Page 31 of One Last Touch

He shrugged. “We could never marry. Have kids.”

“Watch it.” I smirked as I started walking again. “You’re showing your age.” He gaped at me and I laughed. “So the reasons you think I should leave you all to a miserable fate is because I should be out there, fucking other guys and getting hitched?”

His brows slammed down, the tightness of his voice filling me with a smug confidence when he replied, “Well, I mean, that’s not exactly what I meant—”

I laughed and after a second he joined in. We followed the dirt trail around in a wide circle and I jumped when there was a rustle in the trees up above, sudden movement darting about that had me stepping instinctively closer to Sage. Leaves scattered, flying up into the air and I gasped, the rustle growing louder until a small, grey head popped out of the leaves and my hands shook when I laughed breathlessly. Scared by a squirrel. I’d been spending too much time thinking about ghosts, clearly.

“So how exactly do you break a tether connection between a ghost and the point of their focus?”

Sage shrugged as we stepped onto the wooden dock and looked out at the water. “I have no idea.”

“But with my mum, you guys thought he would move on when she died, right?”

“Yeah, I mean, it made sense. If she was the thing tethering him to this plane and she no longer existed on it, then he would have nothing to hold onto.”

An icy chill descended on me and my blood ran cold. “Do you think there’s a way to sever the tether without me… dying?”

“That’s not an option, so we’ll find one.”

I nodded but my footsteps felt heavier, like something in my soul felt that my time was limited, tenuous.

“If killing me would break his connection to our world, why would he do that though?”

Sage stared out at the sea of trees, the branches had begun to sway more vigorously and I knew we needed to get home before the weather had a chance to turn on us. “Maybe he doesn’t care about staying here. Knowing him, he just wants revenge. No matter the cost.”

I would do terrible things for the people I love, I’d told him and I couldn’t help but wonder what Jared might do in the name of revenge and what I was going to do to stop him.

Chapter Thirteen

“Mum,” I whispered the following night as I crept around the halls on the second floor. “Mum, are you there?” The darkness was so complete my lit candle barely seemed to penetrate it and I hissed as melted wax dripped onto my thumb.

“Natalia,” I tried instead. “God fucking damn it, where are you?” Normally using language like that would have resulted in a full scolding, but only silence greeted me. I kept my breaths even, trying not to let my frustration weigh me down as I spun around and walked out of the master suite. I blew the candle out and let my hand graze the wall for direction as I walked around the corner and into the nook where the cold fireplace sat next to the window seat. The moonlight was weaker today, only a crescent filling the sky, but it bounced off the lake water and up through the window as I looked out.

I’d gone into town again yesterday and grabbed pillows and blankets from a few different shops and had used them to pad out the wide wooden ledges that accompanied the big windows on each floor. Looking out at the water, this was probably fast becoming one of my favourite places to sit and think. And there was a lot to think about, so much that I’d learned. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. There was a ghost in this house whose sole focus was hurting me.

So far, Sage said the others had been pitching in to lead Jared away from the house and me until we could figure out how to get rid of him, preferably without killing me. We hadn’t had much luck yet.

I swung my legs over the edge of the seat as I looked out into the house, into the darkness. “I’m mad at you,” I said eventually, not knowing if she could really hear me, but needing to say it anyway. “I’m mad at you for leaving, for not telling me about anything that happened here, and I’m mad that you didn’t tell me about him. Either of them. At least I would have had my whole life to come to terms with who I was, where I came from, instead of having this ache inside me because I just…” I breathed out all at once and it felt like I deflated, my anger burning away until all I felt was tired. “I just needed to know.”

I stood up and grabbed my candle from where I’d left it on the floor. From here, the light from the window could guide me to the stairs, illuminated by the matching window on the floor below that sat facing the steps up to this floor.

It felt good to confess those words to her, even if she was too lost within herself to hear or understand them. Admitting them had been just as much about me as they were about her. It was hard to be angry with someone you loved after they were gone, it felt wrong somehow, but I was only human and so was she.

My steps were quiet on the floor as I walked carefully to the staircase and went down it. That was probably the one thing I missed about my university accommodation—it had a lift. I started to smile, glancing up into the window opposite me as I did and then froze, a startled shriek escaping my mouth as I saw somebody standing behind me, reflected in the glass. “Wait—”

Eyes as grey as mine burned out of a face that was so like Edward’s but not, twisted with a kind of darkness. He thrust out one hand and slammed it into my back.

The world slipped into smears of brown and black as I fell, my ankle twisting painfully as I cried out.

He made no move to come after me, just stood on that same step, his face blank and cold as I tumbled until solid arms caught me before I could hit the last few stairs.

Jared’s face burned into me before he vanished, the first emotion I’d seen on him so far—hell, the first time I’d seen him, period, and it was eerie how closely he resembled his brother. How horribly they resembled me.

“I’ve got you.” Sage. Of course.

“I’m okay.” I breathed through the pain and winced as a sharp stabbing sensation came through my side and my pulse throbbed in time with my ankle.

“Okay? That bastard almost killed you. What are you doing wandering around in the dark when you know how dangerous it is?”

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