Ghoul Friend: Medium At Large, #2 2z3641

Ghoul Friend

Meredith Spies

Copyright 2021 by Meredith Spies. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to people, places, or situations, present or past, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

Contents

Author’s Note

Additional Credits

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

16. Epilogue

Comin Soon

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About the Author

Author’s Note

Potential Triggers in this book include mentions of murder, descriptions of death and dying, acts of violence, and ing mentions of homophobia, both internalized and external. While most of these acts occur off-page, many are described and may be triggering for some people.

Additional Credits

Editing and Proofing by Cate Ryan Beta Reading by Kirk Waites with LesCourt Author Services Cover and Promotional Art by Samantha Santana with Amai Designs

Acknowledgments

THANK YOU! Thank you so much to Cate Ryan, who has dragged this into shape and helped make this into something wonderful. And Jennifer Conklin, keep going. I love you frond. And Alec and Spawn: Thank you for laughing at my bad jokes and not laughing at the weird hair. At least not where I could hear you.

Chapter 1

Julian

“C ome on! It’ll be fun!” CeCe said, pushing the razor-thin laptop towards the other side of her desk, where I sat with Ezra and Oscar. “Just look at it.” “I’m having flashbacks to the night I lost my virginity to Devon Crenshaw,” Ezra muttered. Oscar snorted beside me. “If she tells me to ‘just take it,’ I’m leaving.” “That’s more like the night I lost my virginity to Devon Crenshaw,” Oscar sighed. CeCe snorted. I was overcome with a weird, unwelcome pang of envy for something that happened before I even knew Oscar existed. He slid a glance my way and reached out to pat my knee, giving it a little squeeze. “Don’t worry—it wasn’t even as good as it sounds.” “Anyway,” I muttered, warmth suffusing my face as his fingers lingered a moment longer than appropriate considering we were at work, “what are you trying to pressure us into?” “That’s exactly what I said when Devon Crenshaw popped ‘round for some Xbox and said he had an idea,” Ezra whispered loudly. CeCe barely hid her smirk. “Definitely nothing as outré as that. No, I just think it’d be a lot of fun if y’all filmed the road trip.” “Wait, road trip?” I leaned forward. “You know how I feel about road trips, Cec.” She rolled her eyes. “He thinks they’re inefficient and a waste of time and resources. But really, he just gets carsick because he insists on reading while

someone else drives, so the best way to avoid that is make him do the driving.” “It’d be for the best,” Oscar said solemnly, though his eyes crinkled in amusement. “I still try to turn into the wrong lane here.” “Seriously? You’ve been here for months and you still turn in to the wrong—” “He’s fucking with you,” Ezra interrupted my growing disbelief. “He just hates driving.” “It’s boring,” Oscar agreed. “Especially in a new place. I’d much rather be the human Labrador and stick my head out the window to see the new sights.” “And smell the new smells,” Ezra intoned. “Sniff all the butts.” “This just took a turn for the disturbing again,” I muttered, sinking back into my seat. A few months ago, I’d have laughed myself sick if anyone had suggested this would be something I was doing—sitting in my sister’s production office while discussing the filming of a paranormal investigation show I was part of. No, I was a respectable professor of cultural anthropology at a small but progressive college in Louisiana! I was published, I had a growing presence in my field, I… fucked up and had a fling with my head of department’s boyfriend and ended up getting sacked and my name blacklisted across academia and had to get a low-paying job as a substitute teacher at a tony prep school. And got pressured into taking an insanely well-paying gig as the ‘professional skeptic’ on my then brother-in-law’s show when that didn’t pan out. We were only one episode in to the series and it had been an unmitigated disaster, except for one thing. Between the poisonings, the arrests, the attempted murders, I’d managed to become kind of, sort of, involved with (in)famous medium and honest-to-God believer in things that go bump in the night, Oscar Fellowes. I was the Scully to his Mulder, and it was my job to find the real-world explanations. So far, I’d been able to find plausible reasons for almost everything he’d come across. Almost. “Who pissed on your pant leg?” CeCe asked. “Huh? Oh, sorry. Mind was wandering.”

