He dabbed it a couple of times and rummaged in the kit for a bandage. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “But we’ll figure it out.”
I studied Connor’s face for the first time in ages. He’d shaved since last night, probably for his mother. She hated the scruff. He worked his jaw, tensing the back muscle. I reached out and touched the knot, allowing my fingers to run along his chin. His blue eyes jerked up to mine.
“Sorry,” I said, dropping my hand. “You’re doing that thing when you get tense. The jaw thing.”
I looked away from his eyes and fanned myself. Wow, it was hot in here.
He didn’t respond, but kept searching in the kit. Picking a bandage out, he took off the adhesive edges and then carefully wiped the cut again. He blew on the drying antiseptic. Goosebumps rose up and down my exposed skin.
Connor leaned close, over my lap, and for a second I felt lightheaded. Did that fall affect my brain? The room felt so warm and Connor smelled so, so good, like laundry and sweat – the good kind. When he leaned over to secure the bandage on my cheek, I forgot what I had been angry and scared about – how I even ended up here.
I lifted a hand to Connor’s face, mirroring his position. His eyes locked with mine. “I’m sorry about New Year’s Eve.”
“Me, too.”
“I know you were only trying to help.”
“We seem to have a jinx or something with the New Year.” He ran his hands anxiously over his thighs a couple of times and the room shrank. I placed my hands over his, trying to calm him but it seemed to have the opposite effect and Connor snapped, half-standing and pushing me backwards onto the bed. His face and body hovered over mine, but he didn’t do anything else. He just stared down at me, eyes glazed.
“What?” I asked. Every nerve stood on end, braced and ready for this moment. What had I been fighting? This was right. It was and had been the only thing that was right for a long time.
“You’re so beautiful.”
I pushed up on my elbows and kissed him, sparking a coil of electricity between us that spread through my body and down my limbs. The dark shadow in my chest receded. It dissipated even more when Connor kissed me back and ran an arm under my back, lifting me toward the headboard.
Heat rushed between us. My face no longer hurt and I was consumed with a desire for Connor, so strong I barely felt the niggling concern in the back of my mind. Everything was perfect.
So incredibly perfect. Too perfect?
Connor must have thought it was right, too – obviously he did. We were in synch. His fingers grazed my stomach and I grabbed at his shirt, pushing it above his abs and away from his chest. I wanted to see his chest. See his body. He used one hand to tug the shirt over his head, dropping it to the floor.
Um… wow.
I lifted my hand, feeling the warmth of his skin. I wanted to feel him all over. No. Needed to. Again, Connor’s movements mirrored my own, his fingers slipping under the fabric of my shorts. He kissed my stomach and stopped. Eyes boring into my flesh.
“When did you get this?” he asked, running his hand over the ink.
“After you left.”
He was the only person who understood the symbolism. I never thought he’d see it. Or maybe I always knew he would be the only one to see it? He grazed his fingers over the mark and then kissed it softly.
That kiss ignited a fire between us, all remaining rationality falling away.
His tenderness moved to something more frantic and I ignored the pressure on my hip, where I’d bruised it in the fall. Where his thumb dug into my skin. I focused on Connor’s eyes. On the affection and desire. Why had I given this up? I felt his breath on my ear and he whispered my name over and over, only stopping to remove the remainder of our clothing.
My heart beat strong and loud as we pushed beyond the boundaries we’d set with one another long ago. But that was then and things were different now. In the heat of this tiny room, I realized we’d changed and all I wanted was him. All he wanted was me. That hole in my chest filled with something other than the souls of the dead.
“Is this okay?” he asked, his voice thick and muffled.
“Yes,” I nodded, wondering why he would even stop to ask.
Sticky with sweat, I stared into Connor’s eyes, blissed that his mouth was on mine. Forgetting everything else, we gave ourselves to one another.
