Page 48 of Deadly Blooms (Psychic Unraveled #1)

UNHOLY COMMUNION

Graham

“Shit.” I groaned, my head splitting like someone had taken an axe to my skull and left it halfway buried to the bone.

My muscles screamed like they’d been stretched past snapping point and stitched back wrong.

Felt like some sick bastard with pliers had been peeling me apart while a medieval archer got creative with his flaming arrows, and my core was his target.

I was back.

Inside. Alone.

And for once, it wasn’t a metaphor.

Silas was gone. Or weakened at least. I couldn’t feel him anymore—no tug, no static in my chest, no voice crawling up my spine.

And shit… that silence? That dead, empty, echoing quiet inside my skull?

It was glorious.

Not peaceful, not really. But mine. Finally. Like I could hear my own thoughts again without someone else standing over my shoulder, rifling through my memories like they were postcards from a life he wanted to steal.

I didn’t move.

Didn’t breathe much either.

Just let it settle.

I let out a deep sigh.

Then I heard it—soft, bright laughter.

Her laughter.

Sweet and high, like wind chimes in the summer. My sweet girl.

My eyes snapped open. I jerked upright.

And there she was— Wren.

Whole. Beaming. Real.

Dressed in that damn twirly dress she’d wear until it practically disintegrated in the wash, hugging the pink teddy I gave her the day she was born. Her giggles cracked something wide open in me, a warmth I hadn’t felt in ten years blooming in my chest like sunlight on fresh snow.

I watched her twirl.

Watched her sing to that bear like no time had passed.

Like nothing ever broke.

She spotted me. Lit up like the sunrise.

“Dadda spin! Dadda spin!”

She ran toward me, little feet pounding invisible floors.

But just before she reached me?—

She vanished.

And standing in her place…

Was Rebecca.

God, she was beautiful.

Chestnut hair spilling over her shoulders like she’d just rolled out of bed—mine. That perfect smile, soft and sinful, laced with a gaze that told me exactly what she wanted. No teasing. Not games. Just us.

I rose to meet her, and she folded into me like she never left. Her kiss hit hard—deep. Like she meant to pull my soul through my fucking teeth.

She always kissed me like that. Like the world could end, and she’d still want me between her thighs when it did.

Her hands slid down my stomach, slow and familiar. Belt undone. Button popped. Zipper down. She reached into my briefs, wrapped those fingers around my cock and stroked until I was hard in her grip. Still kissing me. Still making me forget I’d ever known pain.

She guided my hand to her breast. I dragged my other down her back, palmed her ass, lifted her like she was weightless, and laid her down on our bed.

Our bed. Somehow here, in this black void.

She giggled.

But something about it scraped at the inside of my skull—too light, too new.

I pulled back.

And found myself hovering over Maggie. Naked. Flushed. On the bed at the cabin in Port Grey.

My gut twisted. My brain short-circuited.

“What the fuck?” I breathed, stumbling back.

It wasn’t real.

None of it.

It couldn’t be.

As I stumbled back from the bed, my foot hit something soft.

Chester.

Little shit reared up onto his hind legs and started twirling in circles like he’d joined the goddamn Bolshoi Ballet. Then Tophie showed up. Then hundreds— hundreds —of cats in pink tutus and leotards flooded through the doorway like some LSD-fueled Cats: The Musical reboot.

I blinked. Tried to reset my brain.

When I turned back to the bed, Maggie was still there. Only now she wasn’t alone.

Rebecca was beside her—both naked. Both tangled in each other’s mouths like a scene straight out of a porno tailored to every guilt-ridden impulse in my ruined psyche.

They looked at me. Smiled. Beckoned.

Then Becca started clawing at her throat. Gasping. Lips turning blue. Eyes bulging.

And then—just like Wren—gone.

Maggie stayed. But she was laughing.

Laughing like she hadn’t just watched someone die.

Then I heard another voice.

Betty White?

Then Bea Arthur.

The Golden Girls theme started playing somewhere in the distance, echoing through the black.

What in the actual fuck?

I locked eyes with Maggie—if that’s who it even was. Her laughter twisted, turned shrill, then echoed in the dark until she vanished too.

Gone.

But the laughter kept going.

Louder. Harsher. Mocking.

It was a dream. A nightmare. Some kind of leftover psychic sludge from being Silas’s meat puppet.

Wake up, Graham.

Wake the fuck up.

A blinding light flashed before me, and when I opened my eyes, I saw the wooden beams of the attic’s ceiling. I looked to my right, and there she sat, scrolling her phone, giggling under her breath at some clip of The Golden Girls —Maggie.