“The way you were staring at Oscar, I kind of figured,” she teased. Beside me, Oscar cleared his throat, his cheeks a little pink. “I was saying that a road trip does sound fun. We’ve never been to Texas, and the concept sounds interesting.” “The concept of Texas?” I asked, making a face. “As a native Texan and longtime resident, I can say that the concept is interesting, but it often lacks in its execution.” “No, you twat.” He laughed, turning the now-open laptop to face me. “We film little vlog episodes between here and Denver.” “I picked out a few routes for y’all,” CeCe added. “Several stops along each at sites of historic interest, most reputed to be haunted, and also some lesser-known locations. Y’all feel free to look up some others if you’d like—I want y’all to be excited about this!” Ezra was beaming at me with a shade of wickedness. “Oh, I bet Julian’s all kinds of excited, aren’t you? He seems the enthusiastic sort!” “Keep it up, and next time we have a horror movie marathon I’m slipping in Veggie Tales.” He made a face. “You monster!” Oscar and CeCe watched us volleying back and forth, and CeCe broke into a huge smile. “This is exactly what we need on the show, y’all. Bring this energy to the next episode! And this,” she tapped the laptop’s screen, “is gonna help. It’s exactly why I want y’all to do this.” “Because you enjoy watching them snark?” Oscar asked, one brow creeping upwards. “I don’t think you need a road trip for that.” CeCe’s smile wavered and she sighed. “Look, here’s the problem. Well, one of them. The channel’s been great about all the changes and has been on board with me taking over with my production company, new as it is. Frankly, I think they feel the morbidly curious will tune in to the first episode as the news about Jacob and Mark’s trials gets out. But they’re worried about the chemistry between you. All of you,” she added. “Julian…” she trailed off.

“Let me guess,” I sighed. “I’m too stiff? Boring?” “Rude,” she muttered. “They don’t like how you’re a bit brittle with Oscar and Ezra. I assured them it was nerves and not, you know, you.” Shame and annoyance washed through me even as Oscar squeezed my knee and said, “I don’t think you’re rude. Well, not to me anyway. Then again, I’m English and have a different perspective on what constitutes rude.” “Don’t get fussy with me, Julian,” CeCe started, but I waved her off. “No, it’s fine. I get it. We need to be a cohesive unit on this, and if people don’t like what they’re seeing, they’ll either hate watch or turn it off. And hate watching only gets you through so many episodes.” Just ask several formerly popular Netflix series how hate-watching turned out for their viewership. CeCe nodded. “Exactly. I mean, I think you get it, but I still don’t trust you. So, consider this a team building exercise to find your groove before we film in Denver, and the vlogs are going to be a great promo tool. Stacia in PR thinks a revival of the whole vlog thing is right around the corner and has an early aughties kind of retro vibe to it.” A sharp knock fell on her door and CeCe smiled. “Harrison! Come on in!” Harrison Temple, who I’d jokingly called her pet lawyer over the past several years, was actually a junior partner at the firm CeCe had put on retainer shortly after coming into her inheritance. Harrison had stuck to her like glue when the other partners, junior or otherwise, had been dismissive of a young woman with big business ideas and unabashed enthusiasm for life. CeCe often said she was going to hire him away from the firm one day. He always politely demurred, but I was thinking maybe that wouldn’t last much longer. He definitely had a spark for Ezra, and Ezra seemed rather taken with him as well. Harrison took up a perch on the side of CeCe’s desk and gave Ezra a lingering look before clearing his throat and turning his attention to the rest of us. “Nice of you to us,” CeCe said, her lips curving into a smile. Harrison turned a shade of pink I wasn’t aware was in his repertoire, the blush at odds with his professional appearance. “What’ve you got?”

