Page 15 of Guarded By the Nightmare

I blinked, then reached for my purse, which I’d set beside me the night prior, all the better to sleep closer to my gun. I had a small notepad inside, where I’d carefully recorded all of the guys’movements and patterns, watching all five of them have the lives they’d denied me and Ella. “Logan Whitmore.”

My Nightmare crossed his arms. “Who is he?”

“Better to ask what.” I could tick off all of Logan’s life attributes on one hand. “Devastatingly handsome, rich, and stupid as a baked potato. He’s a legacy RRP, and the only reason he hasn’t flunked out yet is because he has access to their testing bank, plus he pays a tutor on the regular.” I put air quotes around the wordtutor—the RRP had other kids in the same classes essentially on payroll to help.

“And he’s the first of your five why?” Sylas asked. His tone was neutral, indifferent even, but the tilt of his head gave his interest away.

I made a face. “Because I won’t mind us killing him—and also because I know exactly where he’ll be tonight.”

Sylas looked around. “I take it we’re trading up in the world.”

“As long as I’m not bringing any bedbugs back to my apartment,” I said, crawling out of my sleeping bag at last.

I didn’t brushmy teeth at the hotel. It wasn’t worth bothering with, when civilization was so close at hand. I was surprised when we left though to find out that the door down the hall was open but there wasn’t any police tape around—then I remembered Sylas had totallydisappearedthe corpse. No one had noticed that guy was missing, or called the cops.

“I don’t want you doing that with Logan,” I said, once we were both inside my car. Sylas was harder to see now with more ambient light,but I could sense his curiosity as I drove us away. “I need for there to be a body. The rest of them need to know it happened.”

Sylas gave a malevolent chuckle. “Good. I like that. More fear for me to feed off of.”

I nodded strongly. “Yes.”

The only reason I’d come to this hotel was because it was the only place in town where I could pay cash for a room. If I’d had to go through with my plans alone, with just the gun, I needed to be untraceable, and when someone started putting two and two together, the first place their concerned fingers would point would be at the “lying” ex-girlfriend.

But I had a feeling that now, with Sylas, the murders would be so atrocious that no one would think they could be committed by little old me—until it was too late.

“He’ll be at his tutor’s from six to eight tonight. He’s got a final coming up, and he needs a C to pass. We just have to wait for him to walk to his car to drive home when he’s done.”

And that was a good thing, too. His tutor lived off campus, far away from the rest of the frat. If Logan’s corpse was found near RRP house, they’d view it as an attack, whereas if he was murdered a few miles away, it could be a wrong-time, wrong-place scenario.

A mugging gone wrong.

“Do you have any weaknesses?” I asked Sylas.

He seemed affronted—I could tell by the way he dispersed, letting more of the sunlight show through him. “Excuse me?”

“That I should know about,” I quickly explained. “Like some way he can capture or hurt you?”

There was a still between us in the car, like when you were in the eye of a storm, and then raucous laughter poured out of him. “Me? Be hurt?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m just asking.”

“Curious for yourself, I bet,” he said, his smoke forming a tongue for long enough for him to lick it across his now showing sharp black teeth.

“No, I don’t renege on deals.”

“That’s what everyone who hires me thinks, at first,” he said, with a shrug. “And then, for some reason, as their sands run out, they all seem to change their mind.”

I frowned. I hadn’t laid eyes on my hourglass today, but the mark didn’t hurt as much as it had the night prior. I was going to have to keep wearing long sleeves to hide it, I wouldn’t want anyone putting two and two together until it was too late, but it was a crisp October, and I had plenty of reasons to be wearing sweaters.

I’d given away three-quarters of my wardrobe after Ella had gone away. Any girl my size who hit the Goodwill that week was going to think she won the lottery. I just couldn’t stand the thought of wearing anything I’d worn with Trent ever again, and seeing as we’d dated for six months, that was most of my clothing.

Too bad no one would wonder what Logan was wearing when they found his corpse.

The Nightmareand I reached my apartment at ten, but I turned to him before he could get out of the car. “Can other people see you?”

“As in, should I hide?” he asked, with a shrug. “Probably.”

I squinted at him before taking off my seatbelt. “And you didn’t think about that, yourself?”

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