Page 113 of Chasing Your Ghost

“I don’t understand,” Riley said, her head jerking from side to side.

“No,” Noah’s voice came from somewhere to her left. “No, this can’t be happening.”

“We need to start CPR or something,” Chris said, and he didn’t wait for anyone to take action. He nudged Ella aside to do it himself.

Riley stared blankly at the place where his clasped hands pressed down on Asher’s chest. It looked so violent, so painful. It was no wonder you could break someone’s ribs by doing it. Riley wondered if they would hear the crack if Chris pushed a bit too hard.

Her gaze slowly moved to Asher’s face, taking in his pale skin, his dry and cracked lips, the ugly purple bruise on his temple. He looked the worse for wear, but he didn’t look dead. But what did Riley know? She’d never seen a corpse before.

She’d seen countless ghosts since before she could remember, had been touched by death her whole life, but it was this, seeing Asher’s dead body, that broke something inside her.

She could taste salt. Her throat ached, burning with the sobs she was keeping in. She couldn’t look away from his face. The face that had been smiling at her only minutes earlier. His eyes had been alive with laughter, and she couldn’t understand why he wasn’t opening those green eyes. Why wouldn’t he look at her?

Why wouldn’t he just open his eyes and look at her? She wanted to scream the question at him. She wanted to beat her fists on his chest until he did.

She wanted to find whoever had done this and demand to know why. Why they’d done this to someone as wonderfully kind and funny and smart as Asher. She couldn’t understand it. Her eyes burned with how much she didn’t understand it.

“That won’t work.” The familiar voice came from somewhere above them.

When Riley turned her head to the side, she saw a figure standing at the top of the basement stairs, outlined by the light coming in through the open door.

The others scrambled to their feet, frightened into movement, but Riley remained frozen at Asher’s side.

The man stalked down the steps, his movements slow and confident. He was a hunter, toying with his prey, and Riley hated him more than she’d ever hated anyone.

All the breath left her lungs when he reached the last stair. “You."

He grinned. “Hello, new neighbor from New York.”

31

“Brett,” Riley seethed.

“You know this guy?” Noah asked in a quiet hiss that was more confusion than accusation.

“He offered to help me with my boxes on the day I arrived.” He seemed so nice, she wanted to add but didn’t. Of course, he’d seemed nice. Ted Bundy had apparently been charming as shit.

“What did you do to him?” Chris asked. He’d stopped administering CPR, and that, more than anything, made Riley lose the last shred of hope she’d been clinging to.

Instead of answering the question, Brett simply disappeared. Riley blinked at the place where he’d been, wondering if she’d gone mad. She opened her mouth to ask the others if they’d seen it too, but before she could, he appeared behind Ella.

Noah, who had been watching it all unfold from outside the pentagram, reached toward Ella’s arm to pull her away from the flaming circle and out of the man’s reach. Whatever his feelings for the woman, it didn’t stop him from wanting to get her away from Brett. But he wasn’t quick enough.

The man had his arm wrapped around Ella’s throat before Noah’s fingers could wrap around the brunette’s limb. A cacophony of alarmed shouts rang out, Riley’s among them.

“Don’t,” the imposter warned, his arm tightening around Ella’s neck when Noah made a move forward.

In a move that surprised Riley more than anything else, perhaps unfairly, Ella didn’t freeze in fear at the threat. She started clawing at Brett’s arms and struggling against him like a trapped and rabid animal, her eyes wide with the kind of fear that was mindless, thoughts scattering under the desperate need to get away.

It didn’t work. Her scratches and incoherent screams were like mosquito bites to the man, with how little he reacted.

“Please, just let her go,” Noah begged in a shout that could barely be heard over Ella’s screeches.

“I don’t think so,” the man replied with a smug smile. He lowered his head and whispered something in Ella’s ear that made her go still, her eyes flaring to show even more of the whites of her eyes.

“No,” she whispered, her head jerking from side to side.

“Brett, please.” Riley eased herself to her feet slowly as though he were a wild animal who’d be attracted to fast movements.

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