Page 126 of Lost in the Moonlight

What had Lincoln said to me all those days ago? That he’d thought she’d returned to haunting him? What had Felicity told the media?He sees ghosts.

The burning in my chest grew.

Sienna had saved us tonight.

She wasn’t really there, and yet somehow she was, and she’d saved us.

The EMTs asked me to step back even farther, but Lincoln reached for me, gripping my hand with his good one. “She stays,” he growled out.

They checked his vitals and tore his shirt to get a better look at the bullet wound. “I think it just winged the deltoid, but we won’t know if it hit bone or a vein until we get you to the hospital. It’s good you’re awake. Try to stay with us.”

“Somebody turn the lights on,” James snapped.

“He cut the electricity from the main line down the street. The whole street is out,” Axel responded.

“Then where the hell is the music coming from?” the Marshal demanded, heading toward Lincoln’s room.

As the song cut out and a heavy silence descended, a new fear rose through me. Mom. Alone in the cottage.

When James reemerged from the bedroom, a tortured cry leaped from my throat, “Mom!”

“She’s fine, Willow. She’s at Hector’s. She went there as soon as she left here.”

I wasn’t sure why that knowledge was what started the tremors. Adrenaline. Relief. But when I looked down at Lincoln, covered in blood from him and Aaron, the shaking only intensified.

Shadowed in the weird light of the flashlights, two EMTs arrived with a stretcher and made their way to Lincoln.

“I can walk,” he said, and using me and the wall, he attempted to stand and wavered. It was Axel on his other side who stopped him from falling.

“Nothing wrong with letting them take you out on the gurney,” Axel barked.

“I leave this house on that thing and someone photographs it, it’ll spread that I overdosed. Walk me out. Then, call my mother before she hears it from someone else.”

Surrounded by the security team, the Marshals, and EMTs, we were led to the back of the waiting ambulance. Lincoln climbed in, and I stepped up after him. Finally, he lay down on the gurney. His face was white. Whiter than I’d ever seen it. Whiter than the ghost who’d stepped out of nothingness to warn us.

The ambulance moved, racing down the darkened street.

My hand clutched Lincoln’s good one as the EMT checked his vitals again, hooking up wires and pads. Panic filled me. A deep, unyielding fear. I couldn’t lose him. Not now.

Lincoln squeezed my hand. “Willow, look at me.” My eyes met his, and I saw the anger there that blended with a strange sort of relief. “I’m okay. I’m alive. You’re alive. We’re okay.”

I choked out. “You’re shot.”

“Was that Aaron Vitale?” he asked. “I’d seen his picture, but I wasn’t sure.”

“Yes.” I nodded to reinforce it.

Lincoln’s eyes shut. “Good.”

The machine he was hooked up to beeped wildly, my heart seeming to keep pace with the frenzied beat as I called his name.

His lids snapped open. “I’m here, Sweetness. Just a bit tired.”

When his eyes shut again, I demanded, “What’s wrong?”

“He lost a lot of blood,” the EMT said. “He isn’t dying. His body is doing what it needs to do, shutting down so it can heal.”

I wasn’t reassured, but as the monitor continued to blip, and Lincoln’s chest continued to rise and fall, I held on to his hand and murmured words of reassurance and love, hoping it would be enough.

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