Chapter 71

A woman's laughter cut through the thin membranes of my slumber. It had a girlish quality, with a light and lyrical tone but there was something about it that made me frown, as if it sounded wrong somehow, like when you listen to someone singing off-key. When the voice whispered so close to my right ear, my eyes snapped open, sure that whoever it was now lay next to me, but all I saw was the grey, cracked plaster of the asylum wall. To my left, Harper lay on his side, with his back towards me and that great dragon tattoo encircling his hip bone, a constant reminder of the beast that waited just beneath the surface of his heavily-inked skin. I could still spy small beads of perspiration on his body and I vaguely wondered why I was freezing cold, when he was clearly still emanating heat from before when we had clutched each other as if it were the first time all over again. It had been a rough, desperate attempt to grasp onto something tangible; a f