Instead of mere confusion and drifting memories that wouldn’t hold still, today the woman’s image was less blurry.
Beautiful face. Full lips parted in innocent surprise. Dark curls framing rosy cheeks.
Hatred, red hot and then ice cold.
Killer.
“Did you have dream sex with me?” Grace whispered, and the world inside his head snapped away, leaving him wondering if the hatred and the word that was emblazoned in his brain were meant for the mystery woman, or for himself.
“I didn’t mind. I just want to know if that’s something we do? Because I’m not leaving. You can’t leave. Last night was awesome, and you can move furniture. So. Yeah. Was that a dream, or you?”
His letters were scrawled and shaky, his form unraveling.
Me.
Nyx felt himself pulled down and back, shrinking and unspooling like a bobbin of thread falling from a great height, unraveling all the way.
Until he was back beneath the bed, gnashing his teeth and clawing at the braver beasts trying to consume him.
Killer.
Am I the one bound here for my sins? AmIthe killer?
The pale face with rosy cheeks branded itself in front of his eyes, and the rage and hatred filled him.
It was only when he heard Grace’s puzzled, plaintive cry of, “Nyx? If you want to see me again, I’ll be here tonight. I’m here every night,” that he realized where he was.
The voice came closer as he sank further, this time allowing the darkness of the void to own him, just a little. He wanted the fight. He ached for the slashing and biting he usually tried to avoid. He wanted to tire himself out and cleanse himself of the thing he’d tried so hard to forget.
“I hope I’ll see you in my dreams again,” Grace’s whisper seemed to come from the distant peaks of far-off mountains, but in reality, he knew she was just on the side of this strange cosmic divide.
He needed to be baptized by a battle that would drain every dark thought from him. That would exhaust him and make him forget.
I want to come back to Grace with a clear head.
And maybe a clean heart.
Chapter Ten
“Excuse me. Hi?” Grace walked up to the reference desk and spoke softly, hoping to attract the attention of the woman peering into a box of battered, probably donated books.
“Hi! Can I help you?” She asked, turning.
“Oh. Um. Yes.” Grace tried to collect her thoughts, but her first instinct was that she wished she’d done something with her hair or worn a more feminine blouse. The buxom Latina librarian at the reference desk looked like a more realistic Jessica Rabbit, or one of those old pin-up girl posters that Grace had found in G-Pop’s old army footlocker. She wasn’t in the habit of noticing people’s shapes, but sometimes her own figure—described by her oh-so-helpful mother as “flat as a teenage boy’s”—provoked a comparison, especially when she was wearing torn-up jeans, a smudged tank top, and had her frizzy hair up in a messy bun.
