Page 606 of Flirting with Darkness

Her fingers slid into his, and he shivered at the contact.

Returning her worried stare, he nodded, fighting to smile.

“Uh-oh,” the one named Rachel said. “Whenever he’s this quiet, the secret is big. The secret must be big this time. Right, Nat?”

Ghost darted a look in her direction, frowning.

Seeing his expression, the doctor laughed, rolling her eyes theatrically.

“Don’t give me that look, Time-Boy,” she scolded, giving him a friendly smile. “Iknowyou, big guy. Nat here told us the rules a long time ago… you can’t lie. You can’t tell any kind of untruth, or it corrupts the time jumps, correct?”

Ghost blinked.

What?

He hesitated, unsure if he should try to answer.

Truthfully, he was utterly bewildered by her words.

Time jumps? They clearly knew more about these time anomalies than he did.

He kept his confusion off his face with an effort.

Realizing she was waiting for an answer, he nodded, once.

“Correct,” he said stiffly.

“Right.” Rachel folded her arms, giving him a knowing smile. “So when you go silent like this, we allknowit’s so you don’t have to lie about something. You’re not exactly subtle, you know. It’s written all over you.”

She waved a finger playfully in the direction of his face.

“So what is it?” she demanded. “Spill, Lazarus. What are you not telling us?”

Ghost kept his expression blank with an effort.

Looking at him, the woman burst out in a louder laugh.

“God. You are hopeless,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Yes,” he agreed quietly.

Nat, who still held his hand, burst out in a laugh of her own.

She clasped his fingers and wrist in both of her hands now.

“Leave him alone, Rach,” she scolded jokingly. “He still looks like someone hit him in the head really hard before he jumped back.”

“If you really think that, don’t let him sleep.” Rachel frowned, gazing at him more clinically once more. “Maybe we really should do an MRI, just to be sure. This is quiet even for him. Maybe he really does have a concussion.”

Ghost barely heard her words.

He still had to fight not to stare at their clothes.

The female doctor wore tight-fighting pants under her white doctor’s coat. Black, of a relatively thin, stretchy-seeming material he didn’t recognize, they clung to her hips and thighs in a way that would be considered positively pornographic back home. She wore what looked like men’s black leather shoes below the pants, only with a slight elevation of the heel.

She dressed almost like a man, in other words, yet wore delicate make-up and gold hoop earrings and her fingernails were the same plum color as her lips.

She looked ridiculously clean.

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