Page 23 of Forever Dark
“It is for me.If I keep giving in to everything.”
She stepped in and took his hand.
The wetness of his skin cooled hers immediately.Connor looked down at their joined fingers, then back at her, and something in him settled.The mock anger went out of his shoulders.The church bells did not ring.No choir sang.It was just the two of them in the side yard with children shouting somewhere out of sight and water drying on his clothes under the sun.
Connor let out a breath.“I have a funny feeling you’re going to get your way.”
Selena squeezed his hand.“As long as it’s at least half of the time.”
That brought the smile back to his mouth.“Fifty percent I can do.”
“Only fifty?”
“You want honesty or romance?”
“At the moment, I want a church wedding.”
Connor shook his head, amused despite himself.
Selena turned with his hand still in hers and looked up at St.Bartholomew’s.Sunlight lay soft across the tower.The windows glowed.The place felt older than either of them, older than every argument they would ever have, older than every promise they could make.
“It’s so pretty,” she said.
Connor followed her gaze.“I’ll give you that.”
“It’s a place where wonderful things happen.”
He laughed quietly.“That sounds like something Father Wells would put in the bulletin.”
“Maybe he’d have good reason.Please, Connor… Let’s get married here…”
He sighed.“Okay.”
“You promise?”
He nodded.“Yeah, I promise.”
Warmth sat in her chest then.Not the easy thrill of being twenty-one and in love, though that was there, too.Something steadier.A sense of future, perhaps.Of a life beginning.Selena looked at the tower windows and pictured herself walking down the aisle, her father on her arm, her mother wiping tears from her eyes.Connor waiting up front trying not to look restless.
The image held.
Then it shifted.
At first she thought a cloud had crossed the sun, but the light on the stone had not changed.Something moved behind the upper tower window.A shape, narrow and dark, close enough to the glass that it seemed to blot out the brightness beyond.
Selena stilled.
The outline sharpened.
A face appeared.
Not Connor’s.Not Father Wells’s.Not anyone living.
Gaunt cheeks pressed thin over bone.Eyes sunk deep in hollow sockets.Skin gray-white and stretched tight, lips parted just enough to show darkness inside the mouth.The face looked dead.Not injured.Not sick.Dead, and looking straight down at her.
Cold ran through Selena so quickly it felt like falling.
Her fingers tightened around Connor’s hand.
