XXXVI #2
When we stepped out of the cabin, the morning air was a clean blade, biting my cheeks and turning my breath into fog.
Then a scent hit me.
The bright, electric tang of clementine and blood orange.
My eyes found him immediately.
Heaton stood near the treeline, one shoulder braced against a pine. One hand was in his pocket. In the other, a thin, pale hand-roll burned.
The tip didn’t glow red.
It pulsed deep blue, casting sapphire light over the harsh lines of his face.
Ruby skimmed ahead, bare feet silent on the cold earth. She moved with restless, impossible joy, as if being dead was just another way to be free.
I followed; every step a careful negotiation with my ribs.
My eyes fell to the smoldering ember in Heaton’s hand.
“You smoke?”
Ruby’s head snapped toward him, her playful demeanor vanishing. She saw the glowing tip, then caught the scent a second later. Her eyes narrowed into stormy slits.
“Is that Ghost Flower?” she asked. “Heaton, are you going to be good for the drive?”
He didn’t look at her.
He took another slow pull; the ember flaring a deeper indigo.
“I’m fine.”
Ruby’s brow lifted. “That’s not what I asked.”
The bond stirred in my chest.
Not a flare. Just a brush of something cooler than my own thoughts, tinged with that same citrus bite.
I swallowed.
Heaton flicked ash into the dirt.
“You want me steady,” he said, voice flat. “This is me, steady.”
He took another slow drag, and for a moment, the smoke didn’t dissipate. It coiled in the air in front of him, shimmering with a pearlescent light, like a captured wisp of northern light.
Ruby made a shooing gesture with her hand.
“Yes, yes, very pretty. Are you done with your light show? Some of us have a living girl to smuggle home before breakfast.”
As she turned, Heaton’s gaze didn’t follow.
It remained locked on me.
An arctic pulse traveled through my chest—not a jolt of pain, but a firm, possessive pressure.
My breath hitched, and a shiver deeper than the chilly morning air wracked through my body.
I pulled the jacket tighter, but it didn’t help.
Beneath it, I could still feel the soft linen of his shirt like a second skin.
And just like that, memory returned.
The bed.
His hand on my ribs.
The way I had leaned into him without thinking, without asking, as if something inside me had already decided.
Heat flooded my face.
God.
I had practically—
My stomach dropped.
I remembered the desperate, aching need that hadn’t felt entirely mine. My whole body screaming for his touch. His voice, cool against my skin.
That’s not you.
He hadn’t just rejected me; he had diagnosed me. Told me my desire wasn’t even real.
Because I hadn’t known. And now, I didn’t know if I could trust the difference.
The bond stirred again, dizzy but present, as if it were aware of the direction of my thoughts.
Of course it was.
Of course he was.
I could feel it—the weight of his focus, severe and unrelenting, as if he were reading every flicker of that memory as it crossed my mind.
His expression was unreadable.
But his attention—
absolute.
I couldn’t stand it—the silence, the scrutiny, the unnerving sense that he saw more than the surface.
I broke first, turning away from his stare and starting after Ruby down the trail.
My pulse stuttered with the effort of keeping up. I watched Ruby’s retreating back, then looked at the miles of steep, unforgiving ridge ahead.
“So . . . how are we getting back?” I asked. “Because I don’t think I can hike five miles like this.”
Ruby perked up, spinning on her heel. Her red ribbon slashed brightly against the gray woods.
“Wheels.”
“ . . . Wheels?”
“Ghost wheels,” she said proudly. “There’s an abandoned car half a mile down the service road. Been sitting there since the seventies. It’s practically part of the dirt now. We nudge it whenever we need to move like the living.”
She wiggled her fingers like a magician revealing the grand finale.
“Community vehicle.”
Heaton dropped the hand-roll and ground it out under his heel with a soft hiss.
“She means we can operate anything effectively divorced from the living,” he said, voice low and distant. “Abandoned objects. Things people have forgotten. If the living don’t claim it, the dead can inhabit it.”
His eyes flicked toward me.
“It’s how I got you here last night.”
Ruby smirked. “Not the first time we’ve had to pretend to be alive. You’ve probably walked past way more ghosts operating heavy machinery than you realize.”
My brain politely declined to process that.
The trees thinned, revealing a cracked service road. Parked crooked across the dirt was a matte black ’70s Chevy Nova. Chrome trim caught the morning light like silver teeth, and the car had a presence that felt almost hungry.
“Our noble steed,” Ruby said, patting the hood.
The engine didn’t just start.
It purred awake beneath her hand, a low, eager shudder.
“You’re drained,” Heaton warned, his silver eyes tracking the way sunlight seemed to pass straight through Ruby’s shoulder.
She shrugged. “Theo’s waiting by the lake. A few hours in deep water and I’ll be fine.”
She gave Heaton a long, knowing look.
He opened the passenger door for me, then paused.
“Ruby.”
His voice changed just enough to make her still.
“Thank you. And maybe don’t tell the others. Not yet.”
Ruby laughed, a soft, bubbling sound.
“Oh, Heat. It’s a little late for that.”
She stepped closer, her voice lowering.
“You tethered yourself to a living girl. That isn’t subtle. You can mask it, but you can’t hide a link this strong forever. Not from them.”
His shoulders tightened, but he remained silent.
Ruby’s expression softened, the storm in her eyes calming.
“Be careful with what you’ve done,” she said, gaze flicking to me. “This is bigger than either of us.”
Then she winked one gray, translucent eye at me and spun on her heel. Dawn caught the red ribbon in her hair, and her form unraveled until she was only another piece of morning mist.
Heaton shut my door with a solid, decisive click and circled the hood.
Inside, the Nova felt faintly warm, as if it had been waiting.
When he slid into the driver’s seat, the engine deepened beneath his hands. He rested them on the wheel for a moment, head bowed, bracing himself against the weight of Ruby’s warning.
Then he dropped the car into gear, and the Nova surged forward—leaving the silence of the mountain behind as we rushed back toward the noisy frequency of the living.