Gypsy Freak (All The Pretty Monsters #2)(68)

I nudge her head when the jostling stops, and I feel us being lowered. There’s no way she can be alive.

More of what I assume is blood tickles me, but it almost feels like fabric pulling between my chest and her neck, growing noticeably more insistent.

Still, nothing.

“Violet,” I murmur, feeling stupid for doing so when I nudge her head with mine again, the absence of the Portocale curse’s pain giving me a false hope.

The telltale sound of a truck backing up and the stiff scent of cement lets me know Vance is going to have to dig extra hard, and I’ll suffocate for even longer.

I can hear the sound of laughter just before the roaring of the cement trucks crank into gear, getting prepared. All of it combined stops me from hearing clearly, because I swear I hear the faintest heartbeat that I wouldn’t be able to hear if not for my stronger senses.

Violet suddenly makes a pained sound, and her heartbeat becomes easier to hear, steadily thrumming as she freezes on top of me, moving one hand up my side.

I’m half horrified and half relieved when her head moves over mine, and wide, really fucking creepy pale eyes stare into mine.

She squints like she’s trying to see in the dark. She clumsily moves a hand over my face when she’s unable to, as though she’s trying to identify me by touch.

I’m completely fucking motionless, too confounded to even react, when a second hand joins her search. Her hands move to my hair, and she sucks in a sharp breath.

“No,” she says on a pained rasp. “No, Emit! No,” she says as she bends quickly.

I stop breathing when she presses her ear to my chest, listening for my heartbeat, presumably.

“Emit?” she asks, her voice getting a little shaky as she starts darting her gaze around and curses when she hits her head above us.

“Emit, wake up,” she shouts.

Just as I open my mouth and struggle for what the hell to actually start saying at this particularly…fucked-from-every-angle moment, she shouts at me again.

“Emit!” Then she hiccups out a scared sound before she slaps me hard across the face, enough to jar my entire head to the side and force a surprised grunt out of me.

She’s nowhere nearly strong enough for that smack.

“How the fuck can you hit that hard, and what the actual hell are—”

“Where are we?” she asks on a shaky sound, moving her hands around the top of the casket that keeps her pressed on top of me, giving her only a few inches to push off.

It’s wide, full of pure silver panels for the strongest burn, weakening me every time I move just wrong. She tries to climb off me on those sides, certainly not burning. But not even one of my wolves could have survived a throat slit that deeply.

I’m not imagining that.

“We’re…currently being buried. Is that a problem? Are you a vampire somehow? Does your blood mask the scent? How? I know you’re a Portocale gypsy—”

“Emit, I can’t be here. I can’t,” she says, her voice shaking more as she starts shoving back, crying out a little when she hits the top too hard.

“Hey,” I say quickly and soothingly, lifting my hips and forcing her to slide forward, putting her over my face as she shakes all over.

“Vance is going to be here real damn soon. Okay? Can you suffocate?” I ask, ready to start narrowing down any of the gypsy freak mutations she could also be. If, by some miracle, I’m not just already hallucinating during the suffocation process.

I worry I’m dreaming all this up.

“Hey,” I say again when she whimpers, shaking her head and rocking forward and back, as she squeezes her eyes shut.

“I can’t handle spaces this small. I panic. I always panic. You can’t be here if I panic,” she says almost like she’s checked out, slamming up again.

The steady splatter of liquid slapping the surface above us tells me the cement has started pouring, and Vance still has a while before he’ll even start looking.

“Violet, I need you to calm down,” I tell her as she makes another pained cry and slams up and into the casket.

This time, I feel us jostle, and I hear the metal groan.

I tense under her when she slams back again. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. You can’t be here,” she says in a more panicked tone, her pupils so small I can barely see them, even though they should be dilated to the fullest in the dark.

She rocks hard again, groaning in frustration. “I can do this,” she says, though it sounds more like she’s saying it to herself.

“Violet, I really think I need you to calm down. Tell me what you are. Tell me what’s happening right now. Talk to me. Just focus on—”

Her head pops back over mine, and she grabs the metal clamps holding down my wrists. Awkwardly, she starts pulling hard, and in the next instant, I hear the metal groaning next to both sides of my face as her heartbeat starts to steadily slow down even more, pattering lower, and humming quieter.

“Violet,” I say again as the metal snaps and my arms fly forward.

I grab both sides of her face the second I’m free, even as my elbows slap the silver panels of the coffin, sizzling over the vast space. “Focus on me.”

I’ll figure out how the fucking hell she broke them that easily later.

“Don’t move,” she says in that same shaky tone. “Don’t move. And don’t speak. Don’t let me see you,” she whispers like she’s pleading with me as her heartbeat continues to drop.