Free Ghostly (Darkly Devoted Book 1) by Brooke Kennedy Page A

cut up and possessed by whatever the hell demon had a hold on her. It was the scariest thing I’d ever seen in my life, hands down. It topped everything that I’d lived through, all the horrific things I’d seen firsthand.
    I saw Meredith trying desperately to open the closet door on the other side of the room to get Cade and me out of there. When there was only Meredith and Ryder left, the girl fell to the floor unconscious.
    “Holy shit,” I breathed and handed the phone back to him, trying to hide the terror from my voice.
    “I have never seen anything like this, except for in movies,” he said.
    “You’ve never even seen a ghost,” Celeste pointed out.
    “Yeah, well, I didn’t expect to see this! She was freaking possessed!”
    “Who was she?” I asked.
    Ryder shrugged. “I dunno.” He looked at Meredith expectantly.
    She shook her head. “I have no clue. I invited some friends who invited some friends who invited some friends. She could have been anybody.”
    “Which is exactly why the party needed to be kept small, with just us,” I said. “Now some girl out there has been possessed and is going to start spreading even more rumors about my house!”
    “It’s bad enough, Briar, no need to get all crazy,” Celeste said and stood up. “Besides, it’s all in good fun. You’ve got balls to stay in that house.”
    “Or you could move out,” Meredith added.
    “I can’t just move out, not right now.”
    “If you wanna live, you might wanna do that.”
    “Mer!” Ryder scolded before turning his attention to me. “Listen, if you ever need anything you let me know. I don’t want some ghost bringing you down like everyone else who has lived there. If you see anything, I mean anything out of the ordinary you call me. We will figure out what to do.”
    Too late, I already had. The one encounter I couldn’t explain had left me bleeding, but I couldn’t very well tell him that. I felt guilty enough as it was to invite people over after that, and that poor girl in the video…what was going to keep that from happening to me or my family? I felt sick just thinking about it.
     
     
     
    That afternoon, Ryder drove me home; we sat in silence. I didn’t want to talk anymore about ghosts, and he didn’t seem to want to bring it up. The video had completely freaked me out. I dreaded to even step foot into the house again, but my family was in there. They needed to know how dangerous it was.
    I muttered a thank you and grabbed my bag as I got out of his truck. After racing up to the house, I fiddled with my keys and stepped inside. I found my brother and father sitting at the dinner table eating.
    “Sorry to start without you; Dillon was starving when I picked him up,” my dad said.
    “It’s alright.” I shrugged and took a seat across from him. Pizza sat in the middle of the table, so I helped myself.
    “You’ll have to get your own drink. I wasn’t sure when you’d be home, so I didn’t get you one.”
    Whatever. “I’m always home at the same time every day.” I pushed away from the table to get something to drink.
    When I walked into the kitchen, I opened the nearest cabinet to retrieve a glass and sat it on the counter. I growled in irritation, mocking my dad under my breath as I grabbed a two liter of soda out of the refrigerator. I turned around to walk back to my glass and froze. It was gone.
    “What the hell?”
    My eyes darted around the room, finally settling on the glass, which had somehow moved to the island in the center of the kitchen. The room grew cold as I walked over toward it and reached out with my shaky hand. Before I could touch it, it flew away from me and slammed into the cabinet before hitting the floor and shattering. I screamed and threw my hands up to cover my face from the glass, just as I heard my father call out my name and his footsteps echo down the hallway.
    I couldn’t seem to take my eyes away from the broken pieces on the floor as my heart thudded in my