She felt a wave of cold fright slide over her body.
Scott’s voice coming out of Hans’s head was so wrong.
She backed away from him and moved toward the door she’d just come through.
It slammed shut in her face.
She turned around. Hans’s vacant expression was now twisted into something angry. “You can’t help Mary.”
Maybe if she learned more about the spirit controlling Hans she could somehow force it out? “Who are you?”
“I’m Mary.”
Great. They had a schizophrenic spirit on their hands. At any rate, Anjali no longer cared who’d killed Mary Chestnut. She just wanted to get off the damn ghost ship.
Hans moved toward her. “Mary is trapped here. You can’t help her.”
“I don’t want to,” Anjali said.
Hans sneered. “I don’t believe you.”
“Then we have a problem.”
Okay, she had to figure a way out of here. She didn’t know whether Hans was a willing host, but during the séance, she’d been able to push the presence out of her mind after hearing Scott’s voice calling to her, feeling him holding her hand.
“Hans? Hans, listen to me.” She kept her voice low and softly reached out with her mind, trying to connect with that part of him not controlled by the spirit. “Hans—”
The thing shoved her, hard.
The moment his hands touched her, it was like a flashbulb went off in her brain. A woman’s face—cupid’s bow mouth, dark blue eyes, and chestnut curls, staring at herself in the mirror, then lunging at the glass with a vicious snarl. The same woman, putting the barrel of a gun in her mouth, hands steady on the trigger.
Anjali lost her balance. She fell back hard, her head making painful contact with the metal. The world shifted out of focus. Hans—Mary, it was Mary—loomed above her, reaching for her. Gray eyes shifting into blue.
No more nightmare-free nights for me, Anjali thought.
If she survived, that was.
She raised her hands to ward off the attack, but then someone was yanking Hans away.
The world shifted back in and she saw Scott push Hans away. The man lost his balance and fell against the railing. He sat there, blinking, and then with a cry, scrambled off, fleeing through the door.
Scott was beside her, brushing the hair from her face. “Are you okay?”
“My head hurts.”
His fingers lightly probed the back of her head. “You’ll have a nasty bump but the skin isn’t broken. Do you feel nauseous or dizzy?”
“No.”
He helped her to her feet. For a second her legs felt like jelly, and she grabbed on to his waist to steady herself.
That’s when he pulled her into his arms.
She pressed her face against his chest. He felt so solid. “Mary Chestnut committed suicide—out of hate. That’s what I kept sensing, self-hate.”
Scott pulled away and looked down at her. “How do you feel?”
Like she wanted him to hold her again. “Okay, but Mary is still floating around this ship.”
“Vivica can deal with it. Let’s get out of here.” He started walking and held out his hand behind him.
Smiling, she caught up with him, put her hand in his, and they went to find Coulter.