Page 37 of Death and Do-Overs

A man with golden hair emerged. A man with sharp features and impossibly green eyes. A man wearing colorful sleep pants and a white t-shirt.

He looked as panicked as I felt. And upon recognition of the man standing in the hall with me—Levi Rivers—the impossible happened. I felt relieved.

“Something’s on my balcony,” I said.

At the same time, he said, “Someone broke into my room.”

Crashing sounded in the direction of his room. Then louder, crashes echoed out of both rooms. Were there two creatures breaking in at the same time?

“Do you have any weapons?” Levi asked, which should have been a strange question to ask a virtual stranger, but didn’t feel strange at all.

The dull pocket knife I kept in my bag didn’t count.

I shook my head.

My head….

Realization struck.

With it came an overwhelming sense of horror.

I’d left Nie behind.

“My head.”I ran back into my room.

A huge hole gaped in the wall between my room and Levi’s. The glass door to my balcony was shattered.

And Nie was gone.

CHAPTER 9

MAR

The world narrowed as if I was falling into a deep abyss. Ringing filled my ears. Thoughts raced through my head at breakneck speed, colliding and fracturing into incoherent fragments.

Anger, fear, frustration—I knew them all so well.

They slipped through my fingers like sand.

But none of that mattered.

My feet were already moving, desperation propelling me into motion. I raced through my room and onto the balcony. Ihadto catch the intruder before they could get away, before they could steal Nie.

No one was on the balcony.

I leaned against the railing and peered down. The cold iron barricade filled my nostrils with a metallic scent and dug into my palms.

I wouldn’t blink, not until I saw a sign of where Nie had been taken, not until I caught a glimpse of the one who had taken her.

My eyes burned.

Don’t lose your head.

The kernel of truth haunted me. I should have tried harder to interpret every possible meaning of the warning as soon as I received it. I should have anticipated this.

I saw nothing but a still and dark night. I heard nothing but the sounds of distant waves. The shadows that had enveloped the inhuman figure could only mean one thing—the reaper had done this. Bernadette had killed Nie, and she’d returned to take Nie away from me a second time.

What other explanation could there be?

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