Page 84 of Malice

“I trust you, Aster. With my life.”

“Good.” He rises slightly to kiss me again. “We should get cleaned up. I don’t want to wait any longer to deal with this.”

I nod, but I’m unable to hold back my thoughts. “Can it wait a little longer? Can we lay here together and pretend this is the way it is? That no one and nothing is here but us. Then you can do whatever you need to do, but I need your arms around me a little bit longer.”

“Yeah.” He nods, brushing his thumb across my chin. “Yeah, we can do that.”

Chapter 28

Aster

Iwake to the sound of crashing glass and launch myself out of bed, running to the hallway bare-ass naked. There’s nothing there, so I hurry back to the bedroom to grab my jeans and shimmy into them.

“What’s going on?” Hudson asks sleepily, making no attempt to move.

The house creaks and whines like a strong wind is blowing through it. “You don’t hear that?”

Hudson peels his eyes open. “Hear what?”

“Well, shit.”

Why can I hear all of this but Hudson can’t?

“Stay put, huh? I’m gonna check on some things.”

“Okay.”

I manage to get my boots on and find my shirt on the floor, yanking it on as I hurry back to the hallway and climb the stairs to the attic. Inside it’s silent, with no hint of the house spirits.

“Hello? Crash? What the fuck is going on?”

I scan the darkness looking for traces of the Horror but it’s gone too.

“Fuck. Crash?”

Nothing.

I scratch my head before turning and running down the stairs. Maybe it’s in the kitchen. I hurry down the hall, visually scanning each room as I pass until I find myself back where it all started. It’s eerily silent. Where did everyone go?

The hair on the back of my neck rises as foreboding spreads through me. Something is wrong. Very fucking wrong. I glance at the clock on the wall. Three a.m. I don’t know why but for some reason that time sticks in my head.

Out of options, I do the only thing that makes sense. “Request to speak to Farnsworth.”

I close my eyes, bracing for the impact, and this time when I land on the floor in the underworld, it’s far less jarring.

Farnsworth is hovering right in front of me, his brow creased. Abigail stands beside him.

“The target is in trouble,” Farnsworth says.

“I know that. Where did the Horror go? And the house spirits? And Crash?”

Farnsworth offers his hand to help me up. “You can’t find the Horror?”

“No. It was trapped in the attic and now it’s nowhere and neither are the spirits that were guarding it. Can you lose a Horror?”

Farnsworth frowns, closing his eyes and vibrating. His body flickers with orange, red, and a deep blue light that seems to come from inside. He snaps his eyes open, and they are completely white.

He reaches out and grips my wrist with unexpected strength, but before I can react, a vision slams into me of Hudson suspended in midair, spinning and screaming my name. Instead of the Horror, a spirit dressed in what looks like a 1940s era tweed suit stands before him, laughing maniacally. The other house spirits lie scattered across the floor like victims of a massacre.

---