Page 6 of Haunt Me, Maybe

Something felt off, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. Fenn wiggled his back legs, just as put out by the sudden atmospheric change as I was.

I don’t like this, he groused.

I snapped my head to the side at the sound of thin whistling. The window next to the bed was slightly ajar, letting in the chill night air along with the dampness from the rain. My muscles unclenched as I let out a sigh of relief.

“It’s just the window.”

Fenn croaked back in a way that sounded deeply unconvinced, but really, what else could it be? Gideon didn’t deal in ice and fog. He attacked with heat and blood. We were still safe.

I grabbed my mother’s jewelry box next and set it on one of the shadowed nooks near the bed, still jittery and nervous despite my calm reasoning. The hair on my arms rose like static on my skin, reacting to the faint hum in the air. I paused once more, eyes darting around.

This place reeks of death magic, Fenn warned, as frost spread across the mirror above the dresser.

My magic sensed it too—like eyes pressing between my shoulder blades. Maybe Gideon had found us after all. Maybe we weren’t as clever as we thought, and my inability to go a single day without casting was going to get us brutally murdered.

When minutes passed and nothing jumped out to kill us, I pushed the feeling down. Paranoia never helped anyone. But it was easy to understand why Mrs. Haverly couldn’t keep a tenant up here. Reaching into my satchel, I pulled out a dried bundle of cleansing herbs—rosemary, mugwort, amaranth—and the attic groaned like something heavy shifted inside its walls.

The air dropped ten degrees.

Hurry up before the floor buckles or something!

I rolled my eyes again at Fenn’s level of drama but lit the edge of the herb bundle with my trusty lighter and, lacking a proper feather, used my hand to fan the smoke around the room. I walked along the edges, from corner to corner, essentially telling the attic to “chill the fuck out”...only with nicer words.

A cold gust swept through the room. Lights flickered. The haphazardly stuffed rocker in the corner creaked violently like someone shoved it. Then it went silent. I thought that was the end of things, but I was wrong. So wrong.

When I pulled out a spare set of clothes—BAM. A trunk lid slammed closed across the room. I set my spellbook and wire ring for casting on the writing desk and—SCRAAAAAPE. The rocking chair dragged itself toward the rug.

You made him mad, Fenn warned.

“Who?”

I already told you what I smelled. Don’t make me repeat myself.

The attic answered with another creak, loud and irritated. The dried herbs obviously weren’t strong enough. I planned to ward the room later, before I went to sleep, but now seemed as good a time as any, and the magical boost would help to calm the energies in here.

Stick of chalk in hand, I set the desk chair beside the bed and used it to draw a simple protection sigil above the window. The dresser rattled. I pulled the chair across the room and repeated the process above the entry door, and the window slammed shut.

The attitude may linger a bit, but things shouldn’t get any worse. And most importantly, we were better shielded from Gideon. Exhausted, I only unpacked the essentials—I’d worry about the rest of my clothes in the morning. The second my jar of moonwater hit the windowsill, the overhead light popped and died.

I threw my hands up in exasperation.

“Okay, seriously, what is your problem?”

A low vibration ran through the wood beams, like laughter. Cold, brittle laughter. All the shadows in the room gathered, concentrating in a single spot near the dresser, as if someone was standing there. My skin bristled.

Fenn groaned from his perch on the end of the bed, Definitely a ghost. And he hates you.

“He doesn’t even know me,” I whispered.

I think he has opinions anyway.

Dust lifted in the air, swirling like it was caught in an unseen current. My magic took notice, waking inside me despite it hovering at dangerously low levels. I stood my ground, refusing to let the threat of a ghost scare me out of my first chance to rest in a bed.

I pulled one more item from my pocket, my focus stone. I needed all the help I could get if this came down to a fight. It was warm to my touch, but the moment it glinted in the half-light, the room exploded in a rippling wave of cold.

The shadows in the corner deepened, and from it a shape formed. A head. Then shoulders, broad, tense, and unmistakably human. The man—ghost—was younger than I expected, around my age if I had to guess, and dressed casually with rolled sleeves and a skewed collar and tie.

He was tall and sharp-featured, with dark, tousled hair like he’d run a hand through it a thousand times. And those eyes…they were sharp and storm-dark and narrowed on me.