Page 34 of Definitely Dead

And his entire world ground to a screeching halt.

On the bright side, the deep purple lines had definitely vanished, but only because the face staring back from the mirror didn’t belong to him. Eyes the color of spring grass widened, and a face round from youth slackened with shock. Though he knew he controlled the expression, he still couldn’t process what he was seeing.

“What the hell?”

He clapped a hand over his mouth, his heart racing as his adrenaline spiked. Yes, he had spoken the words, but the voice that had come out of his mouth didn’t belong to him.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he chanted, tangling his fingers in his shaggy curls as he spun away from the mirror. “This is not happening. It’s just a dream.” His vision blurred, and blood roared in his ears as he gasped for every breath. “I’m dreaming. It’s just a dream. This isn’t real.”

It felt pretty goddamn real, though. Even if he had no explanation for why he was wearing Aster’s face like a Halloween mask.

Maybe his mind had finally cracked from the strain of too many sleepless nights. If not a dream, perhaps he had descended into waking hallucinations.

Turning back to the mirror, he gripped the edges of the sink and screwed his eyes closed. Then he took several deep breaths before forcing them open again. Aster’s face still stared back at him, the expression a mixture of shock and horror.

“This is fine,” he told the reflection. “Totally fine. No need to panic.” He was absolutely panicking. “It’s just a little bodysnatching. I can fix this.”

But he couldn’t do it on his own. He needed help, the magical kind, because he didn’t even know how to start unraveling this. He also needed to find his mate…and his body.

“Oh, shit.”

The idea of Aster strutting around the village, cosplaying as him, made his hands shake and his stomach churn. He didn’t even want to think about what the guy was doing while pretending to be him.

No, this kind of stuff didn’t happen in real life. Right? It was probably just a glamour spell, an illusion to make him look like Aster. They hadn’t actually switched bodies because that would be insane.

And pointless.

Sunne didn’t have any powers or influence. What could the witch possibly hope to accomplish by trading places with him?

He didn’t know, and moreover, answers would have to wait. Right then, he needed to find Tyr. Maybe Orrin. Probably an exorcist.

In the doorway of the en suite, he paused, realization finally sinking in that this wasn’t a spare room in the castle. Rather, he was inside Aster’s apartment at the Tower. He recognized a pair of the witch’s boots in the open closet and the jacket hanging on the back of the bedroom door.

Otherwise, it appeared completely mundane. No candles, spellbooks, or runes scribbled on the floors and walls. Nothing that would suggest the witch had been plotting against him this whole time.

Striding down a short, narrow hallway, he came to the main part of the unit. Utilitarian in design, with sterile white walls and sad gray tiles, only a single beige sofa and a rickety coffee table occupied the room. A postage-stamp-sized kitchen took up the back wall, comprised of a tiny stove and an outdated refrigerator that appeared to be held together by magic and hope.

Tyr had tried to tell him. He had tried to explain that most apartments in the Tower looked and functioned like this one. Sunne hadn’t believed him. To do so would have meant accepting that something about him was different, special, and he could more easily believe in bodysnatching than he could that.

Debating whether he should search the closets before leaving, he jerked back, stumbling several steps, when three loud bangs rattled the front door.

“Aster, open this fucking door!”

Despite the ire dripping from every word, relief flooded him at the sound of the familiar voice. He rushed to the door and jerked it open, ridiculously happy to be standing face to face with over six and a half feet of enraged shifter.

“Tyr, something happened. I don’t—”

His words came to an abrupt halt when long fingers closed around his throat and slammed him against the wall beside the doorframe.

“What do you want with Sunne?” he demanded, his eyes dark with anger.

“Tyr, it’s me,”he screamed through their bond, grabbing his mate’s wrist while his toes groped for purchase on the floor.“It’s me. Sunne.”

The shifter pulled him forward by the throat, then slammed him against the wall again. “You did something to him. You’ve been fucking with his head for weeks. Why?”

“Tyr!” he gasped aloud. “Tyr, it’s really me. It’s Sunne. I don’t know how, but I swear it’s me.”

“Bullshit,” his mate snarled back. “I just left Sunne with Orrin.”

---