Page 117 of Chasing Your Ghost

“What do we do?” Ella asked, her voice breaking into a sob.

Noah had slumped down against the wall, his legs sticking limply out in front of him, and she was kneeling beside him, her now-blood-covered hands pressing against his bleeding arm. Chris was on Noah’s other side. His expression was pinched with worry as he looked at his friend.

“I don’t know,” Riley admitted. She spun when her neck prickled again, the knife slicing through empty air. Her hand shook, and the blade trembled in front of her. Brett was taunting them, and it was working.

“Maybe we should—”

Whatever Chris was going to suggest was cut off by a female yelp and the sound of Noah screaming Ella’s name. Riley turned around and saw Brett dragging her away from them by her arm, her legs scrambling on the floor, trying to find purchase. Riley ran, not giving herself a second to think, to hesitate.

Brett had stopped, but he was mumbling something under his breath—words that she couldn’t make sense of—and she knew they couldn’t let him finish whatever spell he was casting.

She drew her arm back as she neared him, her mind sorting through a list of the best place to stab him, but his words cut off, and he looked up at her before she could bring the knife down on him. He smiled before he disappeared again.

Riley let out a string of swear words that would have made the most foul-mouthed of men blush. Not knowing what else to do, she kept her knife trained forward and held a hand out to Ella. Something slammed into the side of Riley’s face, and the other girl’s fingers brushed through hers as the force sent her crashing to the ground. She held her hands out to soften her fall, and the knife clattered to the concrete floor beside her.

The impact of her fall jarred her, but it was nothing compared to the ache of her right cheek. The bastard had punched her. If her ears weren’t ringing and her head wasn’t throbbing, she would have cursed him with a colorful mixture of words that her dad would have probably been both proud of and horrified by.

Instead, she groaned and gingerly brought her fingers to her face. She flinched and hissed in pain. She was going to have one hell of a bruise. Not important right now, she told herself, lifting her gaze to the scuffle a few feet away from her and Ella. Asher had Brett pinned beneath him, and he was raining down punch after punch at the man’s blood-smeared face.

Maybe she should have been horrified by the way he was attacking the man with unrestrained and merciless violence, but she couldn’t find it in herself to be anything but impressed. Even with his many wounds and after spending five weeks in that basement, Asher was more than holding his own.

But Brett had an unfair advantage, which he used for the fourth time by vanishing just as Asher’s fist was about to connect. Unable to stop in time, Asher’s hand met concrete. If his knuckles weren’t split before, they definitely were now.

“Guys, we need to get Noah out of here now,” Chris yelled. “He’s losing too much blood.”

Riley looked at where he was crouched next to her stepbrother. He was right. Noah looked like he could barely keep his eyes open, despite the pressure that Chris was putting on his wound. “Take him outside,” she replied, scrambling to get back hold of the knife. “The police should be here any minute.”

“Is he okay?” Ella asked. She was standing back on her feet. She started moving toward them but was stopped when Brett appeared directly in front of her.

He grabbed her shoulder with one arm and lifted his other hand to her forehead, hastily tracing something on her skin with his thumb while she struggled against him. The skin where he was drawing the mark started to shimmer, tiny ripples of light and colors appearing in the wake of Brett’s touch.

Riley had to stop him. She didn’t recall how she was suddenly standing right behind him, but she would never forget how it felt when the knife sank into his back, cutting through skin and muscle before stopping against the bone of his shoulder blade.

She would have dreams about it. She would have nightmares about how easily his flesh gave way to the blade. She would remember the way her fingers, slick with his and Noah’s blood, slipped on the handle of the knife before she tightened her grip and pulled it out. She would remember the ragged breath he took before he blinked out of existence—or rather, out of their plane.

And a part of her would always, always regret not aiming for a place on his body where a stab wound would have been fatal. Because Brett would prove to be right when he said it was far from over, and they all should have listened.

32

Riley turned to Chris and Noah as soon as Brett had disappeared. “Get him out of here now,” she ordered.

Chris didn’t hesitate. He wrapped Noah’s uninjured arm around the back of his neck and pulled him to his feet, and the two of them stumbled their way outside.

Riley spun in a circle, her breathing sounding too loud and her pulse beating at a frenzied pace. Her neck seemed to burn with the threat of Brett’s invisible presence, and she waited for him to reappear. Only he didn’t. The itch at the back of her neck eased until she felt not even a whisper of sensation.

Riley pulled in a deep breath. The threat was gone, but her body didn’t seem to get the message. She felt dizzy and agitated. She felt cold even though her brow was damp with sweat.

“Riley, are you okay?” Asher asked, but her attention had strayed to an object on the floor, and she couldn’t seem to look away.

“Oh my god,” she repeated several times as she looked down at the bloody knife she didn’t remember dropping after Brett had traveled into whatever other plane he had chosen for his escape.

He might have deserved it, but she couldn’t believe she had stabbed someone. Riley curled her hands into loose fists, the blood coating her skin making her fingers feel slippery.

She couldn’t just smell the blood anymore; she could taste it. There was an iron tang in the air that coated her tongue. Her stomach churned, threatening to expel its contents.

“Riley?” Asher’s panicked voice called out, but she was too busy trying not to vomit to twist her head toward him or respond. “Riley?” he asked again, this time from right in front of her.

She looked up into his face, into a pair of familiar green eyes. A line of blood traced the outside of one of those eyes, stemming from a cut above his eyebrow. Riley wondered how many punches he’d taken before he’d managed to get Brett down to the ground. She hoped it was only the one.

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