Page 39 of Dead Set on You
His apartment closes in on me as all of yesterday—each petrifying piece of it—clicks into place, and the urge to wail is almost overpowering.
One. Mamma. Mia.
Maybe the ghost stuff was a dream.
I glance down at myself, at my hands that look sohuman. Taking a deep (almost hopeful) breath, I reach for theFood & Winemagazine resting atop his coffee table. My hand movesstraight through it, through the table, like slicing through ice … with no resistance.
The air whooshes out of me.
Ghost powers: still intact. Nightmare status: officially confirmed.
Curling my fingers into my palm, I dig my nails in, needing to feel something besides the dread spreading through me like a swarm of angry termites, devouring everything in their path. So much like the morning after Annie died.
Two Mamma Mia.
Waking up in a world without my sister was worse than not waking up at all. At least, that’s what fourteen-year-old Stevie Popovici thought.
Three Mamma Mia.
But twenty-nine-year-old Evie Pope hasn’t lost anything. Not yet.
A phone buzzes and rattles against the wood floor beneath the sofa. It could be mine or Violet’s—one of hundreds in a graveyard of phones beneath his sofa. It wouldn’t surprise me.
I don’t bother checking. Phones are as useless to me as the man who refused to help me.
I glare at the poster above his TV. The ridiculous man smirks back. Who even prints posters ofthemselvesand frames them like this? A vain, selfish, loyalty-optional human. That’s who.
I stick my tongue out at the poster, displaying about as much maturity as the man in it. Must be something in the Vela-oxygenated air.
And it makes me want to deliver on my promise to haunt him and make his life hell.
I eye the door to his bedroom.
Why not?
Ire and determination fueling my movements, I shoot from the sofa and cut across the apartment, trying really hard to not question why I’m wearing the same heels from yesterday, ones Iwasn’twearing when I fell asleep. Getting an explanation for that is about as likely as Rafael admitting he planned to backstab me from day one. That would require him to be decent and truthful.
Decent, truthful people don’t deserve hauntings, butthisone? Oh, he’s got it coming.
A sense of wicked glee settles over me as I enter his dark bedroom. His king bed dominates the room, a shadowy monolith for nocturnal adventures I try desperately not to imagine. Rafael’s nothing more than a shape sprawled atop it. He’s sleeping likehe’sthe one in a coma.
This might be the first time since waking up yesterday that I feel a sliver of something besides dread as I close in.
Flipping my hair over my face, I imagine I’m a ghost out of a horror movie and circle around the bed, arms raised above my head and teeth bared. I open my mouth to unleash a ghoulish moan.
But the shapes move. The shadows shift and settle. And I almost finish the process of dying.
Rafael is sprawled across his bed, sheets twisted around him—around hisbare and nakedbody—leaving very little (nothingis little) to the imagination. I want to simultaneously look and look away as heat sweeps through me, flowing and ebbing. Rafael mumbles in his sleep and flips over. His backside saysHey, girl.
Ohmygod.
I squeak, half tripping over my legs as I scramble out of his bedroom.
Heart thundering against my ribs, I’m breathing like I’ve sprinted a 5K as impossibly vivid images of Rafael’s toned chest and taut ass play through my mind like a movie reel ofabs,thighs,ass.
I count the seconds—which feel like lifetimes—before I decide it’s safe to get out of his apartment and leave the haunting for another time, like when hauntees are wearing lots and lots of layers.
Gaze averted, I slip past his bedroom, out the front door, and down the fifteen flights of stairs to his building. Outside, I suck in a deep breath of air, hold it for three seconds, and release. I repeat it several times, and each time I think of dirty diapers, spoiled eggs, and very old, saggy-skinned men.