*
My whole body ached the next morning, from my head to hip, and everywhere in between. I couldn’t blame my actions on drinking, but I felt like I’d been hit by a vat of Hunch Punch. One peek at Connor’s unmoving, passed out body implied he felt the same.
I wiggled out from under his arm, the one with the chain of tattoos twisted around the taut, hard flesh, and groggily searched for my clothes. How I wasn’t embarrassed last night was the biggest question of all. I’d been carefree and perfectly at ease, but today? In the light of day? I scrambled for my shirt and running shorts.
What the hell happened?
I glanced up at Connor while tying my shoes. The perfect arching dip of muscles in his back and smooth arms splayed across the bed. The sheet barely covered his lower body and my eyes fixed on the two dimples anchoring his lower back. I was struck with an understanding of why that happened and why I wanted to. Connor was gorgeous and I didn’t exactly regret what we did. I was just confused. How did we get from running down the street to his bed?
I grazed my puffy cheek while pulling my hat down over my ears and eased out of the room silently, making sure not to make a sound. I couldn’t deal with what we’d done last night. Or how it came about. My brain was fuzzy and I needed air. And coffee. And Ava.
I ran home.
Chapter 14
Music filtered through Lila’s door when I got back to the dorm. I felt better knowing I wasn’t in the building alone, but at the same time relived I didn’t have to justify my obvious walk of shame to anyone. Oh, or explain my bruised face.
With no one else fighting for bathroom space, I took a long shower and tried to piece together what happened the night before. I’d been running with Connor – sort of. I believed his story about not stalking me. I didn’t want to be at home either. Then there was the weird moment with the spirit running through Connor and slamming into me. The spirit didn’t try to get inside my body – I would have felt that. What happened next was unclear. The time in Connor’s room felt like a dream. A hot, confusing, emotionally charged dream.
I looked down at the bruise on my hip, but instead of seeing the ugly, spreading purple mark, I focused on my tattoo. A ring of birds in the design of Connor’s protective mark. The one he’d tattooed on his wrist. The one to ward away evil like Charlotte. The specifics were hazy and I tried to recall how his mouth felt on my skin.
“Man,” I muttered to myself, leaning my head against the tiled shower wall, hot water washing away the fog. I’d had sex with Connor and I barely remembered it. I wondered if he did.
I turned off the shower and heard the sound of echoing sobs through the bathroom. I sighed and wrapped my hair in a towel. The crier had come back early, too. Bending down, I peeked under the row of stalls and saw the black Chucks and the inky blur of the tattoo.
I figured now was as good a time to confront her as any and I walked directly to the stalls and sinks. “Hello?” I asked and the sobbing stopped.
The room turned silent and I said, “Hello? Are you okay?”
Nothing.
I walked down the row, sloshing through a puddle of water, and pushed the stall door open. Empty. I tried the next and then the next. As each one turned up vacant, my heart hammered in my chest.
“I know you’re in here. What do you want or need? I can help you.”
Black shadows curled beneath the stall doors and my little speech was met with the start of a sob that shifted into a tiny voice.
“Jane?”
“Hazel?”
The response was a throaty, adult laugh that bounced off the bathroom walls.
“What are you?” I asked, eyeing the smoky spirit creeping toward me. I ran for the door, eager to get away from this unknown force. I glanced backward one more time and my eyes landed on the row of mirrors over the sink. Each still covered in a fine sheen of fog from my shower.
Each with one word etched into the steam.
Later.
*
Even after changing and calling Connor, my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I had to call him three times before rousing him. He groggily agreed to meet me at the coffee shop. Away from my dorm. Away from whatever the hell was going on.
Connor moved slower than normal, but handed me one of the two cups of coffee he bought at the counter. The café was dead. The only other person was the barista working at the counter.
“She had a tattoo of a flower on her ankle. Is it Charlotte?”
He shook his head. “No, she didn’t have a tattoo like that – or any, actually. She was too vain to mark up her flawless skin.”
“Then someone’s screwing with me,” I said. “No one knows about that ‘Later’ thing. Only me and you. I never even told Ava. It’s too private.”
