XLV
“Maddie? You awake . . . ?”
The door creaked open before I could answer.
Penny stood in the gap, wrapped in an oversized cardigan and clutching a pillow to her chest like a shield. Her eyes darted toward the shadows of the hallway before she slipped inside and shut the door with the heel of her slipper.
“I can’t do it,” she whispered. “The guest room is doing that thing again. The shadows are moving. Not like wind-in-the-trees moving. Like actively-watching-me-sleep moving.” She swallowed. “Can I just sleep in here?”
I pulled the quilt back.
She dove into the bed, scrambling over me as she climbed beneath the covers. Her cold toes found the heat of my legs, and she tucked her head against my shoulder with a shaky sigh.
“Ugh, you’re like a little space heater.”
Then her hand brushed the mattress beside me.
She froze.
“Okay, that’s weird.” Her voice dropped. “This spot is freezing. Like you had a block of ice here two seconds ago.”
I opened my mouth to blame the draft. The cracked window. The old house.
But I could still feel the phantom pressure of Heaton’s mouth on mine.
My heartbeat turned into a war drum.
“Pen—”
“Don’t.” She squeezed my arm.
She turned her head, looking at the empty chair by the desk, where a white ribbon of smoke still curled into the moonlight. Then to the rumpled pillows. Then back to me.
“Oh my God.”
I pulled the covers up to my chin.
“Maddie.” Her eyes widened. “Did he just leave? Or is this a regular thing now? How long has the ghost been staying over?”
“Ghost? I don’t—”
“Uh-huh. Let’s review the data, shall we?” She held up one finger. “One: mysterious new transfer who shows up everywhere like he has a personal GPS on your soul. Two: I feel like I’m walking into a meat locker every time I bring you a snack.”
Heat flooded my face.
“Three,” she continued, nudging my knee with hers, “you live in a bunker full of paranormal research, industrial amounts of salt, and iron pokers. They’re everywhere, Maddie.
” Her voice softened. “And four . . . sometimes you flinch like you can feel someone who isn’t there.
You get this look on your face. Like something invisible just touched you. ”
I groaned and buried my face in her shoulder.
“At first, I thought I should stage an intervention,” Penny said, pulling me closer. “But it never felt wrong. Terrifying? Absolutely. But not wrong.” She hesitated. “Whatever he is, he looks at you like you’re the only thing in this world that’s actually solid.”
The corner of the room seemed to darken.
Not enough for Penny to notice.
Enough for the bond beneath my ribs to give one low pulse.
I lifted my head, fingers worrying a loose thread in the quilt. The Ghost Flower had my thoughts loose at the edges, too soft to hide behind sarcasm.
“I don’t always know what we are,” I admitted. “And I’m pretty sure his family doesn’t like me.”
Penny propped herself up on one elbow. “His family?”
I winced.
“Wait.” Her eyes widened. “His ghost family?”
“Yeah.”
She stared at me for a moment, then let out an incredulous laugh.
“Okay. Great. So now we’re meeting the haunted in-laws.”
Despite everything, my mouth twitched.
“I offered to meet them.”
Penny’s head jerked back. “You offered?”
“He didn’t say no.”
Her brows climbed. “Maddie, that’s not nothing.”
I stared at the blanket between us. “Or maybe it is. Maybe I just said it because I want to understand him, and he let me because I’m useful.”
Penny went still.
“You really think that’s all this is?”
I laughed, but it came out thin. “I think once this is over, he’ll realize I was just the closest living girl in a bad moment.”
Penny’s expression softened.
Not with pity.
With disbelief.
“Maddie,” she said carefully, “a guy like that does not let you anywhere near his family unless you matter.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know enough.”
“I’m the one who pushed for it.”
“And he still could’ve shut it down.”
I didn’t answer.
Because he could have. Because he hadn’t.
I turned my face deeper into the pillow. “He called me the goddamn noise in his head, Pen.”
Penny grimaced. “Okay. That was rude.”
“It was honest.” My throat tightened. “And maybe that’s all I am right now. A distraction. A problem. A living battery he got stuck with.”
Her hand found mine beneath the blanket and squeezed.
“You’re spiraling.”
“I’m being realistic.”
“No,” she whispered. “You’re being cruel to yourself.”
I looked up at her then, the room soft at the edges.
“What if I’m reading all of this wrong?”
Penny held my gaze.
“Then meeting them will tell you.”
I let out a shaky breath.
“What if it changes the way he looks at me?”
She shrugged one shoulder, gentle but unsparing.
“What if it changes the way you look at him?”
“That’s not comforting.”
“I’m not trying to comfort you.” Her voice softened. “I’m trying to keep you from building your whole life around whatever version of him only exists in this room.”
That landed. Hard.
My eyes drifted toward the window, toward the November night, toward the world beyond, which always seemed to get bigger whenever Heaton was in it.
Penny was right.
The walls were shrinking. Whatever this was, it wasn’t going to stay contained inside Dead Time and whispered conversations and cold spots in my bed.
I didn’t want the version of him that only lived in the dark.
I wanted the rest of him.
Even if the rest were worse. Even if it changed everything.
Penny eventually settled back against the pillow, her breathing softening beside me, her warmth a living answer to the cold still lingering in the mattress.
But sleep stayed out of reach.
The bond wasn’t screaming anymore, but it was far from quiet. It thrummed low and heavy in my marrow, a steady reminder that I was tied to something dead.
And he was tied to something living.
Something breakable.
Something temporary.
I stared into the dark and tried not to wonder whether he was still nearby.
Keeping watch. Listening. Regretting.
Because that was the thought I couldn’t shake, no matter how badly I wanted to. That once the danger was over, once the panic and urgency and hunters had all burned out, Heaton would look at the knot between us and realize what I already feared.
That I had only ever made sense in the middle of a disaster.
And how could I blame him for wanting his eternity back?