Page 104 of Haunt Me, Maybe

No. They absorbed it, devoured it, pulled light and hope into an endless abyss. Whatever gazed out from those depths wasn’t human. It was other. Predatory and eternal, the air folded toward him; like gravity itself shifted its alliance. At his throat, a red crystal burned like a captured star.

Aven told me what it was. It was her family’s magic twisted into a weapon, a leash, a battery of horrors, and it was around the neck of a man who didn’t feel mortal. He felt like the end of things. The silence after the last scream. And Aven…she stood in the center of that circle, incandescent. Like a beacon in the gathering storm.

Magic poured off her in waves, coiling around her like living fire so bright it seared even my spectral vision. How had she ever contained all that? How had she survived years of pretending to be small and dimming her presence to a flicker just to evade him? My chest ached with a fierce, protective pride. She was magnificent. Terrifying in her own right.

Fenn glowed brightly at her ankle, a needed presence that funneled her magic into the chalk runes etched on the floor. The circle held…for now. But the air thrummed with tension, and the barrier flickered under the strain.

Like a dam cracking before the flood. Gideon extended one hand toward it. Simply leaning in, he inhaled the energy like a connoisseur savoring fine wine.

Drinking.

My jaw tightened. He wasn’t trying to shatter the perimeter. He was siphoning it, testing its limits, and letting the circle feed him through sheer proximity. That cursed crystal deepened to a bloody crimson with every flare Aven released.

How was she supposed to fight that? Her family’s essence weaponized into a conduit that could absorb anything she threw at him?

With it, he was invincible. But…if we took it away…we could shift the balance. My fingers curled into fists, the air around them frosting over. I stepped from the shadows slowly. I didn’t let my anger manifest in frozen floors or cracked walls. I was quiet. I was air. A draft floating along the spine of the room, unnoticed.

Gideon said nothing, his gaze never wavering from Aven. It remained locked on her with that insatiable hunger. Either he couldn’t see me, or he didn’t deem me worth the glance. Good.

Aven’s circle strained harder, the runes pulsing erratically. I moved closer. Five feet behind him now. Three. The temperature plummeted as I gathered myself. Frost crept across the concrete in a thin, silent sheen, inching toward him like fingers of inevitability. Gideon’s head tilted— a fraction.

Not toward me, but toward the ice. His lips curved in a serpentine smile that made my nonexistent blood run cold.

“So,” he mused, voice rippling through the room like oil over water, sick and contaminating. “You brought a friend.”

Oh. Shit.

His words sank into my core and tightened like a noose. Then, Gideon’s hand lifted toward me, and the air warped. For the first time since I died, something gripped me back; a vise of dark power clamped down and tried to pin me like a butterfly on a board.

“An anchored spirit,” he said softly, almost amused. “How quaint.”

The pressure intensified, squeezing, attempting to cage me the way he caged magic in that infernal crystal. Panic choked me in an unfamiliar wave, but I didn’t fight it. I’d spent decades learning the art of intangibility; how to be less solid, more mist than man. I let my form blur and slipped sideways instead of forward.

Gideon’s grip went through me like fingers through smoke. His attention wavered, just for a second—a hairline fracture in his unbreakable focus. And that was all Aven needed. She surged.

A column of her light bent and lashed like a divine whip, cracking through the air with a thunderous snap. It struck Gideon full force across the chest in a blaze of pure fury that illuminated the mill like daylight. He staggered—half a step, but it was enough.

Now.

I unleashed the part of me that had once frozen windows solid and shattered pipes in abandoned houses. The air around Gideon’s neck plunged to killing cold in an instant, frost exploding across his chain like white fire.

He snarled, the first true crack in his composure, and swung a hand toward me again. Black energy tore through the space I’d occupied less than a second ago, ripping splinters from the wall.

I phased and reappeared behind his back, close enough to feel the unnatural heat radiating from him. I grabbed the chain and nearly screamed. It burned.

Stolen power shrieked against my ethereal hands, a cacophony of trapped souls wailing in protest. I wasn’t meant to touch this. But too fucking bad.

I wouldn’t let go. Not now.

“Aven!” I barked, my voice echoing with the desperation of a man who’d already lost everything once.

She understood instantly. Her attention narrowed in on the crystal, and she struck. Violet and gold speared down like a lance from the heavens, slamming into the red stone as I wrenched the chain backward with every ounce of strength I possessed. My frost fractured it further, sending spiderweb cracks through the metal.

The magic hit, and the chain snapped with the sound of breaking worlds. The crystal tore free into my hand, pulsing wildly as fissures raced across its surface, and the sound that erupted from Gideon wasn’t human—not even close.

It was a primordial roar that shook the mill to its foundations, rattling beams and sending dust cascading from the rafters like snow.

Power slammed outward in a concussive wave, blasting through the room. The mill groaned in protest, but held, its ancient timbers straining like bones under torture. Outside, the crows shrieked in utter chaos. The crystal in my grip throbbed violently, on the verge of shattering, its stolen light leaking out in erratic bursts.