I’m taking a risk he’ll even be at home, but it’s been three weeks, and I hate this communication blackout. I can’t stand it any more. Ghost could literally stay hidden for years, and I’m sick of letting someone else make decisions about my life.
I’m in limbo.
I can’t move forward, and I’m so damn tired of letting the past poison my future.
I told the taxi driver to drop me a few streets over as a precaution. I don’t know if it will make a blind bit of difference, and honestly, I don’t know what I’m afraid of anymore. Is Ghost watching Logan? Is she watching me? The house? I don’t fucking know. I can’t live like this, and since Logan won’t make contact and that one letter seems like a lifetime ago, I have no choice. He’s deliberately fallen off the grid, and I’m deliberately disobeying his wishes and Atticus’s orders by visiting Logan’s home. I don’t care. I have no choice.
If I told Atticus where I was going, he would’ve cuffed me to the bed, and not because of his jealousy either. He happens to agree with Logan. Ghost is dangerous, psychotic, and desperate, not a great combination. My only attempt to broach the subject of a flying visit was shot down, not negotiable, end of.
It’s still early, despite the rush hour traffic, when I trudge up the hill toward Logan’s home. I squint against the sun to try to spot any signs of life, a light in one of the windows, a twitch in the curtain, which is ridiculous because he’s not the type to spy on the outside world like that, not when he has the dark net at his disposal. Besides, Logan is much more likely to drag the curtains wide, lift the window and hang from the ledge in all his naked glory if he wanted to take in the view.
The gate groans on its hinge, stiff and reluctant to give me much more room than my body width as I squeeze through. My tentative knock on the door echoes around the arch of the porch, and I suck in a nervous breath. I knock again after a few minutes and again after a few minutes more, this time with more force. The tension in my shoulders drops with disappointment. He’s not in. My mind races with possibilities, and my heart quickly catches up, beating a rapid pulse and rocketing my anxiety. God, I hope he’s all right. Where could he be?
The answer to that is, anywhere. He could literally be anywhere.
I take a backwards step when the door opens. My throat chokes out a mix between a gasp and trying to suck back the surge of vomit threatening to make an appearance. I can’t get my head round what I’m looking at, mostly because I’m looking at me.
My clothes, my hair styled in a sloppy bun, a little darker than mine but the effect is uncanny, and my bright green eyes.
“Are you wearing contact lenses?” Because that’s what’s important here.
Not, what the hell is Ghost doing in Logan’s house when he said he’d kill her if he saw her again?
Not, why the fuck is she doppleganging the shit out of me?
Not where the hell is Logan?
I just want to know how come her eyes have changed colour?
“He liked your eyes.” Her tone is sing-song wistful, and the way her lips twist in both a cruel smile and fond memory makes my legs lose all their strength. Sudden hollow pain washes over my body like an ice shower, and I fold both arms around my tummy.
She used the past tense in that chilling statement.
“Where is Logan, Ghost?” I force the calm delivery when I’m feeling anything but.
“He’s waiting.” She steps aside, and I rush in, pushing her back with my shoulder. She stumbles, but I don’t look back. I run flat out though the hall and up the stairs, the chill in my veins thickens my blood, weighing my every step with fear and foreboding.
“Logan!” I call out, my voice pitched with panic. I keep calling his name, rising hysteria making each cry louder and more desperate. I hit the first floor landing at breakneck speed, flying from room to room, hysterics and terror colouring my hazy vision. His bedroom is untouched. Clothes are neatly folded where they always are when they’re not put away into draws and wardrobes. His bathroom has his toiletries all laid out and positioned exactly as he likes. Every room is the same as it always was. At first glance, at least, the house is lived in and in order.
His office is uncommonly quiet since all the screens are switched off and there is no ambient humming from the servers. Everything is shut down and switched off like I thought they would be, but no sign of Logan. I race along the corridor calling his name. My room is empty, and every other room I continue to search is the same. I run back downstairs, check the living room, library, drawing room, den…all the fucking rooms in this enormous townhouse and nothing. I’m breathless and beside myself when I enter the kitchen. Ghost is slowly stirring a spoon in a cup of tea, she glances up, and the same smile is fixed on her face, vacant eyes seem to stare right through me when I speak.
