Under My Skin Read Online Free PDF

there. I’d gone to bed anticipating another steamy dream of coupling with handsome Mr. Elijah. I’d anticipated a sultry encounter intended to show me how much Lanie loved him, how their time had been cut short, what a good man he was…because I believed all that to be true.
    What I got, instead, were frantic dreams of running. I would run and run and then fall, a wall of fire, or something similar that stung and burned but was indecipherable in my dream state of panic, would overcome me. My lungs felt stuffed full of cotton, my skin ablaze. I screamed but as so often comes in really bad dreams, no sound escaped me. No one heard me, so no one came to help me.
    I woke with that infernal buzzing, rushing, crackling sound of whatever my inhuman nemesis had been. The sun was just up and the light in the room was a clear lemony yellow peeking around the blinds. I shook my head to clear the dream but realized the sound I was hearing was very real. Not part of the dream at all.
    “Hello?” I whispered. No one was here but me, though. I knew it as surely as I knew my name and my birthday. Just me and the resident spirits.
    Hurry…
    The thought slammed me hard as something small and reddish brown floated from under the door and through my room. I had chosen the room on the ground floor. A suite of rooms actually that had an attached bathroom, a fireplace, a patio outside of two French doors. The white sheers that covered the doors shone with morning light. For all intents and purposes it should have been a storybook morning with bright light and a quiet street, me waking in my new luxurious suite of rooms. Queen of my new manor.
    Instead, the mind numbing droning sound sharpened, making me feel uncomfortable, like I would scratch my brain if I could. The panic in my chest amplified and I knew it wasn’t my emotion, but it was important. Another brownish blob zipped under the door. I watched in a stupor as they seemed to bob and weave toward me, and it hit me just as another slipped through the crack near the floor.
    Wasps.
    Mahogany wasps. The kind that could sting and sting and sting indefinitely and not die.
    This was ’s evil energy at work. He drove the owners out of their new home, scaring them bad enough that they wouldn’t return. I had no intention of leaving for good, but as a fourth winged-threat buzzed into my room, I knew what I’d find on the other side of that door. And it wouldn’t be pretty. Or safe.
    My mind made up, I stood, finding my robe and a bag near the foot of the bed still packed from the move. My purse was under my bed where I always kept it, I’m an old lady that way. I shoved my feet into moccasins and glanced around the room to see what else I might need. There were about ten of them now and they were clustered together as if communing. As one unit they started to move toward me. I reached out to Lanie and whispered.
    “Okay. It’s fine. I give you permission. Hop aboard and then let’s get the fuck out of Dodge.” There was a warm sliding sensation and a crowding feeling. And then I was co-pilot to my own body. Seeing my sights but sharing them too. Her energy was good, warm…excited.
    I hustled toward the French doors and unlocked the right one. Throwing it open, I darted out onto my patio and then climbed the low stone ledge and ran toward my car. I might need an exterminator and a hotel. Or an exorcist and a hotel.
    The fall morning licked coolly at my bare legs and I shivered, I was rooting for my keys in my purse when I smacked face first into a tall burly man. Elijah.
    “I…oh, um…”
    He gripped my upper arms and said, “Lanie—” Confusion, pain and then shame flickered over his face. I felt so bad for him.
    “Hey, there. Thanks,” I said, trying to interrupt his thoughts of his perceived faux pas.
    I turned to glance past the French doors into my room. A small cloud of reddish brown floated lazily above my bed. So far the wasps had not ventured outside. Up in the attic