4. Chapter 4
4
“ S ophie.”
My eyes snapped open. I lay on my back in bed, my heart pounding but unable to move. There was a chill in the air, like I had left the window open, and goosebumps covered my skin.
I could still feel him, the vampire with the glowing silver eyes. My nerves buzzed with the ghost of his touch, my core throbbed with a needy ache, and my salivary glands tingled. I could taste him on my tongue, like chocolate and spices, sinfully rich and decadent.
“Sophie.”
I swallowed roughly. Someone was here with me. In my bed. Not the man—the vampire—because he wasn’t real. Because both he and the shifter assassin had been a dream.
But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even turn my head to see who had said my name.
Deep down I knew. I recognized the voice. It belonged to my sister, Amaya. My sister, who I had watched die.
“Luna Sofia!”
That name. Nobody had called me by that name for decades. Not since Javier vanished.
I squeezed my eyelids shut, and tears leaked out from the corners of my eyes, trailing down my temples. I tried to ask the haunting specter of my sister what she wanted, but all that came out was a weak whine. I didn’t have enough control over my lips or tongue to form actual words.
“You’re in danger, Soph,” my dead sister said. “They’ve found you. You can’t stay here.” Her voice grew more urgent with each instruction. “Find Gavin, the vampire with the silver eyes. Only he can protect you now.”
I whimpered and wiggled my fingers, fighting the paralysis. I clenched my hands into fists and slowly, with great effort, turned my head atop the pillow.
My sister crouched beside me on the bed, luminous and ethereal. She was so young. Little more than a child. In my memory, she seemed so much older.
“Amaya?” I murmured.
She leaned in until her ghostly visage was mere inches from mine. “Find him, little sister. Find Gavin!”
A low growl rumbled from the foot of the bed, and my already racing heart stumbled, then beat even faster. For a moment, I thought it was the shifter. The assassin. But that had been a nightmare that turned into something far sweeter, while this was real.
With great effort, I raised my head enough to peer toward the end of the bed. A lithe feline form stalked painstakingly slowly up the mattress, following the length of my legs. Sombra, my stray-turned-house-cat. The panic tightening my chest eased slightly at seeing him.
Sombra crept higher, his low growl shaking the bed. He hissed at my sister.
“Find him!” Amaya urged. And then she stuck her tongue out at the cat.
Sombra swiped at her with one paw, his claws extended.
My sister’s specter vanished.
The panic that had gripped me tight eased the rest of the way, and the temporary paralysis left my limbs. My heartbeat slowed, and my head cleared. Breathing hard, I rolled onto my side and stroked Sombra’s sleek fur as the cat curled into the crook of my body.
Had the ghost of my sister really been here? Had Sombra seen her? Or was he just reacting to me, to my fear at seeing ghosts?
As the panic abated and reason returned, I thought the truth was far more mundane. Amaya was just a hallucination born of a bout of sleep paralysis, trapping me in the terrifying limbo between asleep and awake, where elements of my sleeping mind appeared in the real world. And Sombra hadn’t actually swiped at Amaya but had been reacting to me.
It used to happen all the time. I would wake to the specter of Javier huddled in the corner of my room, his body brutally beaten and his spirit broken. The disturbing condition hadn’t happened in years, but it was easy enough to recognize. The sensation was so uniquely terrifying, hardly the kind of thing anyone could forget.
I relaxed, letting Sombra’s comforting purr lull me back to sleep. At least the dreams that filled the remainder of the night turned out to be much more pleasant.