Hunt Me! I Crave the Chase (Spooky Boys #3)

“Sweet. I guess I’ll…um…see you around?”

“You will,” I promised.

And I meant every word.

It was dark.

It was dark.

It was dark.

I was back home. Ten years old and hiding from my demon as I crept down the dark, empty hallway of Lydia’s home, my heart in my throat. It had been sixteen hours, four minutes, and fifty-three seconds since she’d locked Blair in the closet again.

Sixteen hours, four minutes, and fifty-three seconds since I’d felt my stomach drop, and watched horrified as she dragged him down the hallway. I’d felt powerless, but that wasn’t a new feeling nowadays.

I couldn’t do anything.

I’d tried before, and all it had gotten him was more time locked up.

I hated when she did this. I hated it more than I hated anything else. More than I hated this home and its mausoleum-like rooms. Hated it more than my weekend lessons at the hunter lodge. Hated it more than I’d hated my old home, my old parents—the ones who thought I was dead.

The plate in my grip shook as I took a steadying breath, using the training Lydia had given me against her, silent as a specter.

When I reached the hall closet I felt two seconds from throwing up.

This could go so wrong. This could go so, so wrong. But…I couldn’t just let him go hungry. Blair was only a year younger than me. Smaller than me—even though when we’d first been taken we were the same size. Still, his stomach was like a cavern. The kid could put away more food than I could—and he wasn’t the one with the “extracurricular activities.”

He had to be starving.

He had to have been starving for hours.

I hadn’t been able to manage much. It’d taken a lot of distractions at dinner, twiddling my thumbs, sneaking rolls and carrots into my pockets, trying to pretend like everything was normal. Like I wasn’t dying inside. Like I wasn’t completely attuned to the kid who was locked only fifty feet away from where Lydia, her husband, and I sat like a picture-perfect family.

Lydia had asked to hear me play my guitar after dinner.

It had taken every ounce of strength I had in my body not to bolt into my room where I could hide the rolls before she could find out about my deception. Somehow I’d gotten lucky. Because she let me go.

And now…hours later—well after she’d gone to sleep—I was finally able to deliver my gift.

My heart was pounding as I fiddled the key out of my pocket one handed.

It’d been tricky sneaking it out of her room. Especially because I knew for a fact she was a light sleeper. One time, Blair had sneezed too loud, and she’d shown up inside our room at three in the morning—a demoness in a white nightgown.

“Be quiet,” was all she’d said.

And Blair and I hadn’t dared breathe the rest of the night.

Still though, luck had been on my side. Or maybe it really was my lessons. At least they were good for something, right? Other than giving me nightmares.

As I’d snuck the key into the lock and twisted the door open my palms were sweaty. It was hard to get a good grip on the door, but somehow I managed. The second I’d pulled it open, something settled inside me. Something that had gotten knocked loose the second Blair had been out of my sight.

He sat in the dark, huddled in a sad little ball, his mop of black hair hanging over his face.

I had swallowed the lump in my throat, falling to my knees and pressing into the tight space as much as I could.

“Blair,” I’d said as quietly as I could. “I can’t let you out.”

Blair made a broken sound. He lifted his head, looking at me with these devastated green eyes—and I just…I just wanted to die.