She shivered dramatically.
Chloe’s warning not to go inside alone came back to me. If she was willing to accompany me, then it was the least I could do for her friend. I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I’ll come with you.”
She linked arms with me as she led me to the house, but she stalled at the open door, unable to force herself to keep going. She really did seem nervous, so I took the lead.
I had no idea what had gone on before I moved to town, but spending time with Dorian, and even meeting his guardians, made Chloe and Emma’s fears seem ridiculous.
We found the bathroom and used it, but Emma had relaxed by then and was reluctant to leave.
“If we’re here, we might as well take a look around,” she whispered. “I’ve never been in one of their houses before!”
“You do realise they’re normal people,” I said. “It’s not like they’re aliens or anything.”
Ignoring me, she wandered along the landing, pointing out a dream catcher on the wall. “My house doesn’t have anything like that hanging up in the hall.”
But it wasn’t the dream catcher that had drawn my attention. The walls were covered in photos and paintings of wolves. I wondered if we were in Ms. Rivers’s house. If so, she had a bit of an obsession. Emma disappeared into a bedroom, and I followed, intending to drag her out of there before somebody noticed we were missing.
But as soon as I stepped into the room, I felt trapped, suffocated in a dream. Colours seemed to shift, and the air gathered around me. I forgot all about Emma. Something tugged me forward, drawing me toward a wardrobe. I reached up, not knowing why, and when my arms dropped, my hands were full.
“What the hell is that?” Emma released a sudden squeal. “Oh, my God! It’s a spirit board!”
“What?” I shook myself out of a trance to see that she was right. It was an old-fashioned spirit board. What an odd thing to find.
Emma stole it out of my hands to shove inside her bag. “We could scare the shit out of those stuck-up idiots,” she whispered. “What else do they have in here?”
“What are you doing here?” a male voice asked.
I whirled around in shock, facing a good-looking blond man with a significant gap between his upper front teeth. “Um.”
“We were looking for the bathroom,” Emma blurted.
“It’s down the hall,” he said softly, but there was nothing kind in his tone. Suddenly,desperately, I wanted to leave.
“Great,” Emma said uneasily. “Thanks.”
She raced out of the room. I followed, and as I passed the man, he took a step back. I looked at him, saw alarm and distress in his gaze, and then it was gone. “Hurry on then,” he said.
Emma made a show of using the bathroom, and then we left, that man shadowing us all the way outside.
Outside, I couldn’t see him, but I felt his gaze on my back, remembered his reaction to me. I rubbed at my arms, my skin prickling at the thought of him looking at me. Why didIfeel like the strange one?
“Come on,” Emma said. “I can’t wait to show this to Chloe. She’s going to freak.”
“What?”
“The spirit board! It’s Halloween. What better night to use it?”
I followed her with a sigh. It was just another cliché Halloween, spirit board and all.
Chapter 12
Dorian
Margo had disappeared,and I wasn’t sure if she had left. I had at least hoped to walk her home, to get a chance to kiss her again, to just be next to her.
I hadn’t planned on kissing her, but I’d made a discovery. Once I got past that chill around her, it embraced me, drew me into a hidden warmth that made it impossible not to want to be close to her. Maybe she’d been hurt before, and the wolf sensed the walls she surrounded herself with, but there was more to Margo than what lay on the surface.
“Dorian!” Mara slapped my shoulder as she jogged past me. “Stop dreaming and hurry up!”