Chapter Nine
Chapter
Nine
Everything hurts.
Before I open my eyes, I’m painfully aware of every inch of me.
Even my hair aches. My fingernails. My lungs.
It feels like I was run over by a bus, tossed into a blender, and then digested by a giant human-eating plant.
As I surface to full consciousness, bits of memory come through in fragmented flashes.
Pulling into the manor.
Elle in my room.
The flash of light.
My body no longer under my control.
I groan, muscles protesting as I shift in my bed. How did I get in bed?
“Take it slow, Pip.” Warm fingers brush hair out of my face. “Easy now.”
When my eyelids finally manage to flutter open, bright sun burns my retinas. I flinch away from the light. “What time is it?” I try to sit, but my stomach rebels. Muscles trembling. Nausea churning.
Xander checks his phone from his place perched on the edge of my bed. “A little after two in the afternoon. On Sunday.” He presses his wrist against my forehead like he’s checking for a fever. “How are you feeling?”
“Like death.” I force myself into a seated position, gritting my teeth as my head swims. “Which makes sense, since I was briefly possessed by the dead.”
“But you’re okay now, right?” Xander leans forward and adjusts the pillows into a makeshift throne behind me. “No ghosts squatting inside you?”
“It’s just me in here.” Exhaustion tries to pull me back into unconsciousness, and with my defenses down, I find myself disappointed that Elle isn’t here. It hurts, in a way it absolutely shouldn’t, that she’s missing. “And then there’s you out there.”
“How did this happen?”
“It was my fault,” a new voice says, and I spot Elle leaning against the doorway, looking utterly miserable.
Large sections of her hair have fallen out of her ponytail.
Dark circles settle under her eyes like bruises.
“I’m so sorry, Pippa. You warned me not to touch your things. I should have remembered.”
“Maybe this haunted B&B thing was a bad idea.” Xander reaches for my hands and rubs his thumbs across my knuckles, the gesture soothing and familiar.
Elle looks like she might cry, but whether from guilt or the suggestion that her business venture is about to fail before it begins—that whatever personal reasons for the haunting won’t come to fruition—I can’t tell. Either way, the grief on her face presses on my bruised heart. I want to fix it.
“Don’t give up because I made a rookie mistake. Either of you.” I squeeze Xander’s hand, but my gaze is fixed on Elle. “I mean it. I never intended for a ghost like that to live here, and I shouldn’t have left the crystal out where you could bump into it.”
“You didn’t—”
“I did. I had a whole plan for testing the wards in the morning, but I was tired and careless. I should have locked up the crystal the moment I unpacked it.” With great effort, I drag my gaze back to Xander. “Could you find me some pain meds? And some toast or something?”
“I can go,” Elle offers, but Xander stands and shakes his head.
“You’ve been blaming yourself for this all day,” he says in a whisper when he reaches the door and stops beside Elle. I keep my attention fixed on my hands, but heat still crawls up my throat. “Talk to her. She’s really okay.”
Xander leaves Elle standing in the doorway, her head tipped back like she’s trying to keep from crying. An echo of the ghost’s anger rears in my memory, a flash of my hand fisted in her hair. I speak first. “I…I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“What?” Elle wipes the pads of her fingers under her eyes. “No, I’m fine. I’ve been worried about you.” She finally abandons her post by the door and claims Xander’s previous perch on the edge of the bed. The mattress dips under her weight, drawing her closer. “Can I check?”
Her hands hover over my abdomen, and she must see my confusion, because she clarifies. “You made me shoot you with a Taser. I want to make sure it’s not infected.”
“Oh.” I swallow hard, distracted by the heat of her thigh against my hip, near burning despite the layers of clothing and blankets that separate us. “Sure.”
With careful fingers, Elle draws up the hem of my shirt. Her touch skims against my stomach, raising goose bumps in its wake, and she frowns when she reaches the most tender parts.
“How bad is it?” I can barely breathe with her this close, her touch like a live wire against my skin. I can’t stop myself from imagining her hands pressed tighter to my body, roaming to other, more delicate places.
“It’s bruised,” she says at last, lowering my shirt back down to hide the injuries. “There are slight burn marks, too, but it looks okay given the circumstances.”
“ ‘Okay.’ Just what every woman wants to hear when someone stares at their naked torso.”
A startled, barely there laugh escapes her lips. “I was talking about the wound. Not you.”
