Chapter 435

• I jerk up in bed, shock flooding me and turning my skin to ice.
• The man and I stare at one another in silence for several heartbeats, neither of us moving. He’s unblinking, a ghostly, beautiful statue in the sliver of light falling through the crack in the curtains. Half his face is forged from the shadows in the corner, and the other is damn near alight from the streetlamp outside.
• For a moment, I sit frozen, my hands clawed into the blankets against my chest. On the heels of my dream, I’m not entirely certain he’s real. Maybe he’s just a vision—a night terror, a holdover from the dream, the way old photograph negatives could overlap in the developing process.