“Don’t let go,” Colton ordered. “Don’t look away.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “I get it.”
He stepped again and she was drawn after him, plunged into cold like ice. A thousand sensations speared into her at once. The air around them hummed, but this time the sound was clear. This time, her head was full of moans. Her name was uttered like a prayer. It came to her in snatches and in screams. In whines and in whispers.
Delaney. Delaney. You’re here with us, Delaney.
Fingers tore at her coat, at her skin. Colton drew her hard into his chest—hard enough to leave her breathless.
“Look at me,” he ground out.
“I’m looking.” Her voice was snatched away by the moaning both in and out of her head, the sundering of sensation in her arms and legs. Something coalesced in the air beside her face, something ink dark and skeletal and built all of sighs.
Malum navis, it whispered in her ear.Look at us, Delaney.
It came at her again, this time from the other side. She felt, more than saw, the wide gape of a jaw, the hollow points of two empty eyes. It caught her by surprise and she turned, just a fraction—just enough—breaking her eye contact. Somewhere in the distance, far off beneath the ceaseless murmurs, she heard Colton bark out her name.
There, Delaney Meyers-Petrov. Look us in the eye.
We have been waiting, waiting, waiting.
Waiting for you to see.
Colton’s fingers closed around her wrists and he hauled her into him. The nickels bit into the heels of her hands as he brought his mouth crashing down against hers. The kiss was a surprise, immediate and immolating. There was nothing sweet about it. Nothing soft. Only the clash of mouths, the scrape of teeth. They collided the way they always had—like they were going to war—and something in Delaney tightened at the awareness. Her eyes fluttered shut against the skeletal haunts as Colton kissed her like an ache, his breath skating across her tongue.
And then there was silence.
Silence and snow.
It was as if all the world had snuffed out but them. The ground beneath her solidified into stone, the air turned winter crisp. She felt the soft flurry of a light squall, the fast melt of flakes against the heat of her cheeks.
The coins plinked soundlessly to the ground as her hands found their way to Colton’s lapels. She held tight to him like a tether, white-knuckled and trembling. The snow fell and fell, and the kiss remained unbroken. It deepened, turning slow and coaxing. His touch trailed up to her jaw and hovered there, butterfly light against the flame in her skin. When at last they broke apart, the space between them was left flooded with gray, their breath turned crystalline in the chill.
“I told you not to look away.” His voice came out sandpapered.
“And I didn’t.”
He tucked a short lock of white behind her ear. He didn’t linger. “You were about to.”
The moment severed, she felt suddenly desperate to be out from beneath his shadow. Out of reach of his caress. Away from the beat of his heart, visibly racing in the hollow of his throat. Shutting her eyes, she swallowed several lungfuls of air.
“What were those things in there?”
“That’s what you hear.” His eyes were black as an abyss. “When the shadows speak to you. When you hear that hum in your head. It’s all of that, just unmuffled.”
“So those faces, they were—”
“Ghosts,” Colton finished for her. “Shades. Spirits. You can say it, it won’t summon them. They’re already here.”
She reared back and glanced around, eyeballing the dark. The dark that had been her friend. The dark she’d carried home in her hands, cupped tight like a fluttering gypsy moth. The dark she’d feared, late at night when it wouldn’t stop watching.
“Mackenzie’s weirdo friend,” Haley called her. “The one who talks to dead people.”
Dread slunk through her veins. In front of her, Colton’s mouth thinned. “Don’t look at me like that. You knew what they were.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did,” he said. “Deep down. Or did you think Schiller was the only one?”
