Page 87 of Kick the Candle (Knight Games 2)
"You know each other?" I asked, raising my eyebrows at Silas.
"I covered a break in at Valentine's a few weeks ago."
"Oh." I nodded a few times, wondering why Silas would have gotten involved, unless they suspected a supernatural. It was the wrong time and place to ask.
Silas fixated on our coupled hands. "How do you know Logan?"
"He's my, er, friend. We're just friends...who need to talk." The awkward aftermath was my cue to move things along. I said my goodbyes and followed Logan into a small room near the back housing a desk laden with stacks of paperwork. He closed the door behind us, and I smoothed my green dress.
"You look beautiful," Logan said, eyeing me from head to toe. "The green brings out your eyes."
"Thank you," I said. Maybe I should have worn pants.
"Now what's this about your house?"
I told him and my theory that it had something to do with the Book of Flesh and Bone. "Have you seen your mom again?" I asked.
"No, just that one time. But..."
"But what?"
"I've been having these dreams."
"What kind of dreams?" Deja vu. If he said he'd had a sex dream about Rick, I was going to scream.
"There's this woman. I never see her face because she's always in the shadows. She says if I help her find what she's looking for, she'll reward me."
My eyebrows eased down my forehead and squinched over my nose. "What does she want you to find?"
"That's just it. I never find out. The woman motions for me to approach, like she's going to whisper something in my ear, and before I can get close enough to hear her, my mother pops up."
"Your mother? Your dead mother?"
"Yeah. She pops up between me and this woman, just like in my living room, and tells me to find you."
"Wait. You're mother is sending you messages in your dreams to find me?"
"Apparently."
"So what does she say you're supposed to do when you find me?"
"She doesn't. But I have a theory."
This was too much to take sober. I held up one finger and gulped down my wine. The Cabernet tasted bitter, like maybe the cork went bad before they opened the bottle, but I was so desperate for numbing I finished it anyway. When I lowered my glass, Logan was standing directly in front of me.
He locked eyes with me, lifted the empty glass from my hand, and lowered it to the desk. "I think the hooded woman represents every relationship I've ever had. Sensual but faceless, promising but meaningless, and my mom is telling me to find what's real. She wants me to find you."
"I don't think that's what it means, Logan. I can't be with you. I'm, ah, I'm-"
His face was so close, and the wine was rushing to my head. Something else, I was woozy. His eyes seemed to twinkle in a cartoony way, and light played in his hair, tiny dancing bears of white light. Shit! I was tripping. There was something more than wine in that drink. What the hell?
"Theresomethinsflibbitygibbit." I was not making any sense. The floor bent up to say hello and I steadied myself on the first thing I could reach, which happened to be his hips. He took that as encouragement and pressed into me, his spicy cologne seeming to waft through me in my altered state.
And then he was kissing me, a human kiss that was nothing at all like the ones we'd shared when he was a ghost. Even in my altered state I couldn't deny the heat. His lips met mine, soft and warm. He pressed me into the wall, his body enveloping me as his tongue invaded my mouth. I didn't so much return the kiss as absorb it.
I felt like I'd gone down the rabbit hole. One moment I was kissing Logan, and the next Rick's face was in front of me. Wait. That was Rick. And he was pissed. He held Logan off me with one hand and held me up with the other. He looked at me with vile contempt.
"Grateful," he said. Wait. What happened to mi cielo? "I always knew I loved you more, but I never thought you were cruel. Why did you send Poe to find me? Did you want me to see this?"
