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“That was plenty.”
Because she shivered, he stepped back to put an arm around her.
“We can go to my place if you want to get out of here.”
“No. Absolutely not. She’s not going to win this, not going to chase me out of my own home. But something was in that room, Trey. I swear it touched me. Brushed by my arm.”
She shoved her sleeve up. “Look, there’s a mark.”
The pale pink mark, smaller than her palm, marked her skin just above her left elbow.
“It’s an ice burn—a mild one.”
“An ice burn?”
“Let me get the dogs in. We’ll put a warm compress on it, see how that does. It’s barely pink, and the skin’s not cracked or broken. Hold on a second.”
While he called the dogs, locked back up, she stared at the brush mark on her arm.
“It touched me.” Something… someone who’d lived and died had touched her. “It did feel like a burn, but cold.”
“Let’s do this in the kitchen. Does it hurt?”
“No. Well, a little sore, I guess. But, Trey, the lede is, it—she—touched me, and I felt it. I felt her. Just for a second. But… look. It’s already fading.”
He stopped to take a closer look. “Okay, yeah, it is. We’ll make the compress in case. But it looks like she doesn’t have as much punch as she’d like.”
“That was punch enough.” In the kitchen, Sonya dropped down on a stool. “I mean, holy shit!”
“The house is quiet now. All that didn’t last more than five minutes.” He put a shallow bowl of water in the microwave to heat it. Then poured her a glass.
She took it, drank. “Serious question. Do you ever get rattled?”
“I was a little rattled. But it’s interesting, isn’t it, that she pulled out so many of the stops to scare us.”
“Interesting.” She drank again. “There’s a word.”
“The thing is, it didn’t work.”
She shot him a look. “I was scared. Really scared.”
“But you’re still sitting here.”
After testing the water, he soaked a clean cloth, wrung it out. “You can barely see it now, but safer’s better than sorry. We’ll just hold it on there.”
“I don’t like being scared.” She muttered it. “It pissed me off.”
“Says the woman who likes horror flicks.”
“And novels. That’s a different kind of scared. I want her out of my house. If it takes finding the rings to get her the hell out of my house, I’ll find the damn rings. Somehow. The rest? I’ll give the restinteresting.”
Holding the compress against her arm with one hand, he brushed her hair back with the other. “Finding something just means looking in the right place.”
“Oh, is that all?”
Now he pressed his lips to her forehead. “We’re not going to let her win.”
When the cloth cooled, he took another look.
