She stopped worrying about the time when the experience from her workshop repeated itself. In the same way the realization had crept over her before, she knew that she wasn’t alone.
Oh Lord. He was here again. The last time they met, his arms had been around her. This time, although he didn’t touch her, she was sure he was standing in her darkened bedroom, looking down at her. Well, why not? If he could come into the workshop, he could come into the house. Whoever or whatever he was, no locks were going to stop him.
In her workshop, he had only been an unseen presence. A feeling that he was there. On the path, she’d felt his hard contours. In the privacy of her bedroom, there was the possibility of more.
She could sense the warmth of his body. She’d thought he might be a ghost. But weren’t ghosts supposed to be cold?
Too caught up in physical awareness, she was unable to puzzle that out. Everything about him teased her senses, yet this midnight visitor could not be real. In the darkened bedroom, she thought of all the imagined dangers that had plagued mankind from the dawn of time. Ghosts, demons, vampires, evil spirits. None of them seemed to fit. Would a ghost radiate warmth? Could a demon offer her the one thing in life she had always lacked and always craved? Maybe.
Did she believe in demons?
No, that was make-believe. Supernatural beings didn’t come to the bedrooms of living women. But what about the delusions of that girl in the book? Her made-up demons had been as real to her as real life.
The hamster wheel of awful possibilities swirling in her head was interrupted by a voice. Well, not exactly a voice
Please, don’t be afraid of me.
The words were not spoken aloud but in her mind, in a deep masculine tone.
She could be dreaming again, except that she knew she was awake.
To prove that to herself, she sat up and reached for the switch on the bedside lamp. Before she could press it, a hand jerked her fingers away, and a plea hung in the air.
“Don’t.” This time, she heard the word aloud.
Acknowledging him in this new way would be taking a step further into her personal psychosis, but she did it anyway.
“Why not?”
A tortured quality seeped into his words. “You will see nothing. Better to stay in the dark.”
“Why are you here?”
“I need you.”
The despair in his voice tore at her. Another symptom of her madness. Emotional involvement with a phantom.
And that madness was going to bring her carefully constructed life crashing down around her shoulders.
“If you’re crazy, so am I.”
The weary statement left her startled and shocked in a new way.
“What? Did you read my mind?”
Even as she asked the question, she knew it was true within the confines of this weird encounter.
But if she were conjuring up an imaginary companion, why not go all the way and concoct some kind of telepathic link with him? It would give her something nobody else had—to make up for all the years she’d felt so disconnected.
She had to suppress a hysterical laugh.
You’re not inventing anything.Once again, the words were not spoken aloud. She dragged in a breath and let it out. This whole situation was way beyond the bounds of reality. Yet a part of her still struggled to deal with the encounter rationally.
“Who are you?” she whispered into the darkness. “Are you a ghost?
For the first time, his voice wavered as he whispered, “I don’t know.”
She heard his pain; more than that, she sensed it. “Why are you really here?” she demanded.