“Glad to see at least one of us is having a good time.” My voice came out raspy and weak.

Maggie threw her phone onto the couch and dove to me, wrapping her arms tightly around my neck. “Graham! Are you okay?”

“Help me sit up,” I said, groaning in pain.

“I am so… so sorry!”

“Easy,” I winced. “I need to sit up… I don’t feel quite right.” My voice crackled as I spoke through my teeth, clenching them tight as she struggled to prop me up against the wall.

I panted as I slumped to my side, only an exposed stud keeping me upright.

A glowing green ethereal energy left my body and swirled overhead before splitting in two and dissipating.

Silas?

I shifted, grimacing as my shoulders cracked in their sockets. My eyes widening in recognition as I looked at her. I tried to smile, but the corners of my mouth couldn’t move.

“Next time you tell me not to worry, I’m running for the goddamn hills.” I groaned, rubbing the side of my neck like it might snap back into place.

She sighed and offered a weak smile. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“…Yeah,” I muttered, trying to sit up straighter like that would somehow make it true.

“I feel awful. This is all my fault.”

She wasn’t wrong. If I hadn’t come to her little ghost party, I wouldn’t have spent the last however many hours as a haunted meat puppet.

“It’s not your fault, Max.” I lied, like a bastard. “I’ll be fine.” I added that one feeling worse. I wasn’t fine. I wasn’t even fucking me.

I scrubbed my forehead with the heel of my palm. “But seriously—what the hell was that?”

My voice came out too sharp, too raw.

“You didn’t mention the part where your dead uncle could jack my body like a goddamn carnival ride.”

I pushed off the wall, and my legs folded like wet spaghetti.

Real graceful.

“Careful.” She said, rushing to my aid.

I let out a long, ragged breath. “Have you ever been shoved so deep into the backseat of your own mind that you can’t even see the road anymore?”

I didn’t wait for her to answer.

“That’s what it was like. Out-of-body, except I was still inside —just not behind the wheel.

” I leaned my head against the wall, eyes closed, every muscle in me screaming for stillness.

“And then—when I finally do have a thought, one I’d normally keep locked up tight—your goddamn Ghost-of-Christmas-Past uncle hijacks me and blurts it out.

Rips it out of me before I even have time to look at it myself.

It’s like watching someone gut you with your own knife, while you’re too paralyzed to scream. ”

“To be fair,” she said. “I didn’t know you were going to get possessed.”

Something inside me flared. Not anger—something darker. Hotter. Territorial.

Because there she was, all flushed and nervous, trying to downplay everything like it wasn’t killing me not to touch her. Like I hadn’t just spent hours being controlled and dragged through every corner of my own fucking mind—only to wake up to her. Her voice. Her hands. Her goddamn concern.

And there was one part of me—very much alive, very much my old horny teenager programming—that didn’t give a damn about possession or trauma or pacing. It only knew one thing: sex.

“Maybe not,” I muttered, “but there is one way you can make it up to me… because God?—“

I didn’t think.

Didn’t plan.

I didn’t give a single fuck about consequences.

One second, I was barely holding my head up—slumped against the wall like a puppet cut from its strings, drained from the round after round of spiritual leap-frog with a dead man addicted to control—and the next, I had her pinned.

My hand cradled her head so she wouldn’t smack it against the attic floor, the other braced near her ribs, steadying myself as I caged her in. My weight, my heat, my need pressed into her like I was trying to fuse our bodies into one.

She gasped.

And that was it.

Every goddamn shred of control I had—gone.

Her eyes widened, but she didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Just looked up at me like she already knew what I needed—what I was— and she wanted it, anyway.

I took in the scent of her shampoo, the heat of her skin, the way her chest rose to meet mine like her body was begging too—it undid me.

“—I fucking need you,” I growled, forehead pressing to hers.

Not a request.

Not a question.

A confession.

And the way she shivered underneath me?

It was mutual.

Maggie

His hand was warm, steady— intentional. The pressure against my throat wasn’t cruel or careless. It was a message. One I felt deep in my core.

Claimed.

My pulse thudded against his palm.

“I’ve had so much time—lost in my thoughts—fantasizing about how I’d fuck you so hard the only thing you could do… is beg me to stop.”

My brain tried to process the words, but my body had already lit up like a bonfire. I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear—some feeble attempt to ground myself in the middle of the storm that was him.

Had I just heard him right?

“You’ve been thinking about that while I’ve been dragging your unconscious body around the house?” I asked, half in shock, half in challenge.

His eyes didn’t flinch. And that was the scariest part—he meant every damn word.