Page 31 of Haunting the Deep

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” My volume is steadily rising.

He stares at me with his proud expression.

My cheeks are hot and my breath is fast. Six months he’s gone without a word, and then he just appears out of thin air like…“The book.” I point at my backpack. “TheTitanicone that appeared in the study. Was that you?”

He doesn’t respond, but by the look in his eyes, I know it was.

“Did you see the package arrive, too?” I say, daring him to say he did.

His silence holds.

“You’ve been watching me.” I take a step toward him. “And you saidnothing.” I swipe at him. “How could you?”

He dodges my right hand, but I come at him with my left. Then my right again. I get a few good hits to his chest before he catches my wrists. We’re inches apart.

“I hate you,” I say.

But then I’m kissing him.

He pulls me into his body so hard and so fast that it almost knocks the wind out of me. I wrap my arms around his neck and tangle my hands in his hair. His tongue touches mine, and his fingers dig into my back until—

Knock, knock, knock.“Sam? Is everything okay?” my dad asks through the door.

Elijah disappears, and I’m left grabbing the air where he just was.

Irun down the hallway to my homeroom, dodging people as I go. Three hours of sleep, no breakfast, and a brain that keeps cycling through thoughts of Elijah and that terrifying dress. If someone took a match to my nervous energy, I’d launch to the moon.

I yank Mrs. Hoxley’s door open and head directly for the Descendants, sliding into the seat next to Susannah.

“Big problem,” I say with zero attempt at sugarcoating. They all turn toward me. “I put that dress on.”

Alice clicks her tongue off the roof of her mouth. “You didwhat?”

“I put that dress on and—”

“Wow. We can’t leave you alone for two seconds,” Alice says.

Blair walks past me, and I scrunch my nose at her vanilla perfume.

Mary dismisses Alice’s comment with a wave of her hand and leans toward me, her curls in Alice’s face. Alice frowns. Susannah and I lean in closer, too.

I lower my voice to a whisper. “As I was putting the dress on, my room dropped away. I swear it was like I was on theTitanic.”

“Like in your dream?” Susannah asks.

“Different. More real. I was in a bedroom with a maid dressing me. Everything was disorienting. I kept feeling like I was supposed to be there and not supposed to be there at the same time.”

“So you could touch things this time?” Alice whispers.

I nod. “I drank and ate and talked to people. I was getting dressed up for dinner with my uncle….” Those words feel comfortable, but they shouldn’t. I don’t have any uncles. “And everyone there knew me. Like I had a whole different life. Even some of the things I said were old-fashioned. I felt, I don’t know…happy? But wrong happy, like the calm before the storm. And I can’t shake the feeling that it has something to do with Redd’s death warning. All morning I’ve had this feeling in the pit in my stomach.”

Mary is practically falling out of her chair, she’s listening so hard.

Alice narrows her eyes. “Back up. What do you mean, youruncle?”

“His name was Harry Harper….I’m telling you, it’s like I had a separate life there. I could feel my brain trying to remember who I was, especially in the beginning. But the longer I stayed, the more that dropped away. I had family; people knew me. I sat down to have—”