Page 4

But maybe she could be the one I could finally help. If I talked to Rhodes, or maybe I could find Gloria, I could let them know what was going on so they could inform the police. Except… the womanwasthe police.

Had they started to put the pieces together? Were they finally onto him?

My current priority was Chance, however. I needed to help him acclimate to his new reality. I would find someone to help when I felt it was safe to leave him for a little while. He wouldn’tbe able to follow with his essence still tied to his bones. He, in particular, would struggle with that. Chance had always been a wanderer. Free-spirited was putting it lightly. He wouldn’t do well being bound to one place, let alonethisplace, with all its negative energy and malicious intent. This land would have been a prime location for his career as a paranormal investigator, but now that was behind him, and he had become the very thing he had investigated in life.

I wasn’t sure how he would handle that. Death was a massive change that took time and patience to come to terms with. Not only that, but he had left so many people behind who loved him dearly. Poor Ashe. Poor Mikey. I wasn’t sure how close he and Gloria were now, but I knew that they had got along well before, so she was likely to mourn him, too.

I wasn’t completely certain how his parents would take the news. I had a bad feeling that they would be more concerned with the social decline a second disappearance in the family would cause, not to mention their youngest son being responsible.

My lips twitched as I held back my smirk at the prospect of Mallory and Calvin getting what was coming to them once this all came to light, because it would, and soon. Now wasn’t the time to smile, however, so I squashed it before it could spread. I didn’t want Chance to think I was taking pleasure in the horrors still unfolding, though he wasn’t focused on me.

His spirit was dragged along against his will while Blake compiled the pieces of what used to be his body, ready to transport to the surface to be buried. He wouldn’t do so immediately, which he made clear when his cold, soulless eyes found his next victim huddled up in the dark. No one could say he never took an opportunity when it presented itself to him, and he did so now with malicious glee. He dumped the gory mess of Chance’s body in plain sight, close enough for her totouch and definitely close enough for her to get a good look despite the darkness of the dingy basement. She gagged, choking on her tears and the bile as it rose up her throat. She bent over as far as she could to expel the seemingly meagre contents of her stomach, but Blake only laughed like it was all one big joke, perfectly tailored for his entertainment.

When he grabbed the shovel from beside the stairs, still muddied from when he’d used it to bury Bianca, we all breathed a sigh of relief. The cop sniffled, still trying to stay quiet and unobtrusive, but it was pointless. She had caught Blake’s attention, and she was already in his basement of doom. There was no skating under the radar for her. Not anymore.

What I found the most interesting, though, was that she couldn’t see me. She was showing no signs of an ability to sense me, which I took to mean that she wasn’t close to death. Not yet, at least. That was the pattern that was emerging. Bianca had noticed me when she was about to die. Rhodes was already dying. So, how was Gloria sensitive to ghosts?

I wasn’t sure I would ever fully understand the rules of our existence, especially when they kept changing.

Since there wasn’t anything I could do to communicate with the poor woman, I turned my attention back to the man whocouldsee me, only to find him already watching me. I tried to discern what he was feeling, but his expression was shut down. He was hunched over as if the weight of what had just occurred, what he’d just been forced to endure and witness, was trying to crush him. His eyes were devoid of the light that had drawn me to him all those years ago, instead gazing ahead dully like he wasn’t actually seeing anything.

If a ghost could look peaky (more than a ghost naturally was), that would be it.

I was still too wary to take a step towards him in case I accidentally absorbed him, but it was clear he needed someone. I just didn’t know how without putting his soul at risk.

‘Chance…?’ I called out tentatively.

‘He did that to you?’ he asked in a lifeless tone. The question was expected, but still gutted me all the same. I didn’t like to dwell on the specific details of what Blake had done to me. I wasn’t like the others. He tortured them, sure, but it was mostly physical pain they had to endure. The worst methods of torture he used on me were emotional. Psychological. He used my love for him against me, twisting everything I had ever known, making me question my entire life, including myself. When he finally killed me, it was only after he had broken me. My mind was in shambles just as much as my body, and I didn’t know up from down. I loved him, but I didn’t. I yearned for him, yet I burned for his suffering.

I had put the pieces of my psyche back together after my death, but I could never be the same as I was. He had irrevocably turned me into a different person, and I mourned the woman I had been before. Yet, at the same time, I was glad to be rid of her. She was naïve. Ignorant. Gullible. Far too trusting, and pathetically desperate to be loved, enough so that I had latched onto the only source of love I had found, completely ignoring the red flags that I couldn’t see until it was too late.

When Chance finally processed his death, perhaps he could see how lucky he was that he had avoided those sick, twisted mind games. I wouldn’t bring it up, though. Not unless he asked, and certainly not now.

‘My death was brutal, yes,’ I admitted guardedly. It was a harsh truth that broke something inside him, but I didn’t want to lie. This was my…ourreality. There was no easy way to transition into death for us. It was thrust upon us before our time, and we could either let it break us or make us stronger.

I had chosen the latter. Would he? Or would he crumble beneath the malignant power of Blake’s actions?

Chance’s shuttered expression suddenly twisted with rage, his previously dull eyes burning with the fire of injustice. They latched onto me, and I felt the force of it like a physical caress, the power of his emotions calling to me as like called to like, and I waited patiently, hopefully. His next words would decide everything.

‘I want to kill him.’ His tone was so low and deadly that it almost reminded me of Mortimer, only his fury would scorch everything in its path compared to Mortimer’s biting, icy wrath. ‘I want to make him suffer for what he has done. I want him to pay for the suffering he has caused you.’

I blinked, taken aback. ‘Me?’

He cocked his head to the side, a curious glint overtaking the fire, though it was no less intense. ‘You really don’t know, do you?’

I took a step back, suddenly nervous, almost to the point of fright. But I halted my retreat and asked the question anyway. ‘Know what?’

He cast his eyes downward as if he we saddened by my ignorance, but then they lifted again to pin me in place with the depth of emotion shining through. ‘That I would do anything for you, Kali. I would raze the fucking world for you.’

I couldn’t move even if I’d wanted to. I was rooted in place, trapped by the energy rushing between us, eager for more, desperate for the clarity that was coming. I didn’t know if I wanted it. Didn’t know if I could accept it.

But I pushed for the answer, anyway. ‘Why?’

‘Because,’ he began, sincerity shining through, alongside something I was afraid to name, but he was not. ‘I love you. I always have, and I always will. You are the only woman I haveever loved, and I don’t care if you don’t feel the same way. I am yours to command, mind, body, and soul.’

Chapter 3

Chance