl.” She emerges from out of the shadows and rolls her eyes. “Can we please skip the shock and get straight to the point of why I came here? Because I don’t have a lot of time.”

Kingsley sits up then takes my hand and pulls me up so I’m sitting beside him.

“Why can he see you now?” I ask, combing my fingers through my hair.

I wait for her to tell me some vague answer, like she typically does. She doesn’t, though. Instead, she utters words that send fear scorching through me. In fact, I haven’t felt this much fear since I woke up in the hospital and couldn’t remember what had happened.

“Because time is running out,” she informs us. “My body is about to be found, and if that happens, this is all going to be over.”

“What’s she talking about?” Kingsley whispers under his breath.

“I have no idea,” I mutter to him then say to Beth, “Why will it be over if your body is found?”

“Because the evidence will be destroyed, just like it was with the rest of the girls who died here.”

“I don’t … Wait—who the hell is destroying evidence?” I scoot to the edge of the bed and lower my feet to the floor.

“I can’t tell you,” she replies, water trickling from her eyes. No, not water. Blood. Her eyes are bleeding, the blood dripping down her face and across her torn dress. “But if you find my body first and move it, we’ll have more time.”

“You want me to find your body and move it?” I ask in disbelief as I stand. I then move toward her, but Kingsley captures my arm.

I glance at him perplexedly, wondering what he’s doing, but he’s staring at Beth.

“He’s afraid to let you get too close to me,” she remarks amusedly. “I think he might think I’m a zombie and that I’m gonna eat your brain.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking,” Kingsley bites out. “This is just a little unnerving.”

She muses over something while studying him. “What’s unnerving? Seeing a dead girl standing a few feet away from you? Or letting the girl you’ve been in love with for years stand a few feet away from a dead girl?”

As tension weaves through Kingsley, his fingers stiffening on my arm, Beth’s chapped lips curl into a smirk.

Knowing she’ll continue to mess around with him, I interrupt her.

“If you want me to move your body so we’ll have more time, then tell me where it is. Because your little cryptic messages aren’t enough for me to figure out where the hell it is.”

Her smirk fizzles. “I might be able to … I think I …” She goes rigid as her gaze skates over her shoulder. “Shit,” she curses while staring at my wall.

“What’re you looking at?” I ask, instinctively inching toward her, but Kingsley is still desperately clutching my arm and doesn’t want to let me go.

Her head snaps in my direction and her lips part. “I broke the—”

A howl rips from her throat as grey smoke funnels into my room from a gaping hole tearing through the air, splitting open behind her. Wind screams through my room, scattering papers all over the place.

I trip back as the hole widens, like a vortex that looks like it leads to hell. My back bumps into Kingsley, and he steadies me before yanking me back and positioning himself protectively in front of me as corpse-like arms and hands stretch from the hole and enclose around Beth.

“Star!” she screams as the arms jerk her backward and into the hole. Then it evaporates, as if it never appeared to begin with.

If it wasn’t for the fact that my room now looks like a tornado ripped through it, I would have wondered if I just hallucinated what