Page 93 of Purrfectly Haunted

Our room. When I moved in, Lana offered to give me one, too. Neither James nor I have voiced the desire to have separate rooms.

I squeeze his hand and run upstairs to drop my bag.

"Are you sure you feel up for it?" James asks me for the hundredth time.

We're both getting ready in our room—black clothes only, he said it could get really messy. I tried my best not to gawk as he undressed to change.

I nod. "I need to do this. I can't just hide in here forever while you go ghost hunting."

"You can. You can stay here tonight, live a normal life. If you want I'll even stop ghost hunting, and we can find something else we can both do."

My heart is in my throat. He's so… amazing. I reach for his hand and he grabs mine.

"But I can't," I say. "What happened this year made it worse. I'm even more attuned to the veil now. I can feel them, James, even before they appear. The dead are everywhere, and I'm done averting my eyes. I'm done fearing the dark."

He looks pained, but also proud?

"Then I'll follow you into the dark." He kisses my hand, and I feel lightheaded.

I believe him. James thinks he failed me on the day the monster took me, but he didn't. He never gave up on me and spent months relentlessly on pursuit, changing plans and career just so he could find me. No one in my life has ever showed me such commitment.

I'll make sure he understands how I see it.

"I'm ready," I say.

Night is falling, and I can already feel the veil come alive. Halloween night is the one night of the year when the frontier between life and death narrows, and the spirits will haunt the living more than usual. Pagans used to wear costumes to scare them away. Tonight, Shirley got us simple white masks. Not only for the ghosts, but for anonymity, too. I still have to go to university, and it would be a shame to have witnesses of my extracurricular activities.

"Lets go," James says.

Lana and Shirley bid us a good hunt before we leave. They're busy preparing the Halloween party at the hostel for the night. They both look overly worried, and I have to smooth out their frowns with my thumb.

To my delight, Pearl rushes from upstairs and jumps on James' shoulder before we exit the hostel. She really goes on all the hunts with him. Shirley told me that she was here for him when he needed it the most. She jokes that she's his spirit animal of a sort.

Pearl headbutts the side of his head and he complains about her messing up his hair. Seeing them like this makes me melt inside.

James has a list of all the ghosts he'd like to pay a visit to tonight, in order of urgency. From a little Victorian girl haunting the attic of a house in Old Town, to the ghost of a backpacker haunting a pub in New Town.

"Those are the slippery ones," he explains as we make our way down the street. "The ones who like to hide most of the time. I was hoping Halloween night would make them easier to hunt. But that was before having you with me." He winks at me. "You can find them either way, right?"

I nod. I feel strangely calm. I've been afraid of the dead for my entire life, but a year of being possessed by one has a way of putting things into perspective. All the entities that Earl Lynch devoured through me were as scared as I was. We are all the same, in the end.

People point fingers and take pictures of Pearl, her head poking out of James' backpack. Her tail is swishing every time she stares at a ghost. She can see them all, I realise, just like I can. I wonder if all cats see through the veil or only if they are the minions of a sentient house.

The streets are busy with low level entities, floating among the crowds of the living, the ones who are simply lost on their way to the afterlife and haven't gathered much strength. Only a small fraction of them will become poltergeists one day.

Our first stop is to a fancy house in Dean Village, by the river. A couple in their forties welcome us at the door, looking us up and down with dubious looks on their faces. We both keep our masks on, and it doesn't help, but they relax when James tells them they can pay the fee later with our boss.

"Don't they sometimes refuse to pay afterwards?" I whisper as we follow them down the basement.

"Yes," he says over his shoulder. "But if they don't, we send them ghosts. So they usually comply pretty fast."

I laugh. "You do?"

"Yeah. We have a few ghosts agents now all over Edinburgh. The Urchin is one of them. And since this house sits by the river, he can easily haunt this place and become a nuisance. He enjoys it greatly."

Ghost agents? "Oh my god." I laugh again, and the couple gives us the stink eye.

So the little ghost we freed from the hostel a year ago still hasn't moved on. I make a mental note to help him.