She’s mesmerizing.
She walks toward me, slowly, one foot in front of the other, her chin raised high in confidence, her eyes locked to mine until I can feel electricity at the base of my skull.
Fat Rabbit lifts his head, his big eyes watching her every move. For a moment I think he’s going to bark but she just raises her hand at him without looking and gives him a wave. He snorts, settling back down onto the couch and closing his eyes.
“It’s so hard to get you alone,” she says to me, her voice husky and cool, making my insides feel like jelly. “I’ve been trying.”
You’ve been terrifying, I think.
She smirks, her eyes lighting up. “Sometimes I can’t help it,” she says. “You understand what happened to me, don’t you?”
She keeps walking, coming closer and closer.
And closer.
She stops a foot away, close enough to feel the energy radiating off her like a nuclear reactor. It’s a cold energy, making my breath freeze in the air, my skin prickling as if from frostbite.
I’m terrified.
“Don’t be scared,” she says, smiling. Her teeth are white and perfect.
She inches forward, her eyes searching the corners my face.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she adds. “I just want to open your eyes.”
My eyes are open.
“They’re looking at me, but they aren’t seeing the truth,” she whispers.
She raises her hand and slowly reaches for my face.
I can’t fucking breathe.
She can’t touch me.
She shouldn’t be able to.
But she does.
Her fingertips rest on my cheekbones, shocking me with a jolt of electricity that sinks into my skull, making my bones vibrate. It’s almost painful.
“I know you talked to my son today,” she says softly. “It’s too bad that you’re already a taken woman. You could have ended up with him. Destiny is a beautiful thing when you let it happen.”
I’m not a witch.
She smiles sweetly, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
“No. You’re not. But you could be. Perry, you can be anything you want to be.” She leans in to my ear. The smell of the ocean overwhelms my senses. “You have so much power inside you,” she whispers, her breath causing my ear to freeze. “You don’t even know what to do with it. What you’re really capable of.”
She pulls back and her other hand goes to the other side of my face, holding me. “I could show you if you let me. I could show you everything that you can be. Don’t you want to know what it’s like? To have the world at your fingertips? To make people love you?”
People do love me.
She frowns at that, then laughs like music, pressing her fingers into my cheekbones harder. “They do. I forget about that. That you’re already so lucky. Almost seems to be such a waste, for someone like you to have everything to begin with.”
I swallow thickly, my nerves icing over. I didn’t always.
“No, you didn’t,” she muses with a smirk. “Don’t you wonder how that was? How you went from having nothing to having everything?”
I don’t want to mention all I’ve lost along the way, but she knows I’m thinking it anyway.
“We all go through loss, Perry,” she says. “But what determines who you are inside is what you do with that loss. For people like me, like you, like us, we can use that loss to make us stronger.”
A wash of sadness comes over her eyes, her fingers trailing down to my lips where they rest gently. My eyes go round. I suck in a cold breath.
“Maybe it’s not too late for us,” she says. “Maybe there’s still time.”
Time for what?
She just smiles and leans in.
Oh my god.
She fucking kisses me.
Her lips send shockwaves through my skin, liquid nitrogen filling my body, seconds from cracking like ice.
Samantha pulls away teasingly, glancing up at me through her dark lashes.
“Don’t you want your baby to be safe?” A grin slowly spreads across her face.
Then she vanishes into thin air.
I’m too enraptured and confused to move, to make a noise. I feel my brain come back online, feel the cold burning away from my skin, my muscles twitching.
“Fuck! Fucking hell!” Dex yells from the bedroom, and before I can move, there’s a crash, and then he’s throwing the door open and running out in his underwear, his hands at his head.
I’m still too stunned to react, everything feeling underwater.
“Perry?” he says to me, looking up just as a crow flies out of the bedroom toward us. “Holy fuck,” he swears, ducking just in time. “There’s a fucking bird in here!”
I just stare wide-eyed at the crow, even as Fat Rabbit wakes up and starts barking.
Without thinking, I head to the balcony doors and open them.
The crow flies right on through into the rainy night.
I watch for a few moments as it flies away, then I close the windows.
Dex is watching me uneasily.
“Did you know? I woke up and you were gone and there was a bird in your place,” he says. “The fucker looked at me and then started flying around the room, trying to peck my damn brains out.”
“I…” I begin, feeling everything drain out of me like I’m losing my dream. “I got up to get water and…” I try to swallow. “I think Samantha was here?”
He goes still. “Are you serious?”
I nod, pressing my fingers to my lips.
Did she fucking kiss me?
Dex comes over to me, grabbing my hand. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I don’t know I…I think she was trying to talk to me. She wasn’t trying to scare me. She looked…younger.” I close my eyes, trying to concentrate but it’s impossible. It just vanishes like dust. “She looked beautiful.”
His eyes narrow at that. “Was the demon with her?” he asks in a low voice.
“No. I don’t think so. It wasn’t as…scary.”
He’s studying me closely, trying to see through any lies.
I give him an empty smile. “I’m not trying to downplay it. I just know she didn’t hurt me. She didn’t want to hurt me. That’s all.”
He gives his head a shake, putting his hand at the back of my neck. “That’s all? Baby, this is already too much. First the gym, now she’s in our fucking apartment? This is Abby all over again.”
“No, this is nothing like Abby.”
“Maybe not this time, but what about next time?”
“I think maybe Atlas is right, that she doesn’t want to hurt me. She just wants something from me.”
Or something for me.
But I don’t voice that last part.
“I don’t fucking like this,” he says, practically growling, his grip growing protectively tight. “I should have been able to protect you. You should have woken me up.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“But you have to next time, okay? You have to. Promise me.”
“I promise.” A beat passes, my chest growing tight. “You think there’s going to be a next time?”
He closes his eyes and sighs, pulling me into his chest and wrapping his arms around me. “I hope not.”