Ghost Girl

Chapter 3

I'd never slept in the same room as a man before. It was an odd experience. Tommy's snoring and Sylvia's tossing kept me awake. Every time she moved, she kicked me in the shin. However, my lack of sleep had a lot to do with Quin on the other side of the screen positioned at the foot of my bed. He didn't make a sound and I began to wonder if he even needed to sleep at all.

Curiosity eventually got the better of me, and I climbed out of bed. Usually it was completely dark in my room at night, but Tommy had insisted on keeping a candle burning on the mantel in case he needed to get up and protect us. It provided just enough light for me to see Quin when I poked my head around the edge of the screen. He lay on his back without blankets covering him. He still wore his leather pants and no shirt. Tommy lay on the truckle beside him, sound asleep. So much for our protector.

I ventured around the screen to get a better look. Quin lay with his hands resting on his stomach, a pose that reminded me of the effigies of long-dead medieval kings carved into stone. He'd removed his sword, but placed it within reach at his side. He claimed to have cut his hair, but it was still longish and splayed on the pillow around his head like a dark aura. The flickering light from the single candle turned his skin golden and cast shadows beneath his cheekbones and eyes. He really was a remarkable specimen, as Sylvia liked to call him. No Englishman I'd met had such a compelling presence, or a face as masculine and handsome as Quin's. I couldn't take my eyes off it. Oh wait, I could, just long enough to admire his shoulders, chest and stomach. His body had probably been honed from fighting against otherworldly creatures, yet was that what he'd always done? He said he was human, yet he clearly wasn't. At least not anymore. So what was he?

His eyes suddenly opened, sending me reeling backward into the screen. I rescued it before it toppled and woke up the others. "You're awake," he whispered, sitting up.

I tried to appear sophisticated despite being dressed in nothing but my nightgown. "I, er…that is, yes. I couldn't sleep. A lot has happened today and I'm finding it hard to digest it all."

"Digest?"

"Comprehend. What about you? Why can't you sleep?"

He raised one knee and rested his arm on it. "I don't feel tired."

"You can't get tired?"

"I don't know."

I edged forward. "How can you not know? You've been to this realm before."

"I haven't stayed long here in the past. This is the longest time."

"Why?"

"My work usually takes mere moments to complete. I kill the demons then I return to my realm." He shrugged in a nonchalant way that reminded me of my father, a typical Frenchman's shrug.

"So you have never stayed overnight?"

"No."

It was interesting that he told me that much. The fact he had not stayed overnight convinced me that he had never kept anyone cursed with a supernatural illness alive before. I was his first.

"Perhaps you simply don't require sleep, not being from this realm."

"Perhaps."

"Yet you were from this realm, once, long ago."

He gave me that quirk of a smile again. "You're asking questions of me without posing them as questions. That is—"

"Clever?"

"I was going to say devious."

I smiled. "We females must use all the wiles available to us."

His face darkened and closed up, as if shutting off his expressions to hide them from me. "Aye. Very devious."