Millicent hovered in the doorway, between them and the stairs. She wasn’t as transparent as she’d been the last time, like a body beneath the surface of the water, wavering a little. Sam’s stomach turned with the sudden, horrifying realization—they wouldn’t be able to run through her.
Could they lure her in, then run around her?
Edmund.He heard the word in his head, in a voice he didn’t know.
Pure panic clenched his chest, and he realized he didn’t want to wait another second.
“The window,” he said.
He hoped he could get the window open with no problem, but he didn’t know, not in this old house, and he didn’t know what the ghost would do. Could she hurt them? Would she move toward him as he tried to open it? If she did, Erielle could escape down the front.
He wished he had time to explain the plan, but he was oddly afraid the ghost would hear them and counteract their plans.
He released Erielle and lunged toward the window.
Sam’s fingers were shaking as he loosened the little security locks Erielle had installed, then flipped the lever on the main lock. He heaved the window open with more ease than he ever would have expected. He was fully prepared to break this one in order to get out and was amazed he didn’t have to. Before he could see if the ghost was heading toward him, Erielle popped up beside him and looked down the sloping roof.
“Oh, Samson, I don’t think I can.”
“I’ll go first. If she comes at me, you get past her down the stairs.”
She shook her head wildly. “No. Samson!”
The last word split the air in a scream as cold sliced through his shoulder, freezing muscle and bone. His chest seized, his breath caught.
Erielle’s fists twisted in his shirt, yanking him sideways. Agony lanced through him as he turned—against his will—toward the face inches from his own.
Millicent.
The wavering face was inches from his own, and he froze, looking into the black holes where her eyes should be. It reminded him so much of how he’d seen his mother earlier, he couldn’t react.
“Sam! Sam! Samson!”
He heard his name as if from far away, but couldn’t move, feeling like he was underwater now, with Millicent. He felt something tugging at the front of his shirt, but still couldn’t move.
The ghost opened her mouth, her icy breath coating him with the scent of decay.
Then Erielle wrenched at his shirt again, and Sam tumbled through the window.
Shingles scraped his palms as he slid across the steep roof. He hooked a boot against the gutter and stopped, gasping, his heart jackhammering.
He looked up just in time to see Erielle scramble out after him, barefoot, bare-legged, the ghost lurching behind her with skeletal fingers outstretched.
He reached out a hand to offer her, to brace her, and his hand brushed up her bare thigh before he caught her hand in an iron grip.
She shoved her hair out of her face, eyes wild. “How do we get down?”
Keeping himself between her and the edge of the roof, he scooted toward the solarium. They could get down to the ground from there.
He hoped.
The rough shingles tore at his skin, and he worried about Erielle, bare-legged and barefoot. He couldn’t protect her anymore, though.
He eased down first, lowering himself onto the glass solarium roof. “Give me your hand. I’ll?—”
The words cut off in his throat.
Because the moment his fingers brushed her waist, the roof beneath him gave way with a deafening crack.
