“Thank you for offering, but I should be getting home to Benny.”
Eleanor’s face turned grim but nodded before taking off.
As I tied my pumpkin to the back of my scooter, my gaze found a figure standing in the upstairs window of the Goody home. From here, I couldn’t know for sure, but the silhouette seemed to belong to Zephyr Goody, and the blood in my veins ran cold.
Chapter 35
Fallon
Julian stoppedby briefly to kiss me, and his kiss was hungry and urgent out on the balcony and under a milky half-moon, almost changing his mind.
“Go,” I insisted with a light laugh, his lips on my neck, his mouth in my ear. I kept my eyes closed as he adored me. Whispers and moans had flowed between us just before his mouth covered mine once more, sweeping his tongue and tasting like a rush of heat in December. My entire body had heated, from my head to my heels—a warmth spreading in my lower belly.
“I’ll come back,” he promised, landing a kiss on my forehead. “Let me get Beck off my back, and I’ll return to you. Now, sleep until I wake you.”
He was gone before I opened my eyes, so swiftly and without a trace, only the warmth still lingering and the goosebumps on every surface of my skin.
I waited up, staring out the opened French doors. Sitting in the corner, the candle burning inside my pumpkin lit an evil smile with slanted eyes. It was the last thing I saw before surrendering to sleep …
12:33 a.m.
I was jerked awake when hands grabbed my ankles, bound my wrists behind my back. There were so many of them! They pulled a gag over my face and into my mouth, a sack was shoved over my head, and all that moved on the other side were shadows.
A scream burned in my throat and tore through the air. I kicked my legs, my body sweating as panic possessed me, turning me manic. Their hold was slipping as they tried to get a grip on me, then I was yanked from the bed and dropped to the cold hard floor. I was scooped up. Man-handled. Long arms wrapped around me, pinning me to their chest.
“Stop fighting,” he said into my ear.
“GRAA—” I tried through the gag before a hand suffocated my cries, wrapped me tighter against them.
My heart pounded in my ears, and my skin felt as if it were on fire, anger rising from the marrow of my soul. Fingers gripped my skin, twisting my flesh until it burned.
“Moonshine?” Gramps called out from the bottom of the stairs.
“Everyone shut up!” the man said.
“MOONSHINE?!WHAT’S HAPPENING?”A terror laced Gramps words, and I heard the hollowed bluster as he stumbled up the wooden steps. He wouldn’t be able to get to me. I didn’t want him to get to me. I had to get to him, and I kicked my foot forward when it hit a body. Something crashed to the floor. Gramps’ called out, screaming from the steps, “LET HER GO!PLEASE,LET MY MOONSHINE GO!”
I shook my head, trying to free the hand from my mouth. Casper hissed and released a desperate cry. I whipped my head, but darkness was everywhere.
“Ah, the fucking cat!” someone shrieked, and after athud!Casper made a second sound, one I didn’t recognize but like a plush dog toy being squeezed.
Every sound in my ears was like a slit to the wrist because I couldn’t break free. I couldn’t do anything. I was trapped, pinned down, muted, restrained no matter how hard my limbs fought.
“I BEG YOU, PLEASE! MOONSHINE! Don’t…hurt my…grandbaby…” Gramps cried in a desperate struggle from the stairs just outside the door, and my chest felt as if someone drove a stake in it, twisted it. I stopped struggling, not wanting Gramps to fear. Then a loud clatter bounced off the stairs and aTHUMP!echoed throughout the home, throughout my head, throughout my heart.
Then the world went silent.
Still.
“NO! GRAMPS! NO!” I screamed, crying into the hand and shaking my head with a fierce force, imagining the worst, imagining him lying at the bottom of the stairs, so helpless. “Please, stop,” my words were muffled and strained. “Please, my Gramps. You can take me, do whatever you want to me, just please, let me help him first.”
They were silent for a moment, and then, “Keep going,” one instructed.
“Grab her legs.”
I heard the ocean breaking against the cliffs, the icy sea breeze slapping my sweaty and burning skin as they carried me down the balcony steps. They tossed me into the back of a truck of some sort. An SUV. The scratchy flooring was hot against my already irritated flesh. Low beams of light passed as if I were going through a tunnel, but I knew it was the corner street lamps of Town Square as my body rolled in the back when we circled the gazebo.
The car was silent, but not my racing heart. I felt the pulse everywhere—in every cell—as my thoughts ran wild for Gramps.The thump.
