Page 59 of Marked By His Hunger
“The thing is… I see dead people.”
The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
Too loud.
Too real.
They didn’t just hang in the air—they landed.
And everything… shifted.
I felt it immediately.
Not in what they said—because no one said anything right away—but in the way the space around me tightened. Like the room had drawn in a breath and forgotten how to let it go.
My stomach dropped.
Oh God. You said it. You actually said it.
I’d done this before.
Too many times.
Different rooms. Different faces. Same result.
That moment where everything goes quiet—not because people understand you… but because they’ve decided something about you.
Something bad.
Something wrong.
My chest tightened, heart slamming hard enough I was sure it had to be audible. I resisted the urge to laugh it off, to backtrack, to say just kidding or I mean metaphorically or literally anything that would make this feel less like I’d just handed over proof that I didn’t belong.
I forced myself not to look away.
But I couldn’t stop the spiral.
They think you’re crazy.
Of course they do. Why wouldn’t they?
You just did it again.
Faces sharpened across the table—too focused, too intent—and my brain filled in the blanks the way it always had.
Judgment.
Discomfort.
That subtle shift people get when they’re trying to decide how far gone you are.
My fingers curled slightly against the table.
Say something. Fix it.
But before I could?—
“Necromancer,” Dietrich whispered.
