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You should never jump into bed with someone without thinking about the consequences.

He wasn’t sure where that thought had come from, but now it sat there, in the back of his mind, indelible.

Nate turned the cup on the cloth. He didn’t drink from it. “I’ve had a dose like this once before. Admittedly, it put me off the stuff for a long time.”

“What happened?”

Nate looked at the fire.

“I threw up in the kitchen sink,” he said. “After. For some reason, that part sticks out in my memory. I was thirteen and the whole community was watching.” Nate huffed. “It was supposed to be a fun little ceremony. A party and cake after the tea.”

“How did it go wrong?”

Nate was quiet for a moment. “Well. They gave me the same dose every other kid gets. Nobody considered that I might be more sensitive to the effects than everyone else. Usually it just opens your senses a bit. Me? I got kicked out of my body. One moment I was sitting, and the next I was looking down at my body in a chair.”

Leo blinked. “What? How does that work?”

“Astral projection.” Nate shrugged. “I didn’t know what it was then. I know now. At the time, all I knew was that I was floating toward the ceiling while my mom was calling my name. She sounded like she was underwater.”

“That sounds scary.”

Nate grimaced. “It was. I had no idea what I was doing and so… I got grabbed pretty quickly.”

“Grabbed?”

“By one of the dead.” Nate said it like it was nothing. Just his life. “I figure he’d been in the dark a long time, and something bright came in reach, and he grabbed it. He was very strong. Or I was very small. It comes out to the same thing.”

“Jesus,” Leo muttered. “No wonder you walked away from the family business.”

“Yeah, well.” Nate considered the cup again. “The adults managed to drag me back eventually. There was no real harm done to me. But I’ll never forget that day.”

“And now you want to what… astral project again? After that experience? What if something grabs you again?”

“Leo.” Nate almost smiled. “The only one who could grab me here is you. And that’s kind of the idea.”

“Oh.”

Chapter

Thirty-Eight

For a moment, Leo just sat there.

Then he was out of his chair. “Not here.”

Nate blinked. “What?”

“You’re not leaving your body in a chair next to an open fire. We’ll go inside.” Leo was already moving toward the house. “I’m not spending my first night with you watching your empty body slide into the coals.”

Nate’s eyebrows rose slightly. “My first night with you,” he repeated.

Leo stopped. He hadn’t planned to say that. But he wasn’t going to take it back either.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s what this is, isn’t it?”

Nate’s eyes seemed to darken slightly in the firelight. “It is.”

“Then hurry up.”