Annoyance rose in my chest and heated my cheeks. “You didn’t know him.”
“Did you? Did you know him, Lune? Did you truly know this man you’re spellbinding back to life with some nightly, complex, wedding-dress-wearing ritual? Because I’m here and now, Lune. I don’t want to go backwards. I have no interest in what my life was before you, before this. Stop looking back and look forward with me. Why won’t you do that, Lunette?”
In anger, I turned to leave and go home on my own, but Shiloh grabbed my wrist. “You’re not going anywhere alone right now. Got it?”
Sending out a short flare of protective magic from my skin, Shiloh’s hand was shocked and frozen momentarily. I jerkedaway, my soul crushed at the look of shock and confusion across her lovely features. “You don’t know me, Shiloh Solair. You don’t even know whoyouare—and you certainly don’t get to tell me what to do or judge my relationships. Do you even know what it is you want? No, you have no clue. You’re stuck in this holding pattern, and soon you’ll leave me, just like everyone else.”
Stomping away, I fought back tears as Shiloh stood frozen, unable to follow me. It wasn’t a long-acting spell, and it didn’t hurt; it was only used in situations where a witch needed to flee. It would also temporarily include her in my banishing spells, so she couldn’t get past the protection wards around my house. So, even if she managed to unfreeze and follow me, she wouldn’t be able to come into my home for the night. None of this would harm her or do any lasting damage. Even so, guilt rested heavy on my back the whole lonely, wretched walk home. Tears streaked my cold cheeks as I realized I’d gotten used to holding her arm and walking everywhere together. I felt stupid at how accustomed to Shiloh I’d allowed myself to become. She was a ghost. Her spirit was surely almost finished with this world, and I couldn’t become attached to yet another person who would disappear.
Why did the sudden realization just hit me that I had allowed myself to become attached? I thought the sex could just be sex. It could be a distraction from my circumstance… but with us, it was never just fucking around, was it? It was more. I felt more.
The cats meowed and pawed at my ankles as I washed off and changed into my wedding dress. The dress felt tight and restrictive. My veil was scratchy and my shoes a size too small. Staring at myself in the mirror, I was the one who looked like some sort of lost spirit.
Maybe I was the ghost.
Some dead thing haunting the grave of the first and only man to ever pay her any attention. How embarrassing I must look.How could Shiloh even like me? She probably didn’t anymore, not after what I’d done—using magic against her like that. The look on her face still made me constrict in agony.
Would she be at the cemetery with me that night? The thought crossed my mind how she might have already chosen to move on and not say goodbye, and that I’d never see her again. The floorboard creaked as I pulled open my bedroom door. I was ready to go to the graveyard to see Shiloh, no, to see Alaric, right?
All of a sudden, a frigid December gust of icy, cold wind blew from my hallway. My fireplace extinguished immediately, along with every candle, lantern, and light in the room and hall. The room filled with pale blue light as an eerie, long figure loomed in my doorway.
A lingering, dark silhouette of a woman. Her face long and full of sorrow. My mouth dried, feeling her sadness pour into me. How did she get past my protective wards? Ghosts never found me within my home. This spirit, this restless ghost. Despite the fear that inched into my body at the cold, dark, and unwelcome intrusion, I opened my mouth to greet her, when she shrieked a loud, piercing cry.
My body trembled as she drifted closer, her hair floating in tendrils like snakes around her head as she spoke. “You have what I want, and you will give it to me.”
Shiloh Solair
With all my muscle and strength, all the biceps built from digging grave plots and hauling coffins, none of it was ever any match for the white witch’s power. What an infuriatingly sexy discovery. I should have been mad, and at first, I was absolutely a little hurt that she would do such a thing, but then as I stood there unable to move, I just thought, goddamn, what a force she was. Lunette was small but mighty, powerful and sure, meek but strong.
I wouldn’t stop chasing after her. No, she’d have to do a lot more than electric shock me into submission to stay away from her. Nothing could do that. Even when I eventually thawed and marched toward her manor to find her—of course, I couldn’t get past the gate. It was as if an invisible wall kept me at bay, and no matter how hard I pushed, I couldn’t penetrate it.
I knew where she’d be going, though, so I’d meet her there.
The graveyard was chilly, and almost all the leaves had fallen from the trees. A few sparse memories fluttered back to mind of my time there. My engrained routine beckoned me to clean up, even the aisles, gather the fallen brush. Every day of my living life had been spent digging, raking, and clearing plots. Something had happened to me, though. Something to make me forget, something to make me die. If only I could recall it. Themoon was almost to its highest point in the sky, yet my swaying, witchy bride was not at Alaric’s grave. Odd, but I was sure she’d arrive.
Instead of bundling leaves, I strolled over to my own grave. The one I’d woken up at and found Lunette. There it was, Shiloh Solair crudely hammered into stone. My headstone wasn’t as reflective and large as Alaric Benjamin Lonesome’s. His stupid full-page obituary mocked my two sentence one. It wasn’t the mortality confirmation of seeing my name in the dead people section of the paper that startled me, though. Nor did seeing my headstone or even really learning I had died. I mean, it happens to all of us eventually, right? Surely, I wasn’t the first person to not see their untimely end coming.
No, it was the pieces that lie around me like fallen October leaves.
Alaric had died the same day as me. Murdered.
Someone else had died on the same day.
Someone I’d spoken to already.
A ghost.
Wind chilled against my back as I made my way to the willow tree that covered her grave. I brushed dirt off the surface of the rough stone. “Cora Marjorie Devue,” I read aloud. “C.M.D.”
Her ghost hummed behind me, and I turned to meet her. A ghastly, strange looking thing she’d become in death. “That is my name,” she answered, swaying like the willow branches.
“You were Alaric’s mistress, weren’t you? You died the same night he and I did.” Something about her looked more unhinged than the last time I’d seen her. The paleness of her features, the way her arms hung at her sides, and her chin slumped forward. I wasn’t sure if I was technically immortal or what, but everything in me screamed to get away from this ghost. But I couldn’t, not when I was this close to figuring this twisted puzzle out.
“Not mistress,” she hissed in a low echo. “He was mine first.”
“Is that why you’re killing people and covering them in sapphires, Cora? Do you think it’ll bring him back?”
She didn’t answer.
