“Not a ghost.” She tugged at the sleeves of her coat. Blood seeped through her fingers in thin rivers of red. Before she could think better of it, she said, “I think there’s something very wrong with me.”
Stepping back through the space between worlds always left Colton breathless. Dizzy, like he’d been suspended much too long in ageless, streaming dark. Throat raw, eyes streaming, his lungs packed with pond water. It took him a while to get his bearings.
This time, he’d come to in the tapering alley between his parents’ home and the Morrisons’, wedged neatly beside a woman’s locked bicycle and two metal trash bins, the nearer of the two fender-dented beyond repair.
This time, he was instantly aware of a problem.
The issue wasn’t so much that he hadn’t immediately recognized where he was, stumbling like an amnesiac down the pavers. It wasn’t even that he had reappeared—quite worryingly—in an entirely different place than he’d left. It was, instead, that from his vantage point beside the soot-blacked grout he could just make out the too-familiar figure of Delaney Meyers-Petrov standing in the street outside the alley.
She’d looked the way she always did—a little stunned, a little lost, the spiral of her hair coming unbound from its bun. Beautiful and bewildered and, he noted, woefully out of place. She’d been haloed in the yellow gold of the tree-strung lights, the night buzzing around her with all the effervescence of an electric live wire. She’d been standing on her toes.
She’d been staring up at his house.
He hadn’t known what made him hold his tongue. Maybe it was the look in her eyes—the way they’d glazed over, shining like glass in the lamplight. Maybe it was the way his encounter with Liam still clung to him in cobwebs of grief. Maybe it was the phantom feel of water in his lungs.
He’d crept forward, one foot in front of the other, and watched as Lane made her way up the empty steps to his home. He’d thought for certain he’d locked the door, and yet when he’d rounded the corner on her tail, it was to hear the give of wood, the creak of hinges.
And then she was inside.
He’d been halfway up the steps himself, cautious and confused, when he heard the smash of something heavy. He knew, intuitively, that it was the planter, set as it was between the foyer and the hall. When he’d stepped inside, it was to find Delaney crouched over the mess. The toes of her boots made divots in the dirt. Her hands ran through rubble.
And, strangest of all, she’d been whispering.
Now he stood in the open door of the upstairs guest room and watched her rifle through his things. The tips of her ears and nose were winter bitten—as though she’d raced all the way here through the frozen streets of Boston. She looked otherworldly, like something he’d dreamt up, half-awake. Some strange, ephemeral haunt to be chased in the quiet gray of dawn.
She stood on her toes in front of the dresser and lifted the vine-beveled top of a sterling silver snuff box. Peering within, she poked at the black velvet interior. Her injured hand remained clutched to her chest. Blood seeped between her fingers, jeweling against her knuckles. He tucked the first aid kit under his arm and cleared his throat. Instantly, Delaney slammed the top back into place. The clink of silver eddied through the room like a shot.
She made no effort to lie about what she’d been doing. Instead, she looked visibly disappointed as she said, “There’s nothing in there.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know.” She dragged a stocking-clad foot through the thick eggshell rug. “Teeth.”
“That’s not where I’d keep them.”
“Oh.” She didn’t look at him. Poking at the brass patina of a drawer pull, she said, “Professor Whitehall told me you’re being investigated as a person of interest in Nate’s case.”
“Allegations were made,” he admitted. “They’ve been dropped.”
Dark green eyes darted to his. “It must be nice to have a family lawyer on retainer,” she bit out, too sharp. The moment the words were out of her, she shut her eyes. “Sorry. I don’t know where that came from.”
“You don’t need to apologize. You’re not wrong.” When she was quiet, he added, “I didn’t do anything to Schiller. You know that, right?”
“I know,” she admitted. “I do. It’s just that everything is upside down. I feel like I’m losing my grip on what’s real and what isn’t.”
He held up the first aid kit. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Then we’ll deal with the rest.” Gesturing for her to follow him, he headed toward the door at the far side of the room. It swung open at his coaxing, revealing the bathroom, tiled all in white. Beneath a quatrefoil window sat a clawfoot tub, deep enough to drown in.
Colton glanced back at Lane and found her frozen, her frame small and dark beneath the doorway. Something steel and cold and entirely un-Delaney-like glittered in her eyes. It caught him like a snare, this odd, interminable look.
“Lane,” he said, louder than he’d meant to. She blinked just a tick too slowly, her gaze refocusing. Patting the porcelain lip of the tub, he said, “Take a seat.”
She obeyed, the gray tattersall of her skirt pooling around her waist. Above the knit wool of her stockings, her bare legs were webbed in celestial fishnets. His jaw set and he lowered himself to the tile in front of her, setting the first aid kit down as he did. Lane’s eyes remained glued to his face, her stare drilling into the scabbed-over gash at the corner of his mouth.
“I’ve been losing time,” she said when he reached for her hand. He set it palm up, fingers splayed in the sling of her skirt. Up close, the cut didn’t look quite so bad. It slashed her palm in a single, shallow stroke. As though she’d taken a dagger to herself in a ritualistic bloodletting. “Whole chunks of it,” she added, and snapped the fingers of her good hand. “Gone.”
He stayed quiet, tearing open a sterile wipe. He thought of the ride home in the reeking back seat of Meeker’s Rover, careening through Boston traffic. Nate Schiller clutching a painter’s bucket, his face several shades off-color.
“It’s gone,” he’d babbled, tears streaming down his face. “It’s gone. It’s gone. It’s gone away.”