“All of the contracts and paperwork are in place for the shoot in Denver. I have some standard non-disclosure agreement forms for y’all to take on your road trip should you need them, and an official business credit card for necessities.” He paused, then added, “You’re all adults so I don’t think I need to give you the this is what a necessity is and is not speech, do I?” Oscar turned on the innocent charm. “I don’t know. I think maybe Ezra might have some needs that require a thorough explanation.” Ezra’s two-finger salute as he sank down in his chair made Oscar cackle. Harrison’s blush turned a concerning shade of red as he shuffled through the papers in his hand. “Well. Yes. Okay then. In the meantime, er. I do need to speak with Ezra, if you have a moment? You’re still running point for you and Oscar in of PR, correct?” Ezra straightened, all business now. “Yep. What’s up?” Harrison stood and motioned for Ezra to follow him. “Just a few things we need to clear up and have in place regarding the move from YouTube to UnReality.” CeCe managed not to do a little happy dance until they were both out of the room. “I knew it,” she whisper-shouted. “I bet they’re hooking up by the time y’all are done in Denver!” Oscar shrugged. “Maybe, but Ezra’s not one to jump in feet-first. He’s…” he trailed off. “Well. Ezra is Ezra, and that’s his business.” He darted me a glance. “Do you need us any longer today, CeCe?” She sat back in her chair and looked between us, her expression slipping back into serious business mode. “It’s not my business but I have to ask. You two gonna be okay with everything going on? I know, when we got back from New York, y’all were starting a thing but I wanted to be sure y’all were cool and we’re not gonna have any drama.” My face heated. Fucking Rey was going to haunt me forever, I thought bitterly. “CeCe—” “Nothing to do with Rey,” she said. Tapping her temple, she added, “Twin telepathy, brother mine.”

“Or maybe I’m just predictable.” “Bit of both. But no, I just want to be sure we’re not going to have some massive fall out to cover, or the need to spin some awkward break up vibes into some narrative arc for the show so people won’t ask questions about why two of the stars are trying to avoid one another.” She pierced us with her direct, stern gaze. “So. Are you cool?” Oscar shifted uncomfortably beside me, his velvet pants dragging on the velvet fabric of CeCe’s office chairs and sounding incredibly loud in the quiet room. “As you said, it’s not your business. I understand why you feel you had to ask. Not only is Julian your brother but this,” he waved a finger around to take in not just her office but the entire enterprise we were involved in now, “is your reputation. Our reputation. And no matter what happens between Julian and I, we’re professionals. And we’re not going to ruin your show.”

“So… her show?” I asked as the elevator creaked its way up to the third floor of the extended stay motel we’d taken rooms at. The sweltering heat of a Houston summer had managed to infiltrate even this far into the building, past the blasting AC, to settle into the un-air-conditioned elevator shaft and make us both sweat as we regretted our choice to skip the nerve-wracking concrete steps up to the rooms. “She was in boss mode,” he muttered. “She’s scary when she’s in boss mode.” I snorted. “Yeah, she’s had that mode since we were kids. I have stick up the ass mode, she has boss mode.” Oscar grinned softly, bumping me with his shoulder as the elevator finally shuddered to a halt on our floor. “Speaking up things up your arse…” “Oh my god!” I smacked at his arm as the doors slid open with surprising speed. “I’m sorry,” he laughed, throwing his hands up. “The heat’s ruined me! I used to be suave and charming and now listen to me!” We were walking towards my room, I noticed. The suite he shared with Ezra was at the other end of the corridor. Ezra had stayed behind ostensibly to go over paperwork with Harrison, meaning we had an hour or two before he returned and wanted to go to dinner or hang out. Ezra, bless his heart, was sometimes like the little brother I never wanted. But he and Oscar were a set, and if I wanted Oscar in my life, Ezra was a given. And, damn it, I was getting to rather like the guy. “So… And I feel like a damned teenager asking this, but do you want to come in and watch a movie or something?” “Or something,” Oscar agreed. I slid the key card to my door and as soon as the light turned green, we were inside. He had his hands on me, sliding up the back of my neck to pull me into a kiss as we kicked off shoes and I struggled to toe off my socks. Oscar laughed into my mouth and pulled away so I could divest myself of the damned things while he—far more gracefully—tugged his own off and tucked them neatly into his shoes by the door. The hotel room wasn’t very

