Page 25 of How I Met Your Murderer

My mind was stuck on the image of Raff’s fingers tangled in that dark, curly hair.

Raff’s lips on his lips. Sucking a mark under that collar.

Those hands sliding up the broad planes of Raff’s chest, taking for granted the soft hair brushing against the pads of each finger.

That smirking mouth kissing a path down from Raff’s navel, Raff’s strong thighs spreading in invitation.

If I still had a stomach, I would have been nauseous.

Hell, I think I was spiritually nauseous. A new phenomenon for Raff to document.

Not that I was jealous or anything. I belonged to the past, and Raff was the present and future. We didn’t belong in the same line of any song. I knew better—I simply kept forgetting because we spent so much time together. My eyes were overly bright with the memory of what it felt like to cry, but of course I had no tears to shed.

I guess it was past time to admit, at least to myself, that I was attracted to him. And not in the way I sometimes admired people from a distance, safe and detached, but somewhere deeper—something that only ever happened when someone had already gotten under my skin. I wanted things I’d never let myself want without that kind of closeness: to touch him, to breathe him in, to be covered in the scent of him. To feel those broad hands on me, getting to know my body the way he already knew my mind, and I knew his.

But that was fucking impossible, wasn’t it?

The phone chimed again, and we both stared as Ronan’s name and image popped onto the display screen. The picture was a tasteful black and white shot of his glistening pecs. I guess demonologists lifted, too.

“For feck’s sake, would you look at this?” Raff grumbled, reaching for the phone with a grip like he wanted to hurl it at the wall.

“Ooh, bring it here, Raff dear. Would you?” Síofra asked, appearing as a silhouette in the decorative wall mirror above the antique settee. “That looks interesting.”

I shot her a look, wondering how long she had been lurking, then glanced away just as quickly. She didn’t need to see what was clearly written all over my face. “Shee, could you maybe go and find Gráinne for us? Tell her we have a surprise for her.”

“Oh, I suppose.” The image in the mirror wavered, then coalesced into something more solid and distinct. I could make out the lines of Síofra’s eyelashes and the shape of her pout now. “As long as you two don’t have all the fun without me.”

With that, the mirror’s reflection cleared, once again showing only my slim, transparent figure next to Raff’s larger, more solid one.

“Are you really going to throw your phone?” I asked, because he was still clutching it like he wanted to crumple it like aluminum foil. “I had no idea who he was, you know.”

“Haven’t decided. And I know you didn’t,” Raff answered on a hot breath, followed by a mutter of “But you’re acting the maggot again.”

“I’m sorry. And—also, I’m not, this time. This is different.” I drifted a little closer, hands raised in surrender. “Look, I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble. You already have your hands full of that here. And I don’t even think you should date him. Obviously, I—I think you deserve better. Worlds better. Galaxies better.”

Raff’s head snapped up at that, eyes narrowing—not out of anger, exactly. More . . . searching. “Galaxies, is it?” he asked softly.

That’s when the energy in the room changed. Sharpened. Intensified. Even I could feel it, another presence with us, and not a friendly one. “Raff, you need to leave,” I said quickly. “Go back to your van. Something’s wrong. It’s not me, I—I don’t know what it is. I—”

The wick of the skull-shaped candle on the coffee table suddenly flared to life on its own as the floor lamp in the corner blinked off, washing the room with shadows. Raff was already sitting, but he still scrambled back across the carpet immediately, putting distance between himself and where the grinning candle sat. He winced like he’d done something to his knee, but his gaze was locked on that flame that had ignited without a match—and the shapes appearing in the fire. Faces I didn’t recognize formed out of the blaze, their lips parting and mouths elongating, gruesomely contorted into silent screams. This wasn’t the poltergeist from the courtyard or Gráinne pulling a new prank.

This was like nothing I had ever seen.

I tugged at the straps of Raff’s denim overalls, trying to drag him even further from the strange sight, but it was like I couldn’t get enough energy with this other presence sucking all the air and light from the room, leaving me weak and winded. Smothering me, reducing me to a worried wisp at Raff’s back.

“Colm O’Dwyre. Fionn Clancy. Dara Keane.”

I didn’t know the names that the fire itself appeared to hiss in a voice as old as the dawn, deep and dark, but one look at Raff’s face told me that he did.

“Dubhán Kelly,” the crackling voice went on. “Ciarán Byrne. Paddy Flanagan. Eithne O’Meara. Sean O’Meara.”

The last name ended on a hiss as Raff shot the candle in its grinning face with one of his ghost-zapping weapons. The Turbo thing.

Black smoke curled from the top of the shattered skull, and bits of wax smeared over every inch of the glass tabletop.

As the lamp in the corner popped back on in the absence of whatever that spirit had been, I found I could summon at least enough energy to lay a chilled hand on Raff’s injured knee. It was the first time I’d touched him on purpose since the day we met, when I’d accidentally pulled his hair. And now that I had touched him . . . Hell, I wanted to do it again, in more ways than I was ready to voice. I just didn’t know what he wanted, and had no idea how to ask.

“My family,” Raff finally gasped. It seemed like my touch was bracing enough to get him to talk again, but I hated how shaken he sounded. Not at all like himself, his usual brash determination and lilting playfulness gone. “That thing . . . It knew my parents. My friends. My fecking c-coach—Eric, please tell me you know what that was. A demon?”