I was also crouching and holding my hands up like I knew how to throw a punch to save my life—Let the record show, I certainly did not.
I hadn’t heard a single sound, but when I spun around to look in a new direction for the hundredth time, I saw the woman with the high bangs. I thought her name was Leah, if my adrenaline-filled memory was working properly.
“Oh,” I said. I felt my eyes go wide and my body turn completely still.
She let out a tinkling laugh as she walked toward me with a confident sway to her steps. She tilted her head sideways, as if she was watching a somewhat interesting new animal for a few seconds before deciding if she wanted to smash it under her boot or jab it with a stick. “You know we can still see you when you don’t move, darling.” She stopped just in front of me, then made me jump when she lurched forward and said, “Boo!”
I blinked a few times, inching backwards. “What do you want?” I asked. “If it’s money, I swear I’m dirt poor. But I have some gift cards back at the apartment. I could absolutely hook you up. Maybe a free ghost tour?”
The woman kept walking toward me, forcing me in an endless backward, shuffling retreat. “Maybe I just like the way you smell when you’re scared.”
I resisted the urge to give my pits a discreet sniff. Clearly, this woman was deranged. “Okay,” I said shakily. “Well, hope you enjoyed your sniffs. I’ve got to go find my friend, though.”
“I’ll take care of him. Don’t you worry about that.”
Icy tendrils of fear slid under my skin, making it rise up in goosebumps. “That guy the earlier today,” I said quickly, still backing up. “He was your boss, right? I thought he only wanted you to follow me. So you should reconsider whatever it is you’re considering. You might piss him off.”
“Boss,” she said, showing a flash of rage at the idea. Then she hesitated as a thought seemed to occur to her. “Wait. You shouldn’t remember that.”
I nodded quickly. “I know. I’ll do like he said and not tell anyone who wasn’t there. I just thought—”
She glanced over her shoulder, then took another step closer, eating up the distance between us. There was danger in her eyes, and I was one more boo away from blasting her with pepper spray and taking my chances.
The deadly playfulness seemed to creep back into her as she tapped her full lower lip in thought. “I wonder…”
She widened her eyes, then fixed them on me and kept advancing. I felt a kind of magnetic pull, then the briefest hint of… arousal?
There was a mental sensation of sliding down toward something, like a black pit I knew there’d be no climbing out of. But before the sensation took me, a vision of a startlingly handsome man I’d never seen flashed in my mind. He was wearing half a grin and showing off the vertical line of a dimple on one cheek.
Then the sensation was gone. Leah ran her tongue across her teeth, laughing in slow confirmation of something. “One of the Undergroves bonded you, didn’t they? It’s a powerful one, too. I’ve never seen a human resist our call so easily.”
She might as well have been talking a different language. None of it made sense to me, and the only thing I was worried about was Zack. I was the reason he was mixed up in this mess, and I wished I could at least know he was okay. “Where’s my friend?”
“The tall, pretty one?”
“The last part is debatable, but yes. The tall one.”
“I’m saving him for later, I think.”
“What does that even mean?” I forgot my fear for a moment and let out the frustration in my voice. “Why are you people harassing me? What did I do?”
She ran a pink tongue over her teeth, then flicked her eyebrows up once. “You let them out.”
“Let who out?”
“The Undergroves.”
I threw my hands up in frustration. “Okay? Assuming that’s true, it doesn’t mean they care the slightest about me. So—”
I gasped. All I felt was a sort of forceful thud in my stomach. I stumbled backwards, then looked down in complete confusion at the red stain on my shirt.
Blood. Was that blood?
My blood?
I looked at Leah, then saw her fingertips were wet and red. I looked at my stomach again and fell to my knees. “Why?”
She shrugged. “Because even Bennigan isn’t always right.” She gave me a girly wave, then back stepped and disappeared into the shadows.
I flopped on my back and looked up at the sky. So this was it. Dead by… what was that? A fingertip punch? Stupid. I was surprised that it didn’t hurt more. All I felt was a sort of cold spreading from my stomach that carried numbness where it went. I wondered if that’s how it would happen. Gradual spreading cold that reached my brain and ended everything.