large, just a sitting area big enough for a squishy chair and a low wall that blocked off a small, euphemistically termed kitchen with a tiny fridge and a microwave that had such low wattage I was pretty sure it was in the negative digits. But the bed was very big and soft and was easy to find without much effort while kissing Oscar, both of us drawn together the moment we’d thrown our sweaty shirts aside. “Why do you always wear an undershirt in this weather?” I asked between kisses. “Aren’t you dying?” “Can we talk about my sartorial elegance later? Right now, I’m more focused on getting the clothes off than the choices that led them to be on our bodies.” His fingers plucked at the button on my tros and I helped, pulling him down on top of me as we got to the bed. I wiggled out of the damn things while he did some complicated maneuvering to rid himself of the tight, velvet stovepipe tros he’d been wearing. “Okay, so maybe I’ll cut back on the velvet until fall.” He didn’t give me a moment for a reder, swooping in for another kiss as our sweaty bodies moved together on the bed. “Can I?” he asked when we came up for air again. His fingers moved down my side, barely enough pressure to be felt, and he reached my hip. “If you’d rather not, it’s fine,” he added. “But I’d really like to fuck you, be inside you this time.” My breath shuddered out in a rattling gasp. “Please. Yes, yes, I want that.” We’d had sex—quite a bit and quite good, actually—since Bettina, but between having privacy issues and both of us trying to find our footing with the other, we hadn’t made it past the hesitant stage into I know what you like and can read your body language well enough to just go for it stage. It took a few minutes to find what we needed—I had unpacked but couldn’t if I’d put the lube in the bathroom or kept it tucked in one of the drawers, and the condoms seemed to go invisible until Oscar threatened to go out and buy more, then I found them in a drawer we’d already looked in twice. Finally, finally, we were back on the bed. Oscar stretched out beside me, long and pale and smiling like some fantasy come to life, puckish grin and clever fingers teasing me without words. I was achingly hard, and so was he. I closed my eyes and tucked my chin down, pressing my forehead to his as he reached between us to take me in hand and start working me up more. His whispers beneath my chin were unintelligible but still sending tiny sparks of fire spinning

through my veins. When his fingers moved lower, teasing the skin of my sac before dipping behind, finding the cleft of my ass and stroking me there, I breathed his name against his skin. His smile against my throat sent another little thrill of excitement chasing through my tired body. I can do anything, so long as that feeling never goes away, I thought. So long as I could feel Oscar’s smile on my skin, his breath against my ear, I could do anything. “Yes?” he murmured. I shook my head. Words were a jumble, and I found myself wishing we could just express our feelings in images, colors, sensation—the words I wanted hadn’t been invented, or maybe just didn’t exist in languages I knew. It wasn’t love—that was a way’s off, I knew. I’d been ridiculous before Oscar, thinking love came fast and certain. I wanted to be more cautious now. We were new, very new, and enjoying one another while still learning one another. But there was a chance one day… My thoughts spun to a halt as he slipped one lubeslick finger against the tight skin of my hole and pressed gently. “Oh!” “There we go,” he laughed against me. “I knew that’d get you out of whatever thought spiral you’d gone down.” “I wasn’t in a spiral,” I fibbed. He pressed again, and I groaned. “Maybe a tiny one.” He hummed against my throat, and I lost track of everything but how his fingers felt opening me, his mouth on me laving and nipping, the sound of his ragged breath in my ear as I moved onto my back and he moved with me, pushing between my spread legs as I opened for him. Oscar loomed over me, all angles and open ecstasy as he slipped the condom over his erection and started to press into me. He threw his head back and sighed as he slid past the tight ring of muscle, and finally, after what felt like too long and not long enough, he was pressed all the way against me, fully buried inside me. I had to close my eyes, not look at him for a moment because he was too beautiful, too intense in the way he looked down at me. I couldn’t hold still when he moved inside me. Wrapping my legs around his back, I braced my hands against the headboard and met him thrust for thrust, sparing a vague thought for whoever was on the other side of the wall and hoping they weren’t in the room yet. He leaned down and kissed me—kissing

