His head quirked to the side in a movement that was not remotely human. Delaney recoiled from the wrongness of it, sliding back until she cracked into the IV pole and nearly sent it toppling. She set it to rights, heart hammering, disentangling herself from the drip chamber. Those empty eyes flicked over her face, moving faster, faster, white sclera bisected with the telltale red of burst vessels. A thin line of slaver tracked down his chin.
Delaney reached for the remote, about to page a nurse, and everything stopped. Nate fell stock-still, his palms slamming flat against the tray in a movement that made her jump. She felt the reverberation in the soles of her feet, in the walls of her heart. She stood gripping the metal pole—afraid to look away, afraid to get too close.
“Nate?”
He smiled up at her. This time, the voice in her head was a creaking floorboard in an old house. It was a stick snapping in the woods. It was leaves whispering on a cold October night. It whistled through the core of her.
Your door is wide open, Delaney Meyers-Petrov. I can see all your most secret spaces. I can see how you will die. I can see what stalks your sleep at night, the things that wake you weeping in the dawn. I can see the face of the boy in the window behind you, how you pine for him when you’re alone. All twisted in your bedsheets.
She barely heard the voice over the rush of blood in her ears. Her eyes flitted toward the window. Colton stood on the other side, his features striped by partially closed blinds, his eyes glued to her, gaze assessing. Watching the one-sided conversation with the precision of a hawk. Discerning whatever he could.
Ah. The sound wound through her in chilly ecstasy.Have I made you blush? The boy in this body blushed too. A pretty crimson, just for me. Blood heats the skin so nicely, and I like it warm.
Her gaze jolted back to his. Nate—or the thing wearing his skin—had shifted on the bed, his bare feet sliding down onto the floor. He squared off across from her beneath the humming light, shoulders hunched. She fought the rising urge to flee.
“Why are you here?”
Because a door was left open.
“What door?”
You are asking the wrong questions, and I grow tired of answering them.
She didn’t relent. “Are there more of you?”
His smile was watery—lopsided, as if the wearer was unaccustomed to its mask.
The boy in the glass knows these answers already, it said.He has not told you the truth.
A chill snaked through her. “What do you mean?”
The smile grew and grew.I will not play a further part in this game. I am much too old and you are far too dull a quarry. I have my own matters to tend to.
She flexed her fingers and found them shaking. “What matters are those?”
Those black eyes flashed.There is a kindness in you, Delaney Meyers-Petrov. A quiet. I find it unduly sweet.There followed a pause, pronounced and eerie. The smile on Nate’s face caught at the corners.Perhaps I will tend to my matters in another way.
She tensed, sensing the change in the air an instant too late. “What does that—”
There was a clatter, the sound of metal striking tile. Nate was at her throat, cold fingers closing around her neck with a grip that cut the air from her lungs. Her back cracked against the wall and her head followed, smashing glass, pitching streaks of lightning across her vision in angry stabs of white.
Fingers scrabbling, she made contact with whatever she could. It didn’t matter. Nate possessed a brute strength that was as inhuman as the rest of him. Somewhere nearby, she felt the reverberating slam of a door flying open. Felt it crack against the wall. Shoes pounded laminate and Nate was ripped away from her, laughing, laughing as he went.
The game, crooned the voice, too close, too close for comfort,is in play.
Delaney slid down the wall, cracking to her knees. She wheezed and she wheezed. Her chest didn’t give. The air on her tongue tasted stale and useless. The room spun in disseminating flickers. Her head was a wraith.
A single face swam into focus.
Colton.
The world tilted, righting itself—or maybe it was she who was being righted, drawn into the fluorescent checker of the hall and guided into a chair. In front of her, Colton’s face was drained of color. His mouth was on upside down. He pressed his palms to his chest and pulled them away. He did it again. He mouthed a single word. It took her several seconds to understand that he was signing.
Breathe, he signed.
That was it. One word.
Breathe.And she did. The first several tries yielded limited results, but on the third she felt her lungs flood with air. Her breath was tacky, her chest sore as her ribs cracked awake. Reaching up a shaking hand, she clicked on her implant. Sound came rushing back in hums and beeps and the steady, indistinguishable murmur of voices.
