Page 31 of The Imaginary Friend's Obsession

Before I’m aware of what I’m doing, I reach up and pull his face toward me. He yields to my touch, and I push his mask just above his mouth and kiss him.

When our lips collide, I know that it’sright. The contact sends a shock all the way through my body, tingling in my fingers…and elsewhere. Dorian’s grip on me tightens, all four hands clutching at me like he wants to somehow pull me closer. He kisses me back with hunger to match mine. Hot breath, a slide of tongue. A whimper escapes me as he crushes me against his chest, my breasts rubbing against his stomach; even through his suit, I can feel the hard muscles of his abs. I kiss him again and again, until I am panting, and even then it is not enough. I nip his bottom lip, breathe him in; I’m struck by a desire to consume him. To be consumed.

I have always kept everyone else at arm’s length, but Dorian can never be close enough. I need him. I’ve always needed him. How could I have forgottenthis?

He pulls away, breath shuddering out. I catch a glimpse of full, swollen lips, and then he yanks his mask down to cover his mouth again.

“Daisy,” he whispers.

I freeze at the sound of his voice coming from the radio. Deep and whispery and all too familiar. He still sounds far away, distorted, like a channel with a bad connection. But hespoke.

I gaze up at him in wonder. “Dorian.”

“Can’t be…” His mouth keeps moving, but the words turn to static. “D-D-D—”

My heart wrenches. “I can’t hear you.”

He reaches up to wipe my face. When he draws his hands back, his white glove is red and wet with blood. I wipe at my nose; I hadn’t even realized it was bleeding. He clenches his hand into a fist.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “It’s just from using my powers, I think.” I wipe my nose again; it won’t stop bleeding. “I’m fine.”

He shakes his head.

“Danger!”

I flinch at the burst of noise from the radio, clasp a hand to my ear as it crescendos in an awful shriek of sound before cutting off. When I look back at Dorian, he’s going fuzzy around the edges again. Fading.

“Don’t go,” I plead. I reach for his shirt, but my hand goes through him. “Tell me what’s going on!”

The door to the cell opens. “Daisy? I just saw something on the EMF, are you…?”

I look over my shoulder at Ezra, who freezes in the doorway, staring. Then back toward Dorian, expecting him to have disappeared already—but he hasn’t. He’s still standing there, his masked face tilted to one side as he looks at Ezra. His eyes narrow, his shoulders stiffening.

Then two of his gloved hands jut out andshoveme backward. Gasping, I stumble directly into Ezra, sending us both falling to the tile. While we’re still sitting there, Dorian grabs the door and shuts it behind him, closing himself in his cell.

* * *

I stand in front of the viewing window, holding a tissue to my nose and watching Dorian walk around the room. After the fleeting appearances of the last few weeks, followed by what seemed to be a total disappearance, it’s shocking to see him so clearly. He is so visible and…real. He doesn’t so much as flicker as he paces the room, and when he pauses to pick up the rubber ball and bounce it against the floor, it’s obvious that he is still solid as well.

“You can still see him?” Ezra asks.

I smile without taking my eyes off Dorian. “Yes.”

Beside me, Ezra fusses over an array of instruments on the desk—the EMF reader, a temperature gauge, and more that I don’t understand. As he records numbers in his notebooks, his eyebrows lift toward his hairline. “Amazing,” he murmurs. “Dorian hasn’t shown such a solid manifestation in the entire time I’ve been observing him.” He looks up from his notebook at me with something like awe. “You brought him back. He wasgone, and you brought him back.”

I drop my gaze. “I don’t think I did anything special.”

“Regardless, the strength of your bond is impressive.” He shuts his notebook and comes to stand beside me, peering through the viewing window.

“Can you see him now?” I ask.

“Mm…sort of. If I concentrate. I can definitelyfeelhim now, like I can with other spirits.”

Dorian pauses as he notices Ezra in the window, and stiffens. Then he disappears from view. The ball drops from his hand and bounces against the floor before rolling to a stop.

I hit the intercom. “You don’t have to be shy. Ezra is helping you. Helpingus.”

The coloring book and crayons fly off the table and hit the wall. A burst of static comes through the radio, and the lights flicker.

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