seemed to be one of his most favorite things to do when we were alone—and the pressure of his body against my leaking cock was almost too much. “Fuck,” I gasped, “gonna come if you don’t move.” He grinned at me, changing his rhythm just enough so his sweat-damp belly rubbed against my cock, sending hot white shocks of pleasure to pool in my spine before spreading through my hips, tightening low in my body until the pressure was past the point of stopping. “God, Oscar!” I whisper-shouted, unable to catch my breath enough for a good groan. He hissed yes, yes, yes in my ear, pounding into me as I jerked and arched beneath him, tightening my legs around him until my hips ached from it. He went still for a heartbeat, then gasped sharp and high, something that sounded like my name. The heat of his release filled the condom inside me and making me want to go again, at least in spirit. The flesh was considerably weaker at my age than it had been at seventeen.

“Why are you looking so introspective?” I murmured against his shoulder. We’d cleaned up, ordered Chinese, and were sprawled on the bed under the pretense of watching a movie, but I don’t think either of us could name a single plot point in whatever show was on the television. “Just tired,” he said. He hesitated, then rolled onto his side to face me. “Can I tell you something?” “Um…” “Oh! No, no, no! It’s nothing bad. I mean, did you think it was bad? , I mean. It might be bad for me, but I can’t be sure yet because I don’t know what’s happening!” Cupping his face in my hand, I pressed my thumb to his lips to stop the flow of words. “Is it something to do with your visa? The show? Are you sick?” I shook my head. “I can’t think of anything else that would be bad unless you mean us and… and I’m kinda hoping you weren’t just being nice right now when you said it wasn’t.” Because, fuck me, we were just starting to figure us out. Relationships, being part of an us that went beyond sneaky, hot hook ups and late-night texts, were foreign territory for me, and the fact I had no idea if it was for him, too, gave me pause. And I wanted a chance for it to work. And I needed to sort my shit out to figure out how that would happen. But if Oscar wasn’t ready for that… He turned his head enough to move my thumb and smiled at me, a tiny and thin smile that was almost sad. “It’s not us. Or the show. Well. Maybe the show, but in a roundabout way. It’s just…” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, like whatever he was about to say was overwhelming. “You’re scaring me a little,” I whispered. “Tell me and maybe I can help you.” “You definitely cannot.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Okay. So. Since we returned from Bettina, I’ve been having problems with my, er, performance.” I glanced down between us. We’d cleaned up, but traces of stickiness still marred the hair on my stomach, and I knew if I reached for him again, he’d be more than happy to give it the old college try. “Um…” I gestured at my sticky skin. “I

don’t think you have a problem but if you mean like on an emotional level or—” “Not that performance! I mean, you haven’t complained, anyway!” “And trust me, there’s nothing to complain about!” “Good.” “Good.” I nodded. Then, “So…” “So,” he mimicked, drawing the word out. His fingers moved delicately across my chest and then down, but aimlessly. He didn’t head for my cock as I half-way expected but seemed to just be idly fidgeting, trying to distract me maybe or himself. “Since Bettina, I’ve been… It’s been hard to do what I do.” I captured his hand in mine, slipping my fingers through his to still his meandering touch. “How so?” Oscar sighed, gently shaking me off so he could roll onto his back, covering his face with his hands. “Since Bettina… I’ve been wondering if perhaps I did something wrong there, if I maybe angered someone, somehow. There’s… there’s a lot about my abilities I don’t know,” He itted quietly. “Why do I have it? How does it work, really? My grandmother is the one who taught me everything, but she was never very open about who had taught her. I never learned about our history beyond the family line, that we were stronger than the others who were able to spirits, but I don’t know why that is. It’s been bothering me, and I think it’s affecting me in ways that are detrimental to my abilities. And I feel like that’s something I should know, that maybe if I just understood how it worked, I wouldn’t be in this particular spot right now.” He glanced over at me between his parted fingers and offered a tiny smile. “I mean as medium-wise, not this spot as in your bed.” I waited. Oscar watched me, gimlet-eyed, and, after a long, tight moment, relaxed on an exhale. “I don’t know how to talk about this with you,” he itted. “I’ll keep an open mind.” The look he shot me stung. Badly. “Seriously! I’m not going to mock you or something!” I rolled onto my side and tugged his hands down. He resisted at first, then relaxed and turned towards me, weaving our fingers together again. “I’ll try,” I promised. “It’s all I can do, okay? Try. Try to