“Where is he, Lilith?”
“You don’t get to call me that.” She sucks the bowl of the teaspoon and then waves it slowly at me like she’s reprimanding a small child.
“I can call you anything I like, you psycho. Where the fuck is Logan? What have you done to him?” I storm over to her, she steps behind the kitchen table effectively using it as a barrier between my clenched fists and her crazy arse.
“I would never do anything to hurt my love. How could you even think that?” She shakes her head, and I can see the thought seems to turn her stomach. That has to be good right?
“So where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit!”
“It’s true. You don’t have to believe me. I don’t care either way.” I step to the side, and she mirrors my move in the opposite direction. I actually think she’s telling me the truth, and I’m also not a hundred percent sure what my plan is, stepping slowly around the table like I am, but I know it doesn’t involve her getting away.
“He won’t see me until he can no longer see you.”
“That can’t be true, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“He tries so hard to love me. He met me yesterday, and I knew he still loved me. I know in my soul we are meant to be together, but you’ve poisoned him against me, after everything I did for you. You need to step away and let us be happy.” Her tone drifts, and the monologue is eerie to say the least.
“You’re fucking insane. Logan doesn’t want you like that. He wants you to get help. I want you to get help.”
“I can see it in his eyes.” She continues to speak, clearly not registering a single word I said. “He loves me, yet you remain in his thoughts, plaguing him, torturing him, and I can’t have that.”
I feel the chill race up and down my spine draining me of colour and hope.
“Lil—Ghost, please just tell me where he is.” I correct myself when her eyes flash with fury at the mention of her real name. She sighs dramatically and seems to switch from her dream state to being very present and very real. I don’t know which is worse.
“Honestly, I don’t know. I broke in early this morning; it was dark. I was hoping to surprise him with my new look, and he wasn’t here.”
“By surprise, you mean trick him into thinking it was me he was waking up to.”
“Something like that.” Her brows rise with sly understanding that churns my stomach. “I know once he really touches me, I can lose this facade.” She tugs at her long hair, and distaste wrinkles her nose when her hands wave up the length of her body and my reflected image. “It will take a little time, but that’s fine. I’m okay with easing him in gently. He’s a like a sick junkie and I’m his methadone. I won’t force cold turkey on him.”
“You must think he’s pretty shallow if he was only interested in me because of the way I looked.” I instantly regret my outburst as venom and vitriol saturates her response.
“I have no fucking idea why he was interested in you. You’re damaged and dirty. You can’t give him what he wants. He wants children, Tia. If you loved him at all, you’d walk away and let us be happy.” I reel from the painful truth, my own pain that has little to do with Logan. I know it’s not how he sees this situation, not by a long fucking way.
“You’re his fucking sister, Lilith! You can’t give him children either.” She flies across the room, leaping and sliding over the kitchen table with a speed I never knew a human was capable of. She’s possessed and crazed. She knocks me to the ground. We are evenly matched in height and build, yet she’s surprisingly strong, sturdy, and easily starts to wrestle me into a position where she is straddling me, my arms pinned at my side, under her knees. The weight and pivot of her body crunches the bones in my wrists against the hard flagstone floor. I buck my hips wildly and wiggle like I’m having a seizure trying to dislodge her. It’s ineffective and even seems to amuse her. She lets out a light musical laugh, and fury boils my blood. I see red right before I see the small cotton cloth she’s plucked from her back pocket. I twist my head this way and that. The smell alone sends a wave of panic crashing, and terror floods my veins, and my whole body freezes. A stupid reaction, given that it enables her to press the chloroform-soaked cloth over my nose and mouth with embarrassing ease. I can’t move, and I hold off taking the inevitable breath as long as I can. Dark spots filter across my vision, and my chest burns with the need to breathe. It’s hopeless. Scared stiff, I succumb, sucking in the toxic air that lets the darkness and fear take me under.