“You think Hazel isn’t Hazel? But this girl? Or the girl is Hazel?”
“Or they’re all the same spirit? Like a shape-shifting spirit?”
“I think we’re in over our heads,” he admitted.
Not the words of support I’d hoped to hear. I drank my coffee, trying to warm myself up, and Connor sat quietly next to me rubbing his jaw, lost in thought. The lines next to his eyes wrinkled in concern.
“What?” I asked.
“Can we talk about last night?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Um…” His forehead creased. “I’m not really sure how all that happened. It just kind of felt…”
“Right.”
“Yeah,” he smiled faintly. “It did feel right, but it’s also sort of hazy.”
“Definitely hazy,” I agreed, relieved it wasn’t just me.
He rubbed his chin again, his beard already growing out a little. His worried expression freaked me out. He leaned in and said quietly, “Look, I didn’t use any protection.”
I nodded, remembering that. It was stupid. Totally stupid, but luckily for him, I was more prepared. “I’m on the pill, Connor. It’s okay. Unless, you know…”
Relief spread across his handsome face, even though the crease remained. “No, I’m clean. Totally. They tested me at program, plus I haven’t been with anyone.”
“Ever?” I ask, surprised.
“Well, uh, just not since,” he swallowed, “we were together. You know, before.”
This made me happy – no, relieved, due to the circumstances, but his hands fidgeted in his lap. I’d never seen him so nervous. I took his hand in my own in an attempt to calm him down. “Good. That means we’re both in the clear. Louis and I never got that far.”
The crease disappeared but he said nothing. I, on the other hand, couldn’t take the pressure anymore and blurted out, “Wow. This is awkward. I never thought you and I having sex would be so incredibly uncomfortable.”
He tightened his hand in mine. “Look, I know it wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty awesome. Really awesome.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It was strange, I don’t remember as much as I should. I had to double check the trash for that condom situation.”
His eyes skimmed over my body and I knew he hadn’t forgotten everything. Just like I hadn’t. It wasn’t so much memory loss as an altered state. “I don’t remember a lot either. It didn’t hurt like I thought it would. You know, first time and all. It was almost like I was drugged.”
Connor frowned and rested against the back of the sofa. “Something crazy is going on. That black thing running through me. That freaky stuff you experienced in the bathroom. We’re going to have to figure this out.”
“I may know who we can talk to.”
“Who? Do you want to call Jeannie?” he asked.
“No, someone closer – a friend of hers.”
“When do you want to go?”
“Now.” I stood up and picked up my trash. Connor reached for my hand and I wasn’t sure how I felt about the shift in our relationship. We went from sketchy friends to lovers overnight. It should be wrong, but was it? Even so, I didn’t push him away.
*
Madam Rosemarie’s electric sign was dark, but I took a risk and knocked on the door anyway. Connor and I were in the middle of a psychic emergency.
“You’ve met her before?” He banged on the door a second time, louder and harder.
“Ava and I stopped in to get a reading. I didn’t tell her I’m related to Jeannie. In fact, Ava gave her a fake name.” I rolled my eyes. “She kept it on the DL but I’m pretty sure she saw everything.”
We knocked again and, this time, we saw movement behind the blinds. Rosemarie peeked out at us. I lifted my hand in a wave and she dropped the shade. Moments later, the door unlocked and opened. The young psychic blocked our entry.
“I’m closed on Sunday.”
“It’s sort of an emergency,” Connor said. “Can we come in?”
Rosemarie looked us up and down, probably studying the energy around us. She looked wary, as well as tired. Her long blond hair was a mess and she had on yoga pants and a hoodie with paint stains on the sleeves. “Nina,” I said, using her real name. “I think you know my aunt, Jeannie. She’s a psychic, too.”
Her eyes widened at the use of her real name. “Jane?”
“Yeah, I’m Jane and this is Connor. She gave me your number in case we needed help.” I looked at Connor and he nodded.
