Liminal - Excerpt Only

Liminal - Excerpt Only (Chapter Four)

LIMINAL

By Maree Anderson

CHAPTER FOUR

I hesitated by the front door, chilled by his matter-of-fact tone. No flirty BS this time. Just a stark statement ringing with truth. "What did you say?"

He spoke to my stiff, unwilling back. "If you don't learn to control your phasing, one day soon—very soon—you'll phase out all the way and get stuck, unable to phase back to the physical world. But you won't die for a while. You're strong. You'll hang on. And you'll keep on fighting, trying to find a way back until your mind shatters."

Horror clawed my spine. I slowly turned to face him, needing to gauge his expression. "You've seen it happen," I whispered.

His face had smoothed to a neutral mask but his eyes were so haunted with remembered anguish that I flinched. I leaned against the doorframe for support and collapsed until my butt hit the carpet. "I'm sorry." Tragic and clichéd, but right now I couldn't think of anything else to say.

He drank off the last of his beer, ditched the bottle on a bookcase, and approached me with his hand outstretched. "Kade Jordan."

Bemused by the super-fast switch to polite normality I didn't over think it, I just reached up and shook his hand.

"But Leather Pants Dude does have a certain ring to it," he said.

I met his amused gaze and cringed. Crap. I really had been talking in my sleep. I tried to snatch back my hand but he tugged me to my feet and toward the couch. When I didn't oblige by doing the obvious he released my hand. And then both of his landed heavy on my shoulders, applying downward pressure until my knees caved and I sat.

He stayed standing, looming over me. Perhaps he was worried I'd bolt for the door. Smart guy. A girl can only take so much shock and humiliation before she needs to dive under the covers with her favorite stuffed animal and stay there for the rest of the year. Since Brown Bear was in my bedroom at home, and the only bed I'd seen so far belonged to Kade—the cause of my current shock and humiliation—I slumped back against the couch cushions, defeated. But only for now, I told myself as I gazed up at him, scared and hopeful and so relieved to finally have someone to share this nightmare with that I wanted to bawl.

"Tell me everything I need to know. If you leave anything out, I swear I'll make you cry like a... like a... girl." I was proud that my voice was fierce and level. And even prouder that he blinked and danced back a step, eyeing me like the cute fluffy kitten he'd brought home had just shown him her claws.

An insanely short time later, the metaphorical cute fluffy kitten reeeally wanted to shred something. I was ready to bet if I looked up "frustration" in a dictionary right here, right now, there would be a one-word definition: Kade.

He'd kept his explanation to the bare essentials of my "situation" as he liked to call it, but I wasn't feeling the love of those bare essentials one iota.

To sum up: If I walked out of here, I'd die—sooner rather than later.

If didn't learn to control my phasing, I'd die.

If I didn't listen to him and do exactly what he said, I'd—you guessed it—die. With big fat capital letters D I and E.

Guess he figured my poor little female brain would explode if he gave me anything but the Cliff's Notes version. Hah. Boy, did he have a lot to learn.

I blew out a long slow jagged breath and strangled the cushion I held in my lap some more. "Spare me the OTT scare tactics, Kade. They don't impress me a bit and I don't scare that easily." Total bravado but he couldn't know that. "Here's the deal." I resolutely ignored his arched eyebrows. "You're going to tell me how I got this way, and exactly what I need to do to fix it and be normal again. Okay?" I resisted the impulse to launch myself at him and whack him senseless with the cushion, and settled for hitting him with my best I-don't-care-how-hot-you-are-if-you-screw-with-me-you're-toast expression.