She Begged for Me Back After I Left novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Third

I went up the stairs alone, with Alana's phone in my pocket.

She had set it to record before she put it there.

Camille stayed behind in the study with the binder, and the last thing I saw of her was her hand flat on the scans.

Dalton's room was at the end of the second-floor hall.

The door stood open a few inches, and lamplight lay across the carpet.

I pushed it with two fingers.

He was sitting in the armchair by the window, fully dressed, with his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap.

The empty glass stood on the table beside him.

No oxygen tube, no pill organizer, no blanket.

Nothing in that room belonged to a sick man.

"Shut the door," Dalton said.

I shut it.

His voice was the same, soft and warm, but nothing was behind it now.

"You've been reading my binder," he said.

"Yes."

"Camille is downstairs, crying. I could hear her through the vents."

"She isn't crying."

"She will be." He smiled. "Sit, brother. You look dreadful."

"I'll stand."

"Suit yourself."

The panel in my eye said Total 1.9, and it began to fall the instant the door clicked.

I braced a hand on the wall.

"You're feeding on me," I said.

"Not at this distance. Only a little. You're a very generous host."

"System."

"The signature in the room is a host-class entity," the System said. "Status: unregistered. Mission: failed. Erasure: not executed."

"That's him."

"Confirmed."

Dalton tilted his head.

"You can hear it, then. Wonderful. Mine stopped talking six years ago."

"What are you?"

"Exactly what you are. Or I was. A man who died somewhere else and got a second chance and a job. Mine was a woman named Camille Winterbourne, and I failed it."

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