Ghost Silk (Ghost Perfume, Book 2) | ✔

2 - Protect me - Part 1

"This is how much I love you," Michael crooned, before he wrapped the ropes viciously tight around me.

"I worship you," I choked out. A broken confession.

He smiled, a gorgeous, brief and empty gesture of the muscles round the mouth. His eyes were hard to decipher. "I know," he said, "you make it pathetically obvious."

He considered me.

The more nervous I got, the more he seemed to gather a dark and confident energy. And I was nervous; my heartbeat thundered in my throat, sweat broke out all over me and trickled down my temples, and my fingers trembled despite the rigid hold of the ropes on my wrists.

He was steady. His lashes flickered in his still face.

He reached over to grip my chin with his left hand. His thumb pressed into my bottom lip.

"Well, do you love me?" he murmured. "As much as I love you?"

"I'd do anything for you." It was the truth.

"Good," he said, and the knife flashed high.

I woke up gasping. There was a hot pain in my neck. My fingers scrambled to press against the skin there, feeling that it was unharmed and unbloodied ... images from the dream jumbled together in a terrifying collage at the forefront of my mind. But they made no sense, no ...

Someone asked something in a low voice.

It was Gabriel. His silhouette sat up from where it'd been slumped in the armchair by the window.

My room was dark and hushed. Nighttime showed in the window outside, grey clouds in a navy sky.

A snake of smoke, gradually coming apart, hung suspended in the air. I smelled the smoke a moment later and saw the cigar lax between his fingers, his wrist on the windowsill. The window was cracked open.

I cleared my throat. "Gabriel?"

I'd gone to sleep alone, only Michael in the house. Gabriel had stayed the night before with me, but when I'd come back from school he'd already been gone for work and Michael had taken his place.

"I was - " Gabriel stopped himself. His face twisted. "Will you prove that it's you, Rose?"

I smiled, though it felt like he twisted the dagger from my dream deep into my heart. "I called you Gabriel."

He scoffed. "An easy detail."

"I, um. The first thing you ever cooked for me were fajitas. They were amazing."

He collapsed back. His free hand came up to cover his eyes.

Eventually he said, "I'm not a stalker. I just wanted to guard you." A mirthless laugh, his teeth flashing in the moonlight. He let his arm fall. "Irrational as it might be and however angry Michael might get. But he's not on his guard. He's so deeply asleep he didn't even wake up when I came in the house." His hand brought the cigar to his mouth on autopilot.

Gabriel wasn't himself. He was more tense than usual, almost anxious.

As my vision adjusted to the low light, I saw the fixed and faraway glaze to his eyes. The mark of obsessive thoughts.

"Gabriel, I ... always feel safer with you, but there's nothing you can really do against revenants. And it's okay. I really did figure out how to control them better."

"I know, yes."

He lapsed into an unhappy silence.

"You're smoking," I said inanely.