Page 85 of Stardusted

Sky spoke up again, sounding resigned. “Raven, I’m not here to kill you. You know me better than that, right?”

“I don’t know you at all!” I breathed a laugh that sounded more like a deflating rubber chicken. “I don’t even know what youare.”

He was quiet for a second before he said, very matter-of-fact, “I think you do.”

Okay, fair. I sucked in a sharp breath, eyes on the door. Silence fell.

He was right, of course. I had a tiny inkling exactly what Sky Acosta was.

A minute crept by.

The door remained whole and door-like between us.

I bit my lip. A tiny niggle of uncertainty began to worm its way through the terror. Maybe hewasn’there to hurt me. He honestly sounded…contrite. Maybe a little tired. Certainly not…well,alien-y.

Then again, what did aliens sound like?

For a moment, I was in the lab, listening to those terrible mechanical garbled words, and I flinched and gripped the pepper spray harder. But when nothing filtered in through the door but the storm, I leaned forward. Strained to listen.

Sky raised his voice just a little over the hammering rainwater and grumbles of thunder. “I just need to talk to you, Raven. Then I’ll go. I swear, I only need a few minutes. I’m not here to…to harm you in any way. I only want to talk.” I heard him sigh. “Please let me in.”

Ugh. That last part was said so…persuasively. That tone, the entreaty in it, combined with the memory of his shocked, frightened face at Oasis had my resolve wavering even further. The blustery storm outside raged convincingly, too, like it was contributing to his cause. He was out there in it, getting pelted by wind and rain.

Could he truly just want to talk?

A sudden, intense sense of surrealism washed over me. This was no dream. I was really standing in my stairwell, and there was an alien on the other side of my door. A being not of this world. Aninterplanetary traveler.

One I’d unwittingly been crushing on for the better part of a year.

There were so many implications that came with that fact…for me, and for the entire freaking human race.

Also regarding my taste in men.

At any rate, if he wanted to hurt me, he would’ve by now. He’d had opportunities. Before this, even. But there he was, standing out there in the pouring rain and borderline begging for a chance to talk. To me.

I held my breath and eyed the door, gripping the mace hard.

Was I afraid? Hell yes. I was terrified.

But underneath all that, buried beneath the bone-deep fear that came from having my reality shaken to the foundation, there was that latent, burning,annoyingcuriosity. My need to know and understand. My gift and my curse.

He wanted to talk, and I…damn it, I had questions. Who was he—whowashe, really? Or better yet,whatwas he, and why was he here? Was his presence connected to the tablet after all? And what about the robot that’d nearly smashed me to bits?

Had that beenhim?

It was nearly impossible to liken the two, but how was I supposed to know? None of this came with a user guide. Even the Reddit threads hadn’t accounted for any of this.

I wouldn’t know unless I asked him.

Unless I let him in. Unless I took a risk and let him explain himself and what had happened at Oasis. If I was lucky, he could tell me what this strange design on my hand truly meant. What had happened to me in that gap of time between the lab and waking up in the hallway.

What was happening to me now.

I grimaced at the closed door. This was a bad idea. This was abadidea on so many levels, it was up there with the world’s highest sky-rise of bad ideas. This bad idea was about to enter atmosphere on its way right off this planet.

But…screw it.

How many people could say they’d entertained an alien?