And there, nestled in the center, was a single shard of bone.
She peered down at it, confused. “What is this?”
She half expected to be met with silence. Instead, Colton offered up another grudging admission. “You wrote a word on the wall back home.Sequestrum.”
A shiver moved through her at the memory. “What does it mean?”
“It’s a type of necrosis,” he said. “It’s a contemporary Latin term for a piece of dead bone that’s been separated from something living.”
“Gross.” She inched closer, her breath fanning over the case. “And I thought the glass collection downstairs was creepy. What did it come from?”
“Me.”
Startled, she glanced up at him. She found him checking his watch, his finger tap, tap, tapping out the ticking seconds. “Let’s hurry this up,” he said. “We’re running out of time.”
Carefully, she lifted the glass off the top of the pillar. It was heavier than she expected, and she nearly dropped it. Setting it aside, she turned her attention to the shard of bone. It was as long as a pinkie and curved like a paring knife, the tip sharp enough to cut. Splintered like wood beneath an ax.
Colton’s stare drilled into her as she pried it off the little pillow. Immediately, the feel of it sang through her skin in a funny, phantom pulse. She glanced back at Colton to find him breathing hard, his eyes gone black. Somewhere in the house, something began to stomp its feet. Faster, faster, the sound dull and exultant.
Get out, crawled a voice through her head, loud and close.Get out now.
“Colton?”
He blinked, his gaze clearing, his breathing steadying. His eyes found hers. “Let’s go,” he said.
***
They were halfway home, the trees slipping past the windows in veins of leafless dark, when Colton finally spoke. She sat in the passenger seat, her hands in her lap, the funny splinter of bone in her upturned palm. It hummed into her skin. It thrummed all through her.
“Keep it,” Colton said, startling her.
“What? Why?”
“Because I can’t,” he explained, “and someone needs to take it. Someone I can trust. Someone I—” His throat corded in a swallow. “Keep it,” he said again.
She stared at him across the cabin. She thought of the dip in his rib, the impossible cleft along the curve of his bone. “Whose house was that, Colton?”
His knuckles were white against the steering wheel. “Someone who doesn’t control me anymore.”
You’re going to have to ask me that again.”
Mackenzie’s voice was rendered tinny by the speaker of Delaney’s phone. Delaney sat in Colton’s bedroom; the walls were painted in hues of early-morning yellow. Down in the kitchen, the smell of coffee grounds wafted up to meet her.
It was Thursday, and on alternating days, she’d learned, Colton went out for a jog. He’d leave before the sun, returning hours later in a sweat, carrying the brisk October air in on his shoulders. He didn’t deviate.
Outside the window, the sun had barely begun to peek over the horizon. He wouldn’t be back for another hour, at least.
“Is it possible,” Delaney repeated, “for someone to exert a supernatural control over someone else?”
On the other end of the phone, Mackenzie sounded as though she was stuffed under a pillow. “It’s too early for this, Lane.”
“It’s important.”
Mackenzie let out a long, drawn-out groan. “I don’t know. Maybe through hypnosis?”
“No,” Delaney said. “Not hypnosis. With an object.”
“What sort of object?”
