Page 121

Caspian was petty enough for the second part, and did I believe supernatural things could happen.

Absolutely.

I had never been one of those people who thought everything unexplained had to be impossible.

But did I believe the man who had been missing for six years was somehow still connected to this house, watching what happened inside it, putting invisible hands on people who pissed him off, and making his presence known without ever actually showing himself?

No.

At least, not right then.

Still, I couldn’t completely shake the uneasiness settling in my stomach.

I rolled onto my side and pulled the covers higher.

“One more weird thing… that’s all I’m giving this house,” I promised.

As I settled into the mattress, the heavy cushion behind my back slowly dipped.

I went completely still… again.

That wasn’t the first time that damn mattress had moved beneath weight that wasn’t supposed to be there. And just like before, it wasn’t the faint creak of settling wood or the soft adjustment of foam beneath my own body. The bed lowered behind me with the distinct pressure of something heavy taking a seat, as though a broad man had just sat down on the edge of the mattress inches from my back.

My eyes opened.

You have got to be kidding me.

For a solid few seconds, I genuinely wondered if somebody was fucking with me.

Willow stayed full of games, and I wouldn’t have put it past her to rig something ridiculous just to scare the hell out of me. Hell, for all I knew, I could’ve been starring in some bootleg episode of Scare Tactics while my sister hid somewhere downstairs trying not to laugh… except that explanation fell apart almost as quickly as I came up with it.

Willow could hide a speaker, she could rig something under a mattress, and she could’ve probably found some overpriced prank equipment online and have it delivered overnight if she was committed enough. What she couldn’t do was make Chalis start choking in the middle of an argument, set his car smoking from across the yard, touch my back while she was nowhere near me, or somehow know exactly when I was alone enough to start questioning my own damn senses.

Before panic could fully settle in, a familiar scent drifted through the cool air.

Caspian’s cologne.

I wasn’t something unfamiliar or one of those random men’s fragrance my grief had decided to attach a memory to.

No. I knew that scent.

I had smelled it on his clothes, his pillows, and my own skin after spending the night wrapped around him. Six years could pass, and I would still know it anywhere.

My chest tightened.

Strangely, I wasn’t afraid anymore, and somehow that was almost more unsettling.

The mattress had dipped behind me, I had already felt something touch me before, and now my bedroom smelled like a man who had been missing for six years. Yet instead of feeling threatened, some deeply familiar part of me felt safe, as though somebody was sitting there keeping watch while I rested.

That made absolutely no damn sense.

First the strange things I’d experienced inside the house, then the porch incident, now this bed, which has happened twice, probably more than that if I wasn’t really paying atttetnion. None of it was enough to send me packing, especially when every incident could’ve still been explained away if I tried hard enough, but I was officially keeping count.

If much more weird shit started happening, I was going to have to make a decision: either I needed to get myself evaluated to make sure grief hadn’t started doing something strange to my mind, or somebody with a bible, cross, holy water, anointing oil, and enough experience was getting invited to my house to tell me what the hell was living in that house with us.

Preferably before Willow found out and ordered a ghost-hunting kit off Amazon.

***