Page 17 of Ladybirds

She can’t feel him.

The bottle slips from her fingers, wine spilling out over the floor. She can feel it saturating the soles of her socks.

He leans down, mouth hovering beside her ear. He’s too close, she should feel warmth from his body, hear the whisper of his clothing, but there’s nothing. “Well, Princess?” he murmurs, a breath that’s not a breath. “Do you believe me now?”

CHAPTER NINE

The air is thick, so humid she can feel the moisture stick to her skin and coat her lungs with every labored breath. Leaving her air-conditioned apartment feels like stepping into a sauna. Sara casts a resentful glance skyward. They’ve been issuing warnings about thunderstorms all week; one look at the dark, gunmetal clouds overhead is proof enough that it’s only a matter of time before the first clap rattles the city.

She walks a little faster.

“Honestly, Princess. Your hair.”

Sara curses under her breath, casting him a glare as hot and bitter as the weather. His grin is wide and teasing. She hates when he does this. It’s bad enough when he taunts her in private, where she can at least snap back. In public, she has to bite her tongue till it bleeds or risk looking insane.

A few drops of rain dot the sidewalk, her only warning before it comes faster—harder. Sara can feel it sliding down her neck, soaking her clothes, and she closes her eyes with an agitated prayer for patience. When she opens them, Seth stands in front of her—grinning and infuriatingly dry. Yet, by some magic she still hasn’t wrapped her head around, there is no dry spot on the cement at his feet. The rain passes right through him as if he really was no more real than her imagination.

His gaze flicks pointedly to her hair. “Suppose that’s one way to tame that mess of a mop.”

“I hate you,” she hisses.

He blows her a mocking kiss. In her peripheral, she catches a warning flash before the thunder.

She pulls her messenger bag in front of her, fighting off the urge to glare at him. There’s already been a few passerby shooting her odd looks.

Get to school. She just needs to get to school, make it through class, and go have lunch with Jen and Miles so she can convince them she’s fine.

Rifling through her bag, she finds an umbrella wedged under her textbook and murmurs a quiet, “thank god.”

“Well, I rather doubt he has anything to do with it.”

Ignore him.

Ignore him, ignore him, ignore him.

She opens the umbrella overhead, the rain tapping eagerly at the fabric. Sara keeps her bag at her front to avoid the runoff. There’s still plenty of time before her class starts, she can probably manage to grab a much needed coffee beforehand. The promise of caffeine is enough to make her walk just a little bit faster.

She hasn’t slept well in weeks. Aside from being a snarky asshole, the devil at her back apparently comes with a tv addiction. The murmured voices from the old tube television is tolerable—more white noise than anything—but the sound of his voice, too clear and too real, through the apartment’s thin walls is almost unbearable. The one night she refused to turn it on, he retaliated by singing operatic nonsense (she’s still not convinced the gibberish coming out of his mouth was a language, despite his claims) at the top of his lungs until she caved.

Seth follows; he always does. Hands tucked into his coat pockets, he flirts at the edges of her vision. The ghost she never asked for. The shadow she can’t escape. Sara wishes she could say the last month has made her used to it, but she still catches herself slipping. The first week, she told him to shut up in front of the cashier at her local grocery. She hasn’t been brave enough to go back since.

“Art Appreciation today, yes?” he asks. Sara knows better than to believe he doesn’t already know. His lips curving into a goading smile. “I’m rather looking forward to it. Last week was more entertaining than I expected.”

Her teeth grind, groaning in her skull. Last week he had spent the entire class mimicking her professor’s every move and flooding her ears in a never-ending commentary of mundane details Mr. Kent failed to mention. She can feel her blood pressure rising thinking about it.

Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she brings it to her ear without hitting call. Still refusing to look at him, she hisses into the receiver. “No. Stay out of my classes.”

Seth huffs, blinking in and out around the various people filling the street. For a ghost, he doesn’t really act like one. No floating, no phasing through walls (or anything for that matter), and it’s been agonizingly clear that no one else can see him.

Come to think of it, the only ghost-like thing he does is haunt her.

“You’re mine, Princess. I’m not terribly invested in heeding your demands, petty as they are. Besides, would it kill you to lighten up? Your attitude is terribly depressing.”

Sara hates that nickname almost as much as the reminder. Loathes it with an intensity that’s as physical as mental—she can feel her blood pressure rising every time it passes his stupid lips. She’ll be damned before she lets him know it, though. The one time she mentioned it, he took it as a challenge to weave it into every sentence.

“Lovely weather today, Princess.”

“Princess, your cleaning habits are appalling.”

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