“Hallie?”
My eyes flew open. It took me a few seconds to focus on the chandelier above me, and a few more to find Dune’s gray green eyes.
“Dune?” I was on the floor. “What happened?”
“I don’t think we should talk about this here.” His face was drawn, his eyes guarded.
“Why?” I struggled to sit.
“Not here, Hallie.”
He scooped me up in his arms like I weighed nothing. I rested my head on his chest, barely noticing my surroundings as he took me to the room.
The unfamiliar memories that now belonged to me repeated on playback in my brain. I had real power. Not false bravery or blustering confidence. I could still feel it in my veins, pulsing under my skin.
“Are you okay?” Dune sat beside me so softly that the couch barely moved, a feat for someone his size. He brushed my hair back from my face.
How had we gotten to the room so quickly?
“I don’t know.” I tried to sit up and he helped me, his arm around my waist. “Was … was it like last time?”
“It was different.” Caution kept his voice guarded. “Powerful.”
“It felt like freedom. Ultimate, supernatural freedom. I lived other people’s lives through their eyes, and I felt all their emotions. But you didn’t feel that, did you? What did you see?”
He didn’t answer. Just looked at me like he was afraid of me.
“Dune?”
“You changed.”
Dune
“You were three different people. At first, you just froze. Your face was expressionless.” Her irises had reflected the light pouring in through the windows, and she’d stopped blinking. I’d stepped back from her, and that’s when her feet left the ground. “Then the rip sucked you in. It was all around me, but I wasn’t part of it.”
Like I was the ghost, and the rip world was the reality.
“What else?” she prompted.
“Your facial features rearranged. When it happened outside Lafitte’s, it was one face. Today, it was three. A young girl with brown eyes. A blonde with a slightly crooked nose. An older woman with dark skin. You were three people in quick succession, and then, somehow, you were all three at once.”
was a subtle, slight hitch in her breathing.
“Your breath just caught.” I said it without thinking.
“Maybe it did. So what?” She angled her chin up at me.
“Nothing. It’s just … it’s only fair. You make mine catch all the time.”
Chapter 12
Hallie
I’d never swooned in my life.
But if Dune kept talking sweet to me, I was going to need a fainting couch and smelling salts pronto.
His touch was gentle, and he smelled like the ocean. Not fishy ocean, but expensive, man-made, bottled interpretation of the ocean. I couldn’t believe how nervous I was in his arms, or how overwhelmed I was by my emotions when he pulled me closer.