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At the top of the stairs, I pause, as I always do.
The ornate mirror there is one of the few places I can actually see her.
I look past my own reflection and my face is replaced with hers.
In the dark of the mirror, she places her hand against the glass and I sigh as I touch it with my own.
I don’t know what Julia looked like when she was alive, but the face she wears in the mirror is not the one I met when I first came to this house.
Back when she was trying to kill me, her jaw stretched grotesquely long, too many teeth and eyes that stared at me like vacuous pits… She’s beautiful both ways.
Now, dark hair hangs over transparent gray skin and Ithinkit is almost what she looked like before she was murdered.
“I have so many questions you can’t answer.” I kiss the mirror where her lips seem to be and when I pull back, I can’t see her anymore, but I feel the cold wash of her hands on my neck.
Tonight isn’t about us, though.
Tonight is about something that has gone terribly wrong in the last six months.
I pull out the book and the six-pack of beer before I drop the bag on the bed in the second largest bedroom—the one I’ve come to think of asmyroom.
Both go on the dresser and then I dig out the vial of prepared ingredients and take a deep breath.
There are worse crimes to commit on a Friday night than drugging your best friend so he’llstoptrying to sleep with you, right?
Especially when that drug is actually just a spelled potion meant to kill this ridiculous crush and put things back to the way they were.
Right?
There’s a flicker of something in the mirror behind me.
It’s beginning to feel like I’ve haunted this house almost as long as she has.
“It’s going to work,” I say, and the lights turn off in a wave around the room for a second before turning back on.
A sarcastic “yes.” I can just imagine her saying “sure” and rolling her eyes.
Julia and I worked out a system years ago. One light-blink for yes, two for no and a host of other random variations on the theme.
“Ithasto work.”
Julia doesn’t give me any kind of response. I’ve been lurking in her home long enough, she knows when she doesn’t need to.
I know, it’s a terrible idea, but after weeks, it’s the only one I have.
And Dylan keeps getting bolder and bolder.
Any day now, he’s going to trip over the line that marks the end of friendship and the start of something I won’t give him. And I don’t want to lose my friend because he’s oblivious.
I check the spell ingredients again, making sure all the proportions are right, and then add a final pinch of salt to each of the open bottles of beer. The six-pack is his favorite IPA and Iam counting on the disgustingly strong flavor of the hops to hide any odd taste.
Julia brushes past me, a presence I can feel, but never see.
“Are you trying to distract me?”
Floorboards creak like a sigh.“Of course not.”I imagine her saying.
Whether or not I believe her…
