“Okay,” I say softly.
Something shifts in his expression, surprise mixed with relief. This isn’t how the scene played out originally. Past Skyla was too angry, too hurt to trust him. I would have slapped him ten times by now easily, and yet all I want to do is pull him in the corner and have my way with him. And sadly, for a moment, I’m not sure if I’m talking about Logan or Gage. Okay, fine. It’s Logan.
Heck, I wouldn’t care if everyone from East and West watched as well—that’s how hard these feverish hormones have me spiraling. Plus, Logan Oliver is hot no matter what point in time we’re visiting.
A movement behind Logan catches my eye. It’s Michelle Miller, looking disoriented and unwell, her hair chopped into uneven chunks as if attacked by a weed whacker wielded by a vengeful toddler. She’s pecking at something on the floor, jutting her neck out in odd thrusts like she’s jonesing for the good stuff.
It takes a moment for me to register what’s happening, and I gasp hard as I take a step in her psychotic direction.
Michelle moves in a slow circle, mumbling into thin air to anyone who happens to pass by while sporting the world’s most horrific home haircut. Choppy and jagged on every side, cut way up high by her ears. Oddly, it’s the exact same haircut I gave to every single one of my dolls growing up, but I digress. Michelle is no doll;she’s a witch, or at least she was a witch to me back in the day. Even so, I don’t like seeing her this way. Completely and utterly out of her freaking mind.
And whyisshe this way? I try to rack my brain for a moment, but it doesn’t take long for the details to fall into place.
The rose! That horrible haunted rose Marshall gifted to her after treating Michelle like his personal playground. He’s such a horrible playboy, with a horrible sense of celestial humor to match. Because nothing says romance like a demon flower.
The pendant hanging around her neck, a blackened rose on a glittery chain, pulses with malevolent energy—and just like that, it all comes back to me.
The last time I was here, I took that thorny rose from her, intending to somehow use it against Chloe. But instead, as my haunted luck would have it, during our struggle for the spooky pendant, I may have accidentally swallowed it, unleashing a nightmare that cursed me for weeks.
“Oh, for freaks’ sake,” I mutter. There’s no way I’m reliving those inglorious hellish days.
Not this time. Not anytime.
“Michelle,” I snap, moving toward her with purpose. “Are you feeling okay?” It’s more or less a rhetorical question, but I need to get the conversational ball rolling somehow, and also somehow get the point across that I come in peace.
“No, but yes, I see them. They—” She starts to babble on about flying people and taking flight herself while pointing at the ceiling.
Wonderful.
That demonic pendant hangs around her neck, like a noose pulsating with enough dark energy to outfit all of hell. I remember Marshall calling it “that rose of a thousand nightmares,” and a “haunted bloom.” And let’s just say both of those monikers are putting it lightly.
I’m calling it all Michelle Miller’s dumb fault for lusting after that snake Marshall is reticent to keep in his pants. Not that she wasalone in her endeavor. Marshall really did get around, or should I say, his snake did.
This time, there is no way I’m touching that dusty, crusty rose. No way, no how am I even getting near it, let alone gulping it down and waiting for a fun trip to the toilet so that metal multi-pronged devil can rip its way out of my backside as it did once upon a haunted time.
Nope. No thanks.
“Logan,” I hiss with a newfound urgency, “we need to get Michelle away from everyone—and possibly herself. That pendant on her necklace is making her insane.”
“Are you talking about that rose?” he asks, wincing at it as if it might jump out and bite him. But knowing Michelle’s history with this particular Oliver, she would much rather do the biting herself. “What about it?”
“Long story short—in our original go-around, I ended up swallowing it during a fight with my least favorite devil, Chloe. Let’s just say it was bad news. Really freaking bad. Think indigestion with a side of demonic possession.”
He takes a moment to frown my way. “Skyla, are you saying we should?—”
“Not repeat that particular mistake? Hell yes.”
I turn back to Michelle, who’s still lost in a riveting conversation with herself about flying things and people that only she can see while that wicked rose glistens in the dim light, glowing an unnatural shade of umber against her skin.
“Michelle,” I all but growl at her. I can’t help it. Michelle and I were never all that close. The entire bitch squad more or less declared me an enemy of the state—or the island as it were, as soon as I stepped onto this haunted rock in some bizarre show of allegiance to Chloe, who wasn’t even alive at the time. It was twisted. “Michelle, maybe you should take that necklace off?” How can I put this so she might have half a chance of understanding it. “It like totally clashes with your outfit.” I make a face and she simply gapes at me.
“What?” she hisses my way, looking ten times more annoyed than she usually is with me. Not to mention that she looks as if she has some sort of supernatural desire to claw the skin right off my bones. And considering I need this teenage costume to get me back to my children, I need to do everything I can to preserve the host that’s currently keeping my soul under wraps.
“The bloom speaks,” she all but chokes out the words, clutching the necklace with trembling fingers. “It’s so beautiful, Skyla. It speaks inside my head. It tells me things. It wants me to do things. Horrible things to others and myself. But I need it, Skyla. Dudley gave it to me. It’s his heart on a string.”
Oh, for Pete’s sake. I can’t help but roll my eyes.
Why am I trying to reason with a lunatic? With or without that haunted rose strapped to her body, Michelle would rather eat gravel than listen to any word of advice I’d have to give. And judging by the present circumstances, she’s well on her way to making all of her gravel-eating dreams come true.