learn, try to understand. And I care about you, Oscar. A terrifying amount—” “Um, thanks? I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not.” “It’s a ham-fisted one,” I sighed. “But I care, and I’m not here to make you feel like shit, okay, or push you into talking about something. I respect you. I trust you.” I bit down on the urge to ask him if he trusted me, too. Instead, I said, “And I want you to know that I’ll give you a space place to vent, okay? God knows I bitch all the time, and I don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk to me about things that are bothering you.” I held my breath for a moment then said on the rushed exhale, “Even if that thing is me.” “It’s not you,” he muttered. “So, get over yourself there, mate.” He winked at me before casting his gaze down towards our bare feet, slipping one of his between my bare calves. “Then what is it?” “What happened to not pushing?” he grumbled. Then, like ripping off a bandage, he said, “So, it’s getting more difficult for me to spirits. Oscar flung his arm over his eyes, hiding. “It’s been getting worse since we got back, but lately, it’s… it’s almost impossible. It’s like something is smothering me, blocking the communications.” He snorted, adding, “Ezra said it’s like my Wi-Fi is out.” “Oh.” Oscar opened his eyes and peered at me curiously. “I thought it was something horrible like you were going back to England, or you were into dinosaur porn or something.” “One, no kink shaming, mister. Two…” he shifted to put a few more inches of space between us and I felt the change push into the gap. I’d fucked up. “Two,” he continued, “this is potentially horrible. I don’t know why it’s happening, Julian. This is part of me. A huge part of me. And blowing it off—” “I’m sorry,” I said, reaching for him again. “I’m sorry I said that. It was a dick thing to say and I’m learning. I’m trying to learn how to walk in your world.

And you don’t have to forgive me, but I am sorry. I don’t understand how this works for you and—” “And you don’t need to,” he said flatly. “You just need to know it does and there’s something wrong. I just… I want you to care, Julian.” Ow. I gathered him in and, after a moment of resistance where I started to let go, he melted into me. “I’m sorry,” I muttered against his hair. “I’m sorry I said that, and I’m sorry you’re having to deal with something awful. I wish I could understand it, but until I do, I’ll try harder to not be a giant, flaming, dick sore about it.” Oscar was shaking and, for a moment, I thought he was crying until a small giggle escaped. “Giant, flaming, dick sore?” “Douche bag is overused,” I protested. “Oh, ew!” “Oh my god…” We laughed at one another, with one another, and ended up sleepily fucking one more time before, after half-hearted excuses about getting back to his own room and trying to navigate things slowly between us, we both fell asleep. It felt like just a few minutes, but it was hours later when I woke up to Oscar slipping out of the suite and closing the door softly behind him.

