Page 63 of Ghoul Me, Maybe
“When.” My nail digs into his collarbone. A bluff. The ritual requires sacrificing the relic, and neither of us knows what happens to ghosts who lose their anchors.
He tucks a wind-whipped strand of hair behind my ear. “WhenI survive…” His thumb lingers on my jaw. “I’d like to take you to Marseille.”
I snort. “Hate Marseille.”
“Then where?”
“Ever ridden a Ducati?”
“I’ve ridden you.”
“Different thrill.” I sit up, seawater sluicing down my spine. “Picture this—you, straddling 200 horsepower, screaming into the Nevada desert.”
He splays his hand over my lower back, anchoring me against the tidal pull. “You’d let me drive?”
“I’d let you hold my hips whileIdrive.”
His laugh tastes like salt and possibility. “Devious creature.” His lips graze the hinge of my knee. “And after this hypothetical road trip?”
The relic shivers between us, its chain cutting into my thigh. I watch a translucent fiddler crab scuttle through his calf. “You really think once you’re flesh and tax forms, you’ll still want this?”
He stills.
“This isn’t four-poster beds and sonnets, Elias. I burn out motel TVs and steal airport whiskey.”
“Sienna Vale.” He hauls me into his lap, grip firm enough to bruise if he weren’t half mist. “I watched you threaten a seagull with a switchblade yesterday for stealing your chips. Do you imagine I find youtame?”
I pick a shred of kelp from his hair. “Most men prefer their girlfriends less feral.”
“Most men,” he growls, teeth scraping my earlobe, “are sheep waiting for slaughter.” His hands slid up my thighs, grounding, demanding. “If I live—when—I choose the storm. I chooseyou. Even if you vanish into another desert.”
The relic pulses hot. His mouth finds mine, dissolving the next objection into something sweeter. When he pulls back, his edges glimmer faintly. Dawn’s verdict.
I press my forehead to his. “Promises are a currency, Captain. They devalue quickly.”
He nips my bottom lip. “Then let me open a line of credit.”
CHAPTER 23
ELIAS
The bay is burning red.
Not with fire.
Withmoonlight.
The blood moon hangs like an open wound over the water, staining everything beneath it—sand, sea, sky,us—in a copper-soaked glow that smells like rust and storm.
The veil is thinning by the second.
And The Collector’s already begun.
He stands on the wreck—onmywreck—cloaked in shadows and incantation. His goons are stationed in a circle, arms outstretched, channeling energy through cracked runes and sacrificial sigils. The relic pulses between them like a second heart.
Sienna stands beside me, fingers laced with mine. Her magic’s raw, unfiltered, wild with grief and fire. Mira flanks her other side, silver markings drawn across her cheekbones like war paint.
Lyle’s behind us, muttering about ley lines and ancient fail-safes. He’s holding two totems and looks one spell away from cardiac arrest.
