Page 65 of She Haunts Me Still

“It’s cold again,” she whispers. “Why does it get socoldin here?”

But Ezra has gone quiet.

Mallory raises her head just as he lowers his hand, fistclenched around the tissues, the blood at his nose slowed to a dull trickle.

“Are you okay?” Her breath is a cloud in the dim light as she touches his neck, his cheeks. Stroking down over his shoulders. Rubbing his back in slow, comforting circles. “Ezra, look at me. That was a lot, are you—”

Mallory’s words evaporate as her fingers brush something sharp and wet at Ezra’s spine. She pulls away with a startled yelp. A strobe of lightning illuminates her palm—

Which is covered in blood.

“What is that?” she demands, fresh alarm coursing through her. “Are you hurt? What happened?”

Mallory rises to her knees, but he moves faster. Ezra fists her hair, tipping her face up to his. Panicked confusion teeters inside her as their eyes lock, a glassy haze between his lashes.

“Ezra, what are you doing?”

Without warning, he reaches inside her collar to tug the rosary beads loose. She cries out in surprise as he rips them straight from her neck and flings them to the floor in a clatter, all before leaning in to whisper—

“Such a pretty thing.”

His voice sounds strange. Hissing. Snarling.

She freezes.

Because it isn’t Ezra’s voice.

But she has heard it before.

“A pretty, young thing,” he says, dragging a firm hand down her neck, over her breasts, squeezing, hard, at the place where her hip meets her thigh. Déjà vu rattles in her bones. It’s the same growl she’s heard for days, the same thing Victor said, the same the same the same—

“I bet you’d taste sweet before you burn.”

Mallory chokes out a horrified scream and shoves at Ezra’s chest as hard as she can. She flies off the bed, primed to race for the hall and pound on the first door she can reach.

But she makes it only two steps before Ezra snares her waist and they tumble to the floor, right in the center of the faded chalk circle from the other night. The back of her skull connects with the ground, and stars drift behind her lashes just in time for him to lean over her with eyes that are fully, wholly black.

“You were so good at hiding all these years.” Ezra smiles, revealing a set of pointed fangs. Mallory gasps at the sight.

Fangs. In Ezra’s mouth. Razor-sharp and descending from swollen gums, glittering in the shadows.

“Your mother must have thought she was so smart, so clever,” he continues. “But you can’t escape our bond with a witch’s spell, girl.”

“Wh-what?” she chokes out, disoriented by the rattle of that horrible voice coming from Ezra’s beautiful mouth. “Witches? What are you talking about?”

Ezra flattens his palm between her breasts, fingers gripping right above her heart.

“I’ll claim what’s mine soon enough,” the thing inside him growls as he lowers his fangs to her throat, scraping the spear-like tips along her delicate skin. “But for now, just a taste. I’ve been so hungry.”

She screams and wrenches away before he can puncture her flesh. Alarm coursing through her, she scrambles back and back on her hands, crying out when her shoulders connect with Ezra’s desk.

Ezra remains crouched on all fours a few feet away, knuckles pulling to white as he grips the floorboards, gazefused to hers. An unspoken challenge simmers between them, vacant eyes daring her to run.

“What’s happening to you, Ezra?” Mallory gropes the wooden surface behind her, unsure what she’s even looking for. Something to help him? Something to defend herself? Something, anything she can close her fingers around—

She freezes, because now she can see what she touched on Ezra’s back.

His shirt is torn to ribbons at his spine, with a long bloody gash between his shoulders. The skin is swollen. Infected, diseased, rotten, and—