Instead, I press my thumb down where it’ll hurt. “How does it feel to be dead?”
Her small hands fly up to my shoulders, and I don’t have a second to react before her knee rams between my legs, making my stomach twist and my body collapse to the ground.
Despite the pain in my groin, I grab her ankle before she can get too far from me. She falls forward. My plan of strangling her quickly goes to shit as I watch her vanish through the floor.
Annoyance has my shoulders rising. This girl is a goddamn headache.
It takes me ten minutes to find her. She didn’t fall through one floor. No. Being the dramatic ass she is, she decided to plummet all the way to the fucking basement.
Her body lies limp on top of a broken table she’s obviously smashed through. Her back is at a funny angle, arched up so much I know she’s broken her spine.
So her body isn’t entirely impervious to the real world. Maybe she fell unconscious and it’s the unawareness that had her colliding with the table?
Not that I care.
Huffing, I lift her into my arms, light as a feather either from her ghostliness or the fact that I’m stronger than anything natural.
Her hair hangs over my arm, the strands long and a mix of contrasts, and I find myself inhaling, surprised by the evidence of strawberry-scented shampoo that’s followed her past the grave and the way I feel myself relaxing somewhat.
She groans against me as I take her upstairs and into the nearest bedroom, her small hand reaching up to grip at my shirt, but I drop her just before she can make any form of contact.
There’s nothump.
It takes me a long second to realize what’s happened. I stare at the empty space on the ground where she should be.
My jaw tenses.
She fell through the fucking floor.Again.
7
Sable
It’s happening again. That same stiffness in my neck. The muted edges of my vision. That in-between feeling in my limbs.
Only this time, it doesn’t take so long to make sense of up from down, or why I’m lying on the dirty floor, staring at a pair of men’s boots illuminated by the morning light.
The fucker killed me.
Again.
That’s the—how many-th time now?
I wouldn’t have fallen through the ceiling and smashed my skull against the concrete floor in the basement ifhehadn’t been chasing me.
This is really starting to get old.Hetrappedmehere. I’m the one who should be running around snapping his goddamn neck.
I gag on a cry from thecrackthat tears down my spine as I sit up.
Oh God. It hurts like a real bitch this time.
“Stop crying.”
Fuckingjackass.
The words don’t come out as I carefully pull myself onto shaky legs. The room spins, and my orientation realigns at a crooked angle. I squeeze my eyes shut, hating that it means I’m not looking at the psychopath, but I need at least two seconds to consciously avoid falling through the floor again so I don’t die again like a fucking idiot.
I’m not sure why it happened, but I know I can’t go through it again. Not only is it painful, and wholly unpleasant, I don’t trust thethingin front of me one bit. Who knows what crazy shitheads like him get up to?
