The kitchen.
My pulse beat in my ears as I readied my weapon and kicked open the swinging door.
The door swung.
A woman appeared.
The door shut.
The door swung open.
The woman appeared closer.
A coward’s instinct would have been to jump backwards, scream, or run. And maybe if it were just me, alone in some house, I would have been a coward. But with my girl asleep upstairs, through the pounding of my heart and the fear racing through my bones, I charged forward and swung with all my might. The doors swung shut behind me, and the kitchen was drenched in soft blue light from the moon. My weapon hit the table.
I spun, expecting to see the intruder, but there was nothing.
Something clanked behind me.
Something crunched under my boot.
Kneeling, I picked up a stone. Crystals sparkled all over the tile. There must have been hundreds of them. Squinting to get a better look, it dawned on me that they weren’t just clear stones or crystals, they were sapphires.
Sapphires littered the floor of Lunette’s kitchen. The same kinds and shapes that were scattered on Jilly’s body.
The same kind of sapphires that encrusted Alaric’s mistress’s locket.
The locket that was currently in the pocket of my pants.
The blue stones glinting like stars all around me confirmed my worst suspicion.
Whoever killed Jilly was here… and they had their sights set on Lunette.
Just as fear was building in my heart, a shriek tore through the manor.
Dropping the poker, I slipped on the stones, crashing to my knees before pulling myself forward and stumbling into the hall. Lunette screamed again. Fuck.
No, no, no.
Why did I leave her alone? Idiot. I was a freaking idiot.
Racing up the stairs, I blasted into Lunette’s room.
The calico cat sprinted between my ankles, and it seemed as if dozens of cat skulls were staring at me from the bedroom wall.
Lunette cried and clutched her blanket, shaking her head, and sitting up against her velvet headboard. “I never know when I send you away if you’re going to come back or not. I don’t know if you’ll disappear or suddenly be gone. That scares me more than the thought of a murderer in the house. I guess, I just realized that as you left the room.”
“I’m here,” I breathed, relieved to see her in one piece and not covered in sapphires. “You have me, Lunette.”
“I can’t have you,” she cried into her hands. “I can’t.”
Coming to crawl into bed with her, I pulled her wrists, gently forcing her to reveal her tear-stained face. “Why not, beautiful? Why can’t you have me?”
Her soulful eyes held my gaze for a long moment, so long I thought that maybe she wouldn’t respond. When she did open her mouth to speak, her reply was more frightening than anything I’d encountered over the past forty-eight hours.
“Because you’re dead, Shiloh. You’re a ghost.”
girls
