Free Ghostly (Darkly Devoted Book 1) by Brooke Kennedy

over my face. “Guess so.”
    “So, she does smile,” he said sarcastically.
    “When it’s worth it.”
    “It must be my lucky day then.” He leaned in to try and kiss me again.
    I let him to remind myself of what it felt like. Maybe the last time was just a glitch in my senses. His fingers slid across my cheek and into my hair, pulling my face to him. He kissed me softly on the lips, leaving an otherworldly tingle as he pulled back from me. The darkness in his eyes was almost frightening, and I wasn’t sure what it meant.
    “You have the darkest eyes I’ve ever seen. They’re almost black.”
    “I guess that goes with my damned soul.”
    I pushed him and tried not to laugh at his joke. He was so cute. He looked so innocent, even though I had a sinking feeling that he was hiding something from me.
    “I think I might believe in ghosts no. You wanna hear my scary ghost story?”
    “What’s that?”
    “One of these crazy ghosts threw a knife at me the day of the party. That’s why I had the bandage on.”
    The smile that had stretched from ear to ear faded, replaced with one I hadn’t seen before. It was angry, dangerous.
    “What?” he demanded. It was almost as if the whole room filled up with something heavy; I felt like I needed to get up and run from the room. It was completely different from what I’d seen from him in the short time I knew him.
    “I was helping my dad take down that awful wallpaper when the knife flew across the room and sliced my arm. You won’t believe it, though; the blood went into the wall! It was insane!”
    He frowned and stood up from the bed with a growl. “I will fuck them up for this.”
    “What? Who?”
    “Those damned ghosts! Don’t worry about it. I will take care of it.”
    “You really think it was a ghost?”
    “It had to be. Knives don’t just fly across the room.”
    True. “Well, Dad doesn’t believe me.”
    “Listen to me,” he said as he came to stand directly in front of me. “I know how to deal with these things. I will make sure they leave you alone. No one is going to hurt you as long as I’m around. No one.”

Chapter Nine
     
     
     
    “You missed it, Briar,” Ryder exclaimed as he sat in the seat beside me.
    “What are you talking about?” I stifled a yawn. Cade and I had stayed up too late watching horror movies and talking about our favorite things. I was exhausted.
    Celeste joined us and sat on Ryder’s desk. “It wasn’t awesome. Don’t listen to him. It was insane.”
    Ryder smiled and reached into his pocket to pull out his phone. “Apparently, the Ouija board awakened something from beyond the grave.”
    “Don’t be too dramatic now,” Celeste said and pushed him playfully.
    “That’s the only way to tell the story!” He looked over at me. “Okay, so, when you went into the closet, one of the girls at the party started screaming and freaking out. Her eyes turned into this weird creamy white color and—ah—it’s just so crazy. You have to watch it. I can’t do it justice.” He pressed a few buttons on his phone and handed it to me.
    With a sigh, I clicked play on the video. I didn’t want to know what had happened while I was in the closet. The second the video started, shaky as Ryder tried to hold it up over people’s heads to see the girl, my stomach sank. The random girl who had been sitting with us the night of the party stood there with blank eyes. Her head tilted left and touched her shoulder, right to touch the other, and then her mouth fell open, releasing the most otherworldly scream I’d ever heard.
    Everyone in the room started to panic. They ran away from her as she lifted her hands to the sky and began to laugh manically. Her voice was deeper than it was when she’d spoken to me, and cuts appeared on her arms.
    “You don’t belong here!” she cried as her body jerked back and forth. “Get out! Get out!”
    No one even tried to help her; they ran for their lives as the poor girl continued to be