Page 55 of Bitter’s Sweet

Turns out monsters like witnesses. They just call it an audience.

Another text appears.

Don’t let him think he gets to keep you.

My fingers go cold.

I look up before I mean to, scanning the festival grounds. Vendor tents. Coffin racers. Uncle Cletus. A woman selling skull candles. Two kids chasing each other with plastic shovels. Prospects hauling hay bales. Mourning Adams arguing with a man over whether a rooster can legally predict marriages in exchange for cash.

No Razor. No black helmet. No Reaper patch.

But I feel watched.

Petal steps closer. “Honey, you’re white as biscuit dough.”

“I’m naturally pale.”

“You were pink five seconds ago.”

“I saw a spider.”

“In your phone?”

I tuck the phone against my chest. “Very advanced spider.”

Petal’s face softens. “You don’t have to tell me. But you do have to tell somebody, because Bitter is walking this way like he heard your heartbeat change.”

“What?”

I turn.

Bitter is crossing the lot from the south gate, and every ridiculous thing inside me reacts like the man just walked out of a storm made for me personally. His cut rides his shoulders. His jaw is set. His eyes are on me, not the tents, the crowd, or the grave-contest banner flapping behind him.

That should not make me feel safer.

It does.

I hate that so much I could scream into Uncle Cletus’s squirrel wedding.

Bitter stops in front of us. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

Petal snorts.

I glare at her.

She lifts both hands. “Baby kicked. Sounded like a snort.”

Bitter doesn’t look away from me. “Phone.”

“No.”

“Sweet.”

“No, Bitter.”

His nostrils flare a little, which is not something I should notice. “We doing this again?”