Radiance (Riley Bloom #1)(20)
I scowled, knowing she wasn’t about to go anywhere. Not as long as Buttercup and I were inadvertently giving her the thrill of her ghost-busting lifetime, even though, technically speaking anyway, neither of us could truly be considered as earthbound entities, since we were only there on a mission, and therefore had no plans to stay—a small, but pretty substantial fact that was completely lost on her.
I sat back and sighed, long, loudly, no longer caring when she turned toward her husband, her eyes wide, head bobbing up and down as she said, “Did you feel that? Just now? That rush of cold air?”
He nodded, his gaze running the track between the camera’s display, the voice recorder, his wife’s crazy eyes, and back.
“Are you getting all this?” she asked, rising in a way that made her knees crack again, causing Buttercup to wince and me to cringe.
“All of it,” he mumbled. “Every last bit of it.” He smiled, his eyes shining brightly.
“Fantastic!” she exclaimed, face beaming, cheeks flushed with excitement, as her hair, still not attended to since she’d jumped out of bed, pretty much stood up on end.
And watching all of that, well, it was just too much.
Not only had I been recorded and filmed, destined for some pathetically dorky, homegrown, schlocky, ghost-busting Web site, but I’d yet to see the Radiant Boy, and as long as they kept this up, it was clear that I wouldn’t.
I slumped against the wall, and glared at the couple before me, hoping they’d get a good shot of that amongst the rest of their footage. Watching as they closed in on us, stopping just short of where Buttercup was crouching down low, transitioning into full-on guard dog mode, as he let off a low, menacing growl.
“Oh, now you decide you don’t like her?” I looked at him, and shook my head. “What about earlier when you were slobbering all over her hands? Huh, what about that?”
But just after the words were out, I noticed she wasn’t the one he was growling at.
There was someone behind her.
Someone creeping up behind both her and her husband.
Someone who glowed so brightly the whole room lit up.
Someone who could only be described as—
Radiant.
14
Behind him, the room shook.
Objects flew.
As the ghost-busting couple bolted through the door with Buttercup close on their heels. Dropping their equipment and abandoning their belongings without a second glance, the shrieking echo of the husband’s high-pitched scream lingering in the air long after they’d left.
Leaving me to face the Radiant Boy all on my own, as practically anything and everything that wasn’t nailed down or weighing in at over two hundred pounds went soaring through the air, directed solely at me.
A chair nearly sliced me in half.
A lamp nearly cut off my head.
As a pair of graying old tube socks with holes in both the toes and the heels lifted right out of the couple’s suitcase and headed straight for my neck, completely bent on strangling me.
All of it whirling about in a frenzied gale-force wind that could rival any Midwestern tornado, and refusing to stop until the entire room and its contents were either broken, upended, or no longer anywhere near their original place.
I cowered against the wall, narrowly avoiding a rogue blow dryer that hissed and looped before me like a venomous snake. Too afraid to close my eyes in case I might miss something, too afraid to keep them open for what I might see. Squinting into the wind and debris at the Radiant Boy glowering over me, wishing I’d just grabbed hold of Buttercup’s tail and sailed right out of there while I’d still had the chance.
But it was too late for that. My failure to run left me with no choice but to deal with it. If I’d any hope of making it to London, learning to fly, or even just having the courage to face Bodhi again, I’d have to stay put, no matter what came at me.
No matter what became of me.
The Radiant Boy towered menacingly, having grown three times his size in just a handful of seconds. The blond curls that had been springy and bouncy just a moment before morphed into angry, vicious, three-headed snakes, while his body emitted a glow so bright—so radiant—it was all I could do not to cover my face. As his eyes raged ominously, two fiery, flaming pits of anger focused on me—though it was nothing compared to his mouth—an infinite black hole—a bottomless abyss—gaping so wide I had the unmistakable feeling he intended to swallow me completely.
I clamped my mouth shout, desperate to keep the scream from escaping. My eyes locked on those two flaming pits as he moved closer and closer still, knowing he was the scariest thing I’d ever seen in both my life and death combined. And that includes my worst nightmares, shows on TV, and even the movies I wasn’t allowed to watch but did anyway.
Nowhere had I ever seen anything quite as frightening as he.
His fiery eyes raging in a way so intense I could actually feel their white-hot scorching heat, as the infinite void of his mouth practically sucked the air right out of the room. Knowing only one thing for sure:
No trip to London could ever be worth it.
And as for flying, well, it was clearly overrated.
But just as I turned, sneaking one foot halfway through the wall, eager to make my escape—I thought about Bodhi.
Thought about the smirky look he’d surely give me the second he found me in the hall, all wide-eyed and scared witless.