“We need your help,” he said.
“We may be in some kind of trouble.”
Nina opened the door all the way and let us inside. “Come this way,” she said, taking us past the curtained door. She led us up a flight of stairs and into her apartment upstairs.
I was surprised there was none of the mystical décor from the parlor downstairs. Everything up here had a streamlined, IKEA feel.
“Would you like some tea?” she asked after offering us a seat. We sat close to one another on a grey couch.
“No, thank you,” I said. Connor shook his head. Nina disappeared behind a wall. She came back with a cup of tea for herself and sat in a chair across from us.
“How do you think I can help you?”
Connor and I started by explaining our pasts. Our gifts and how we can see the ghosts. Nina said nothing the whole time, but frowned when I told her about being Shadow Bound and what happened with Charlotte. We skipped the relationship drama and the hospitalizations because it wasn’t relevant, but I was sure she could tell we omitted details. Lies had their own shade and I had no doubt I was cloaked in it.
“It sounds like you two have handled this okay so far. What’s making you uncomfortable now?” Her eyes were focused on the space between our bodies, and I wondered if there was some sort of post-sex glow about us. I shuddered at the thought.
“We’ve had a couple of run-ins since we moved here. Some standard, some weird,” I explained. I told her about the girl in the bathroom, who I now realized was a ghost. Same with the cryptic messages on the mirrors. I looked at Connor and he described our encounters at the hotel.
“There’s something else,” he said, his eyes nervously flicked at mine. We’d barely dealt with having sex with one another and here we were, laying it out for someone we’d never met. This might be the most awkward day after losing it ever. “Last night, we were jogging and were near my dorm. A spirit, I guess, rushed us, cutting through my body and slamming into Jane.”
“So,” Nina interrupted, “the ghost passed through you but made physical contact with Jane?”
We both nodded. “They can all touch me,” I said. “It just depends on what their motives are.”
“Can you touch them back?” she asked.
“No. It doesn’t work both ways. Well, not here at least.” I told her abo
ut Evan and how we meet. To her credit, she kept a straight face during our info dump.
“Then what happened?”
“Well, Jane was hurt when the ghost hit her. She fell down and I took her up to my room to clean up. That’s when things got weird.”
“Er,” I jumped in. “Weird-er. Things are always weird.”
Connor laughed darkly and took a deep breath. “So, yeah, um… we went to my room and…”
My cheeks burned, but I rolled my eyes at Connor’s lameness. “We had sex. But it was weird and it felt like we were drugged – or at least it did for me.” Nina’s eyes darted to Connor. “He didn’t drug me. It was something sort of… mystical? Like some greater energy was involved.”
“You think you had mystical sex,” Nina said.
“Yeah,” I said. Connor nodded his head beside me. “We hadn’t had sex before. We aren’t even dating – not now. The whole thing was super strange.”
Nina leaned back in her seat. “So, basically you’re seeing ghosts, getting messages in bathroom steam, and last night you two screwed but not because you dig each other, but because the ghosts made you do it?”
“Yeah,” Connor said, again glancing at me. “That’s sort of right.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
“Well, have you heard of anything like this before? Not just the sex thing, but the fact someone knew enough to write a private message on the mirror? Why would a ghost want to haunt me like that? With stuff from another ghost? Wouldn’t using Charlotte or Tonya be a more obvious choice? Why Evan?”
“Obvious, yes. But effective? You seem pretty upset by a one-word note.”
Her aloofness made me angry and I was exhausted from the last 24 hours. No, the last week. “Evan is my friend and someone is messing with that. I need to know why. I also need to know why this is going on between me and Connor.” I hopped to my feet. “I don’t know if you understand what Shadow Bound means, but basically, at any time one of these ghosts can try to body jump me. What if they were trying to do that last night? What if something got inside me and that’s why I felt so weird when Connor and I were together?”
Grave Possession (Wraith 3) Page 12