“And what do you think of me?” I ask, pain and fatigue loosening my tongue.
Before I can take it back, Elle has cocked her head to one side, considering me. “I haven’t decided yet.” Her words are whisper soft but heavy with promise. “More than okay, at least.”
I chuckle, but even that’s too much for my battered body. I groan, and Elle springs off the bed like she’s electrocuted me. Again.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
My hand finds hers, and I tug her back to the edge of the bed. “It’s fine. Just stop making me laugh. Everything’s sore.”
She worries at her lower lip, but she doesn’t take her hand from mine. “Because of the ghost? Or because you made me tase you?”
“Both?” I settle deeper into the pillows, letting them support my weight. “You did the right thing, Elle. Possessions like that are dangerous. The spirit wanted to hurt you, and when it was done, there’d be nothing to stop it from throwing me out a second-story window.”
“Fuck.”
“You did the right thing,” I say again, squeezing her hand. “This wasn’t the first time I’ve accidentally gotten myself possessed. It comes with the territory. I’m not used to living with other people. I should have taken extra precautions.”
“So, no partner at home? No roommates?”
“The only nonrelative I’ve ever lived with is Xander.” I stare up at the ceiling, my life feeling suddenly barren and cold. “I don’t even have cats. I’ve wanted to adopt a pair of kittens for as long as I can remember, but it never felt like the right time.”
A thoughtful hum reverberates in her throat. “Can I ask you something?”
“Pretty sure you just did.” When she levels me with an unamused look, I nod. “Go ahead.”
“If electricity is so effective at destroying ghosts, why do people hire witches to cleanse buildings?”
A wave of exhaustion washes over me, but I fight to remain awake for her.
“Electricity only works if it comes in contact with the entirety of the ghost’s form.
When they’re not crammed inside a living body, or otherwise contained in some way, they’re amorphous.
Electricity is also hard to control. It would be impossible to fill the manor with electricity without burning the whole place to the ground. ”
“But when that ghost was inside of you,” Elle says, testing her understanding, “the electricity was able to get to all of it. Because it was contained within your body.”
“Pretty much,” I say, though the words come out mumbled as sleep tries to claim me.
I realize Elle never pulled away from my touch, and a surge of bravery lets me brush my thumb across her knuckles.
Her skin is soft and warm against mine. “Don’t give up on your dream, Elle.
This was a terrible fluke. We can safely haunt this place. ”
There’s a smile in her voice when she responds. “You’re awfully confident for a witch who was possessed less than twenty-four hours ago.”
“At least now we know it’s possible to transfer a ghost from one location to another.
” With the last bit of my strength, I force my eyelids open.
Elle sits beside me, a tender expression on her face.
I swallow the rush of longing that warms my chest. “Trust me, I’ll figure this out for you. I promise.”
“Trust doesn’t come easy for me, but I can try.” She brushes a lock of hair out of my face, her fingers trailing along my jaw and down the curve of my neck as she pulls away. “Get some rest, Pippa.”
Elle finally releases me as she gets up to leave, and she passes Xander on his way back in. I can barely look at my best friend, my heart thundering traitorously in my chest. Even as I accept the painkillers, my mind is caught on the feel of Elle’s fingers along my skin.
The sensation carries me into a dreamless sleep.
I don’t feel human again until Wednesday afternoon.
After a hot shower to wash away multiple days spent in bed, I take stock of my situation.
I lost four days of our already tight deadline to this mistake.
Elle told me she doesn’t trust easily, and I’m not about to break that trust by failing here.
I text Dea to overnight a pair of lepidolite spheres to the B&B—it’ll be good to have a backup in case I break another one—and get an update on the business.
Unfortunately, the phones have been dead since I left.
Not a single person has reached out for an appointment or consultation.
Eventually, my grumbling stomach sends me downstairs in search of food, and as I near the kitchen, the now-familiar sound of Elle’s true crime podcast washes over me.
She’s fully absorbed in her work, folding dough around a rectangular block of butter.
Once that’s done, she grabs her rolling pin and proceeds to beat the ever-loving shit out of the dough.
With each slam of the pin, the muscles in her bare arms flex, biceps and triceps and whatever the damn muscles in her forearms are called.
It’s obscenely attractive, and it makes me think of Sunday.
Elle’s hand in mine. Her fingers trailing across my jaw.
And what do you think of me?
More than okay, at least.