Ghost Silk (Ghost Perfume, Book 2) | ✔

16 - Heal me - Part 2

Rose (continued)

I realized who I'd forgotten as I swam up from sleep. "The second portal," I said. "Where did it go?"

"I'm not sure," rumbled Michael's voice.

That was still his heartbeat under my ear; I was still in his arms.

Everything hurt, though far less than before. My inner thread was healed.

I pushed on his chest to sit up and realized we were in our living room. It was the second time I'd made the journey home without recalling it.

The fire crackled in the hearth. Only a few of the warmest lamps were lit.

Several revenants – Jackal, the Nightshade siblings, that Seraph Beldam, and Gideon and Bobcat and a few others whose names I forgot – were watching us creepily. I wondered at the fact that they hung around me instead of going to find their families. But another question came urgently to mind. I met Michael's gaze.

"Tell me we took that death diary!"

"Do you remember? It was ruined."

He reached towards the table beside us and handed me a depressingly crinkled book, dried to a hard and bent shape, gunk from the insides of the worm staining one side.

The worm. The fall in the ocean. I tried to turn the dried pages, but they were half stuck together. What I could see of the writing was blurred out.

"My death book?"

"Perfectly fine inside the case. The case itself is ruined, but we've ordered a new one."

Gideon Thorne shifted, restless. I looked at him properly and registered the bared-teeth, maddened rage pulling tight at his expression. Beside him, Seraph Beldam stared at me without smiling.

Jackal, when I looked at him, raised his brows and shrugged in a dry sort of way.

"Jackal, did you tell them?" I spoke aloud for Michael's benefit.

Michael tensed beneath me, and I knew that the news of their continued presence was unwelcome.

"It was obvious that you had some strange control when they couldn't speak freely yesterday. They understand your thread can control them now," Jackal said. "They tried to break some others of your orders and couldn't."

Seraph whirled on him and hissed. Jackal held up his hands, smirking.

Further away, somewhere behind the house, I sensed many more revenants milling, together with several ghosts – regular people who needed to cross. Jane and Ellie were with them.

I said to Michael, "I don't sense the second portal anywhere. Maybe it stayed in the beach house?"

"Probably," Jackal said. "I looked back when we left, and it stayed where we left it, without moving." He sounded like the memory was disturbing.

"We'll go back for it. It won't remain abandoned."

Michael said, "Certainly, we can go back for it. If the death diary still won't work as its key, then I wonder if you can create another death book for it yourself."

Did he wonder or know that?

My eyes traced his familiar, disheveled features.

He pretended to know so much less than he did.

I'd been picking up scraps of the truth for a while now, but I'd finally found something so strange I couldn't fit it with anything else. A puzzle piece that wouldn't align anywhere on the board. They'd fought those monstrous worms before.