Page 88 of The Ghost and the Graveyard (Knight Games 1)
"No." I pushed his hand away. "You lied to me."
"I never lied to you."
"Well then, you omitted the truth. Same difference. Why didn't you tell me right away? Why didn't you tell me before-" I stopped myself. I'd almost said, before I fell in love with you. Why had I almost said that? Was I in love with him? How could I be in love with a monster?
"Before what?"
"Before now," I said.
"I wanted to get to know you like we were human."
"I am human," I said through my teeth.
"I did not want to scare you away. I knew this would be hard for you."
"You got that right." I fidgeted in my seat. "I have a choice, Rick. I don't have to do this."
Before I knew what was happening, he was across the seat and in my face. With his hand on the dash and his knee on the seat next to me, there was no place for me to go. I was trapped.
"What do you mean?" he growled.
My breath came out shaky. I swallowed hard. The first time I'd met Rick I thought he reminded me of a matador. At the time, I'd been referring to his Spanish good looks. But now I realized the comparison went further. A matador's job was to sever the bull's spine with his sword. The red cape is to distract the bull so that the matador can have his way with it. Rick was beautiful, but he was deadly. I was the bull. All of this, his seduction of me, had been the cape, a distraction to get what he really wanted. My soul.
"I mean," I said, my voice cracking with fear, "that this is my life. No matter what or who I was in the past, I don't have to be that now, or ever."
He jerked backward as if I'd punched him in the gut. The expression on his face was tortured, a pure agony that almost made me regret my words. "Who is he?" he gasped.
"Who is who?"
"The ghost whose smell lies under your skin?"
"His name is Logan. He lives in my attic."
His fist came down on the dash and the resulting boom startled me. The back of my head hit the window when I jumped. "Of course he does. Grateful, he's there to be sorted!"
"So? He says it doesn't matter to him. He says I have a choice." I rubbed the lump already forming on the back of my head.
"Do you not see that your attraction to him is an echo of who you were? Something in you seeks the power, even as you deny it. You could be a queen of souls, yet you waste yourself on one of them."
"Logan wasn't a waste, but I'm beginning to think this conversation is." Anger drowned out my fear, and I moved forward in my seat. "You can't bully me into this, Rick."
It was his turn to shake. A tear gathered in the corner of his eye. He shook his head, and it was gone. "I am not trying to bully you into anything. You must remember that when I look at you, I see my wife. I see my long-lost love. I forget that you are young. I forget that you are a new person. Forgive me."
He didn't wait for my reply. Before I could pull my next breath, he was gone.
Matters
Someone had injected me with liquid concrete. I dragged my limbs to bed, unable to form a coherent thought and fully aware that the best night's sleep of my life wasn't going to solve this dilemma. The summer heat had left the room stuffy, so I dressed in a cool silk camisole and shorts. But I didn't dare open a window. Every sound terrified me. The wind blowing a branch into the glass filled me with dread. After tonight, I pictured the things I'd seen in the graveyard and in my past-life memory fighting to get in, to hurt me. As tired as I was, sleep was impossible. I tossed and turned, drifting off only to startle awake and see the clock had advanced a mere five or ten minutes.
Fate's arrow had hit my ultimate weak spot; I had no control. Tonight, Rick and Prudence had taken away my world of safety and security and replaced it with horror and uncertainty. My body ached with tension. My mind raced. I rolled on my back and stared at the ceiling.
All at once, I sensed a familiar presence that registered as a heaviness in the pit of my chest. "Logan?"
"I'm here." His voice came from the corner of the room, and his body formed there.
"How long have you been watching me?"
"Since you went to bed. I was worried about you."
