break-in, while they showed pictures of her beautiful face. The whole thing made me feel a little sick, so I turned it off and ate in silence.
After finishing the pizza, I leaned back on the couch. My eyes started to fall closed, so I jumped up and walked around. I peeked out the front window, then the back. No one was in sight.
The heat and food were making me drowsy. I shut the front and back doors and propped a chair under each knob. I shut all the windows and turned the thermostat to eighty-five. Cool air hissed into the room. That would help with the heat. I just needed to keep myself awake.
I paced until I grew tired, then sat on the couch with my arms folded. Just as I told myself I could stay up as late as I needed to, I nodded off.
I dreamed I was standing on a ship on a stormy sea. Everything below deck had been taken over by a huge beehive—the buzzing was incredibly loud—and waves against the wooden hull were making it groan and crack.
Then I realized I was sleeping and that the sounds were coming from outside my dream. I snapped awake in a living room full of noise. I jolted to my feet, looking around.
The buzzing, cracking sounds were coming from the bathroom.
CHAPTER FOUR
I raced to the bathroom door. The windows were dark; it was still nighttime, but how late was it? I took my ghost knife out of my pocket.
I glanced around the room. No one else was here—not that I’d expected Caramella or Luther to come home and leave me sleeping quietly on the couch. I rubbed my eyes, trying to get them to focus.
The buzzing became hollow, as though it was echoing down a long tube, and was followed by a series of cracks that sounded like the bathroom was falling off the building. I pushed the door open just as a terrible silence fell.
The bathtub seemed to be full of darkness. I took a step into the room so I could see the bottom, but there didn’t seem to be one. All I could see was swirling black, and slightly darker shapes moving far, far away.
An opening to the Empty Spaces had appeared in the bathtub. It wasn’t a vision this time; I could feel the
Something floated through the opening into our world. It was little more than a colorless, shapeless shimmer, strung out like pulled taffy, and it hovered seven feet off the floor.
A bad feeling came over me, and I backed out of the room while lifting the ghost knife. A second form began to rise out of the tub.
The first shimmer rushed at my face. I instinctively held up my empty hand to ward it off. It struck my palm and flowed around it like a thick jelly. Tendrils struck my mouth and nose. It was sticky, just like Summer’s hand when she grabbed my wrist. I kept my mouth tightly shut, but it seemed to be trying to squirm into my nostrils.
My iron gate, one of the spells Annalise had put on my chest, suddenly felt burning hot. For a moment, I felt a strange, heavy blankness in my thoughts, as though something was erasing my mind.
I slashed my ghost knife through the tendrils, splitting it apart. The blankness vanished. I yanked the bathroom door shut. Whatever the hell I was dealing with, I wanted to face them one at a time. I slashed again, and the stuff let out a strange keening that bypassed my ears and went directly to my guts.
This goop was alive. It was a predator and it was after me.
My ghost knife can kill predators, though. I slashed it across the shimmer again, dragging it along my face and around my mouth and nose. More keening, which was just what I wanted. I cut it again.
But I had to be careful: I know little about magic, and only slightly more about this spell I’d cast. My ghost knife has a powerful effect on living creatures, and I’d never cut myself with the spell, for fear of what might happen. At best I’d lose my will to fight, like Wardell. I didn’t want to imagine the worst thing.
So I held the laminated edge of the paper close and smeared it through the sticky liquid slime spreading over my neck and shoulder.
The creature flexed, twisting me off balance and knocking me to the carpet. I reached out to the table to break my fall, stupidly dropping my ghost knife. The predator wrenched me flat on my back. I could still feel it pushing despair into me, trying to make me surrender. With a quick exertion of will, I
The creature flowed over my face, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I blasted air out of my nose to clear it, then clamped it shut with my free hand. My skin … Everywhere it touched me, my skin burned. The thing was like acid.
My iron gate flared again. The despair grew stronger and my thoughts were sluggish and dull. Without that protective spell, I would have been comatose.
The creature flexed again, trying to pull my hand away from my face. Damn, it was strong. It took everything I had to hold my fingers over my nose. Eventually, it would realize it could bend back my fingers until they broke. For now, though, I was new prey and it wasn’t quite sure how to deal with me.
I brought the ghost knife toward my face, but the predator pushed it back, slamming my wrist to the floor. I couldn’t move that arm.
It had me pinned, and eventually it would find a way inside my body. Then the acid burning would be on my insides. With the right leverage, I might be stronger than it, but I was on my back, my air was running out, and I couldn’t see. I had to do something quickly—I had to think quickly—or I was going to die.
I flexed my right arm with all my strength, trying to bring the ghost knife near my face with a sudden burst of power. It almost worked, but I couldn’t quite reach. I moved the paper back and forth along my wrist as much as I could. It made tiny cuts in the predator, but I felt it peeling away from my hand and the spell.
Then my burst of power was over, and the predator slammed my arm back against the carpet.
I was failing. Bad enough that I was going to be killed by this damn predator here on the floor of Melly’s pretty little house, but Caramella would have a predator in her home, waiting for her. God, no, I could not do that to her. I could not be responsible for that.