Chapter 2

Oscar

The thing you don’t realize about Texas is, it’s big. Empirically, most people realize this with just a glance at a map of the States, but you don’t really wrap your head around how big it is until you’re seven hours into a multi-day road trip and you’re still in the state with no signs of getting out. The place was positively Sartre-esque in that respect. When we’d left Houston in the very wee and dim hours of the morning, Julian had assured us it ‘wasn’t that far’ to our first proposed stop, a place CeCe had been practically salivating over called Woman Hollering Creek. “C’mon, Julian, I can see your need to be pedantic simmering just below the surface. You love this kind of thing—connections to folklore, lots of dubious experiences to pick apart…” Julian had rolled his eyes but seemed a teeny, tiny bit less bitchy about the road trip than he had in the days leading up to our departure. He’d even spent the first hour of the drive regaling us—well, me, since Ezra had zonked back out as soon as we hit the freeway—with stories about The Weeping Woman or La Llorona, a folktale that was quite well known in parts of Texas but had some international notoriety as well. He’d taken pains to assure me the haunting was, patently, very not real. “They’ve had all sorts of people out to investigate it over the years, from those jerks who like to shout and call everything demons to actual, legitimate researchers looking to determine the possible causes of phenomena around the site. It’s something to do with the acoustics of the bridge and the water rushing over stones.” He shrugged as we sped westward, a heat-hazy but beautiful, marigold and rose sunrise streaking the sky behind us. Allegedly, the first stop was about three hours from our starting point (our extended stay hotel back in Sugarland, a suburb of Houston), but Julian had somehow managed to turn it into an all-day affair. We’d stopped at a few sites of historic interest where Ezra had a grand time filming himself pretending to fire a decrepit canon on an

old battlefield that I just knew had to be humming with spirit activity but felt as inert and lifeless as cardboard to me. Julian had shot me worried glances the entire time. And again, when we pulled off the main road to grab lunch at a tiny cafe that was housed in a building that used to be a bank and had allegedly been the site of some Wild West style shenanigans in the 1800s. The hostess who seated us had gone on at length about the lady on the stairs and the crying child at the old well out back and we did our due diligence, making the appropriate noises when the owner of the place regaled us with the (obviously, lovingly) embellished tales, posing for pictures when they found out we were paranormal investigators. But when I politely demurred from holding a séance, Julian shot me a sideways glance that made guilt twinge in my belly. I had no reason to feel guilty—whatever was happening, I didn’t seem to have control over it. Or did I? The fact I didn’t know made my already aching head want to just split open and let all the frustration spill out. By the time we got away from the charming, most likely very haunted, cafe and were back en route to Woman Hollering Creek, it had been the better part of our first day of the trip. We were nowhere near where CeCe had planned for us to be on her detailed itinerary and, in fact, it looked like Julian had decided to take us on a scenic tour of slightly unsettling back roads of rural Texas. “GPS said there was a bad pile up on the freeway heading towards San Antonio,” he explained when Ezra woke from his nap and asked where the Hell we were. “I’m trying this back route, but I think whatever satellite the GPS is using is trying to get us killed.” The sun was creeping downwards and, while it was still painfully bright out, it was making the shadows stretch long and menacing across the road when we ed thick stands of trees. We ed what looked to be a burned-out house and a half-collapsed barn before the road took a sudden, graduated curve and spilled us out into a long stretch of farmland that looked like the opening scenes of a horror movie. “I think I’ve seen this one before,” Julian muttered as the car started to shudder and jerk. “Shit!” The car gave a loud, squealing sound and started to shake, a roaring sound coming from beneath us. “God damn it!” Julian jerked us over to

the shoulder, the car giving one last, long death rattle as he turned it off and yanked the key out of the ignition. For several moments, we sat in silence, the ticking sound of cooling metal overlaid with the roar of what Julian had assured us were mostly harmless (‘unless you’re a plant’) cicadas. “Is this the part of the movie where we get eaten by the reclusive farm folk whose family tree doesn’t fork and who have an entire armoire full of skin suits?” Ezra asked from the back seat. The silence pressing in on us from all sides was heavy and thick, making my ears ache with it. The sun hadn’t completely set yet, but it was a near thing. In less than an hour, we’d be on a dark asphalt road in very rural Texas, surrounded by fields and possibly cannibal farmers. Julian shook his head. “No, that’s in act two. We’re still in act one. This is the part where we find ourselves in a bit of a pickle and, with plucky determination, head out into the darkness to find help, sure of ourselves and dismissive of any weird sounds and sights we might see.” Ezra nodded slowly. “Right, right. You chaps want to draw straws now to see who gets to be the survivor, or should we just let this happen organically?” I closed my eyes and let my head fall back against the headrest. “I regret encouraging the two of you to bond.” Julian’s smirk was clear in his voice. “Do you regret it enough to say, Julian, you were right. We should’ve just flown to Colorado?” My expression had become mulish, and I flushed with the awkwardness of it. And I knew I looked childish, the way my chin jutted out, and I tilted my nose up. But it could not be helped. I was forever cursed with one of those faces that would look younger than my years—though if I was like Granmere, I’d look youthful until I hit my fifties then, much like Dorian Gray but with far less pathos, the years would crash down all at once and I’d look every second of my age. In the meantime, alas, I was fated to look like a sulking child any time I had a negative emotion cross my features. “I’m taking that as a no,” Julian sighed. He gave the key another turn in the ignition, and we held our breaths as the engine made a whining, choking sound,

