Chapter Three
Nomi
Istartled awake, laid out over my couch and drooling on my hand. Castiel had, in fact, spanked Dean and I’d been a happy camper after a full belly of lasagna when I read it on my couch. Guess I’d fallen asleep here instead of my bed.
Turning on my phone, I groaned and realized it was still the middle of the night. I padded over to the bathroom and nearly died when Ferguson jetted out in front of me. My arms went out to brace on the wall and save me from a face-plant.
“Fergy! Can you not see some of us are walking here?” I growled at the menace, but he wasn’t listening. His copper eyes were tracking something on the ceiling. I stared up and sucked in a surprised breath.
A red ball of light danced and skated from one end of the ceiling to the other, chasing a blue one that left a trail of something shiny behind it.
A drop of water hit my face as I watched the dazzling display. Then both bounced and danced in front of my eyes. They weren’t lights. They were…wispy? Tendrils of color that smoked but still somehow kept their shape?
I opened my mouth in awe, sure I was dreaming. They swirled around me, and the blue one touched my face. It was cold. I lifted my hand to it, but the little red one was there, brushing and stroking across my cheek, instantly warming the area and leaving moisture in its place.
“What are you two?” I murmured.
Ferguson meowed in concern, bopping his head with their antics. He’d probably watch me die and eat my body after, so he’d be of no help if these things decided to attack, but I still loved the cute little dude.
“Are you guys lost?” I asked them, knowing they wouldn’t answer. But the two whirled around each other as if responding to my question and brushed along my arm.
The two colors danced across my dark blue hair, chasing strands and playing along my roots. It tickled. Soon, spots of me had been frozen then melted and I was giggling at their hilarious shenanigans.
Definitely dreaming. Not that I was complaining. I appreciated the fun ones when so often my childhood crept back in to terrorize me at night. Even after all these years, the memories of what my father did hadn’t left me.
I twirled around and nearly staggered all the way back with a shrill scream. The dark silhouette towering inside my living room slash kitchen put my heart into chaos.
I didn’t have a weapon, so the phone in my hand became one. I lifted it and leveled a demand at the looming figure. “Who are you and why are you in my home?”
His head tilted, oddly reminiscent of the man from earlier. When he didn’t speak or move, I took another step back. My wispy friends flickered and spun in the air right in front of my face.
“Go, save yourselves,” I told them, still half-convinced I was dreaming but refusing to let my cuties get hurt even if I was.
Unfortunately, the adorable things didn’t listen. They strobed their colorful light in gleeful bursts and dashed over to the figure. Oh no, they were either a little bit stupid or survival challenged. If I didn’t do something, the cute lights were goners.
“Not that way, little cuties! The monster’s going to get you!” I tried to warn them.
I held my breath as they rubbed against the imposing figure and shed their colorful light over different parts of his body. But then they reached his face and my chest seized at the sight of him.
I blinked. He blinked. We both blinked. Two owls in my living room. It would’ve been funny if I wasn’t afraid for my life.
“You—”
“You can see them,” his skin-crawling baritone murmured. That deep voice definitely didn’t match his pretty face.
My eyes narrowed in confusion, noticing a pattern. “Uh, yeah. Hard to miss those colorful cuties.”
His eyes tracked them as they flickered and flew over to me, doing the same thing they’d done a few minutes prior, icing and melting all over my bare skin. In a tank top and pair of cotton shorts, there was a lot of real estate for them to have their fun, and in no time at all, I was dripping.
Uh, my skin and not the thirsty thing between my legs. Although, being this close to a guy as hot as a celebrity with a voice that could summon demons might eventually have that effect on me.
I shook my head in an attempt to shake the thought loose. I had a weird guy in my home, a couple of cute wispy things, and no idea what the fuck was going on. Clearly, this was a dream. I’d gone to bed thinking about spanking and manifested the hottie from between the buildings.
My brain was a saucy beech.
“My dreams have gotten so weird,” I said to myself before turning and heading to bed. Maybe if I fell asleep in my dream, I’d wake up in reality.
Worth a shot.
I made it to my bed and crawled under the covers, but the stranger had followed and took to haunting the corner of my room, his watchful red eyes trying to pick me apart. The wispy cuties scurried across my pillow and cuddled into my face.
“You guys are getting my pillow wet,” I chastised them.
They bounced next to my cheek as if giggling and terribly amused by making the spot next to me damp. My eyes stole back over to where the stranger loomed.
He hadn’t said anything else. He didn’t seem to be much of a talker, which was odd because I was. My brain apparently took on a whole new personality for this dream.
Shrugging, I decided it was better to try to sleep sooner rather than later. With determination, I closed my eyes and willed sleep to take me.
My body is ready.
After a few minutes, the skin at the back of my neck prickled and my eyes shot open. The cuties were still cuddling my face, but when I turned to look to my right, my sexy ghost was next to the bed and no longer in the corner.
“Don’t you have other people to haunt?” I asked him.
He crouched next to me, his red eyes at eye level. “You’re the soul I’m meant to protect, so no.”
I blinked. He blinked. It’d become our thing.
My eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I’m dreaming.”
“You’re not,” his deep husk dismissed quickly.
His curious gaze went to the cuties who’d taken to snuggling under my chin, making their weirdly wet home in the crook of my neck. So when he reached out, I refused to move too much because I didn’t want to hurt them, but I had a perfectly good voice to use.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, already protective over my colorful cuties.
His expressionless face was a soft glow in the dark, but those ensnaring red eyes lifted to mine and they were all I could see. “They’re getting your pillow wet.”
It was such an unexpected comment that I opened my mouth, unable to argue. Water was dripping down my throat, but the idea of him taking them made me upset.
“It’s fine.”
I might’ve imagined it, but I almost thought his expression softened at my response. It was tough to read him in the dark. My skill was reading people, not night vision.
“You prefer to be wet?” he asked in such a serious way that a sneaky smile tugged at my lips.
Did he not hear the sexual innuendo in his question, or was I just that much of a perv? Okay, so I was a perv, but come on, that was a prime-time comedy set up.
“I mean, sometimes being wet is fun,” I couldn’t help but say.
A crease formed between his brows, but it was gone so quickly I couldn’t be sure I saw it. He withdrew his arm but stayed crouched next to me.
This was by far the weirdest dream I’d ever had.
Ghost didn’t fit the usual guy I pined over in my fictional stories.
Those guys were sex beasts who demanded a girl take off her panties and let him feast on her.
Or he’d chase her down in the middle of the forest, proclaiming she was his mate and forever bound to him no matter where she ran.
This guy was quiet and almost too innocent for a bedroom burglar who might moonlight as a ghost.
A part of me really wished my brain had gone the sexier route. I mean, the guy was gorgeous and it’d been a long time since my snatch had seen any action that wasn’t battery-operated. I could’ve used the extra fantasy fun.
Instead, my brain, the cock-blocking bitch, came up with this—a weird guy with weird wisps crouched weirdly next to my bed and not tearing off my clothes or diving his face between my legs. But if I wasn’t going to wake up any time soon, might as well humor him.
“Why do you need to protect me?”
As if he hadn’t expected the question, his head canted again. “Because both angels and demons will want to kill you and ensure your soul can’t be used to start the apocalypse.”
“Oh, of course,” I replied sarcastically.
He stared at me, neither elaborating nor pulling away. His face didn’t portray fascination, but it was there in the way he stared at me. Something about me made him curious, and it was an odd feeling to be studied. Guess this was what Felix always complained about when I read his moods.
“So, why’s it your job to protect me from angels and demons?”
The question sounded crazy when I asked it out loud, mainly because no story I’d ever heard painted angels as the bad guys. But this was also a dream my mind pieced together from hordes of fan fiction I’d consumed since I was eighteen. It made sense it was feral and cooky.
His eyes strayed to the wisps still under my chin. “Because I’m one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
I gave a very slight shift of my head to serve as a nod. “Yeah, that makes sense. Although, wouldn’t it be your job to take my soul if it’s meant to start the apocalypse? Aren’t you guys the harbingers or whatever?”
Was this how Alice felt in Wonderland when she wandered around asking weird questions as if they were perfectly normal?
Nomi in Dreamland.
Rising, he stared down at me. “It is.” Offering him an eyebrow, he went on without me asking the question. “But my priorities are different than the others.”
“And what are those priorities?” He seemed hesitant for the first time since I started interrogating him, so I cut in quickly.
“You don’t have to tell me if it makes you uncomfortable to talk about”—and also because this was a dream and none of it mattered come morning when I’d either forget or spend a day dissecting it.
But that comment had frozen him to the spot. The first sign of surprise twisted his expression, however brief, as if he never expected me to pick up on it. That happened a lot with people, so I had the usual shpiel to explain it away.
“I’m very good at reading faces and body language. Sorry if that bothers you.”
He stayed quiet, his eyes dropping to the wisps under my chin. “Hmm.”
It was a soft noise, but it brought my full attention to his very nice mouth. A mouth a girl could get very addicted to kissing, I might add.
“Ignis. Glacies,” he murmured.
I felt the wisps move, but they didn’t leave my neck, and that seemed to bother Ghost. He stared at them, his expression void of emotion, but I detected the shift in his presence. He was confused again.
“Are they yours?”
He didn’t answer, just stared at them.
“Hey, cuties. Your daddy wants you to go to him,” I said to them, nearly missing the twitch of his mouth.
The colors shifted and tickled across my face, a brief chill that was followed by a warm heat kissing my cheeks and forehead. They wandered from one side to the other before settling next to my ear.
I huffed with a smile. “I’ve always had a way with animals, so I guess these cuties aren’t any different. Ignis and Glacies is what you named them? That’s adorable.”
They flew out and danced above me, as if their happiness couldn’t be contained. He watched them the same way I did. I wasn’t the only one dazzled by the sight.
But then his eyes shifted to my window. “Stay with the mortal,” was all he murmured before stalking out of my room. The colorful cuties scurried across my chest, but I was left to stare at where my Ghost had gone.
Or was it Horseman?
Such a weird dream.