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I rifled through my memories, trying to reconcile what my intuition told me with what the facts indicated. I shook my head, smoothing a hand over my mouth. “I don’t know.”
“Exactly.” Tabitha returned her attention to her computer. “You’re never unsure. That should tell you what you need to know.”
“You think I should drop it?”
She shrugged. “You’re with her all the time. What could go wrong?”
She had a point. I blew out a breath. “Right. I’ll be back when you’re done, yeah?”
“Yeah.” She darted a look toward Mattie who appeared to be ordering a mini apple pie pastry. “Good luck.”
“I don’t need luck,” I muttered. “I need tequila.”
Tabitha texted me six hours later at four in the morning, just in the nick of time.
Tab:
Finally got it. Unlocked, downloaded, and ready.
Ghost:
Omw
Tab:
Look at you with the cool lingo.
Ghost:
??
After retrieving it from her just outside the apartment building, I placed the laptop back on the end table in the living room where it had been when we’d pilfered it, and with a weary sigh, I headed back to the apartment for the last time. Thank God. I would have rather spent the night with the moody goddess in the room across from mine, but she’d pleaded a headache and said she wanted to go to sleep early.
My bullshit meter had gone haywire, but I hadn’t pressed her. Whatever was going on with Mattie, I would find out eventually. It was hard to be patient—I clearly hadn’t been patient after interrogating her earlier in the afternoon—but I had to try. Whatever plagued her mind and heart would either surface when she was ready, or I’d come face-to-face with the issue. And when I did, I’d wipe it off the face of the earth, because I never wanted to see that look on Mattie’s face again.
I punched the code to her door into the keypad, and the green light from the buttons lit up the dark, quiet penthouse with an eerie glow. Inside the apartment, silence wrapped around the small space, and I wandered over to the electric fireplace that Mattie had left on after watching TV before bed. I switched it off, leaning against the mantle and looking around the sleepy quarters. This close to dawn, the autumn air held a certain chill that always seemed to creep past heaters and insulation, snaking around my ankles and hanging in the air like mist.
This was ghost hour—the darkest moment between night and dawn where specters were most likely to emerge from the shadows to haunt our dreams. It was my hour. I often woke before dawn to slowly join the world of the living, going from ghoul to man and preparing myself mentally to live another day as me. As the person I’d chosen to become and the nightmares I had chosen to live.
Only, I hadn’t felt like that since meeting Mattie. I hadn’t woken in a cold sweat and wondered who I was and what I was doing with my existence. I hadn’t spent hours questioning what I had become or what I would do with the well-honed machine that had become my body once the killing had ended. She didn’t leave any room for thoughts like those.
Blissfully.
My thoughts were consumed by her, by her problems, by her laughter, and by the frustrating mystery that surrounded everything she did. I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt this whole. Not in a very long time, anyway. And certainly, never like this. In the same way that Mattie never did what I expected, she kept my life so unpredictable, I couldn’t possibly fall back into harmful patterns. I felt more. I felt different. I felt… human.
Like my supernatural thoughts had conjured a spirit from the underworld, a shriek filled the apartment. I started, arms unfolding, and swiveled my head to find the source. My ears picked up on a softer sound. Not a yell like before, but a muted cry of distress. Mattie’s room.
The distance between the living room and hers was so short, I was there in one panicked breath. I opened the unlocked door and reached for the light switch. It blinked on, illuminating her disturbingly childlike bedroom. The windows were shut, I detected no other bodies in the room, and nothing looked amiss.
But Mattie cried softly in the middle of her bed, and I realized the sound had come from her—from one of her nightmares. I released the breath I’d been holding, and my muscles eased out of fight mode with creaking joints. This is going to kill me, I thought with a thudding heart as I crossed the room to her. She’s going to send me to an early grave because my heart can’t handle the Mattie rollercoaster. I don’t even want off the damn ride. I’ll probably die frightened and annoyed.
“Turn off the light,” Mattie said, her voice muffled. She’d stopped crying suddenly, and I had to assume that she’d woken up fully from her nightmare.
I backed up a few steps and flicked the switch off. “Better?”
“Yes. Now go away.”
I snorted softly, reaching her in a few strides and sitting on the edge of her white and pink bedspread. “Yeah, right.”