exhaling only when it failed to catch. “Shit. Okay, one of you bring your phone out so you can shine a light while I check under the hood.” Ezra shot me a look over his shoulder, eyebrows arched nearly to his hairline as Julian popped the hood and got out of the car. “Does he have any sort of mechanical aptitude?” Ezra whispered. “At all?” I thought about it. “I did see him get the coffee maker to work with the application of a well-placed smack to the casing.” Ezra nodded. “Right. Well, in that case, you go hold the light, I’m going to go ‘round to the boot and wait for the zombies to come eat me first and put me out of my impending misery.” We both jumped at the sound of Julian shoving the bonnet up, the creak and pop of the metal preternaturally loud in the rural quiet evening. “I promise I’ll slow the zombies down by being very filling.” “What happened to hoping to be the sole survivor?” I asked, as we got out of the car. “Why the sudden interest in being eaten by the shambling dead?” Ezra followed me to the front end of the car, apparently giving up on his proposed career path and choosing to live un-gnawed upon. “If nothing else,” Ezra replied, “I’ll come back and haunt you so you can always have a ghost to talk to for the show, just in case a location doesn’t pan out.” “Oh, that would be great!” I enthused, turning my phone’s torch app on and holding it over Julian’s shoulder to illuminate the engine compartment, or whatever that space under the bonnet is called. Engine compartment felt right. “This is the engine compartment?” I confirmed. Julian made a noncommittal noise and started wiggling wires and frowning at something that looked like an oil-stained accordion. Ezra crowded close beside me. “Maybe we should get a professional ghost. I mean, if we all survive this remake of The Hills Have Eyes.” “More like Jeepers Creepers,” Julian muttered, waving one hand vaguely toward a dark shape far across the field next to us. “That farmhouse looks almost just like the one from the movie.” I stared hard at the vaguely house-shaped mass, a black hulk against the deepening purple of the sky. I thought I saw something move between us and the

old house, but I didn’t feel anything. No spirits were whispering to me, no curious specters drifting about, hoping to get my attention. Fuck. I’d been hoping for something, like maybe it was just an aberration back in Houston. Some sort of blockage because of my inner twisty feelings over Julian. It felt wrong. There was usually at least a little something in most places, even areas you’d think had never had a death or even human habitation. Humans have been mucking about far longer than most of us consciously realize, and even the most ‘untouched’ places have been, frankly, touched by our grubby little hands over the centuries. An old growth forest with no signs of trails was once a thoroughfare for Paleolithic ancestors. A swath of scorching desert with only cacti and lizards for company once had a thriving community tucked away, well aware how to survive in the potentially lethal environment. I’d once encountered a very startled, very confused woman from some time before the Romans visited Britain whilst on a walk in Hatfield Forest—the oldest forest in England—with Grandmere when I was a pre-teen. The poor old dear (er, the ancient lady, not Granmere) had stared at me with no small amount of fear and horror. I could only imagine how odd I looked to her, and what she had been thinking she was doing with her day. It was the first time I’d really thought about sentient haunts, and what it must be like to just exist for so long without acknowledgment, without being in the world they’d known. It was one of the first things to make me think of helping the dead rather than simply communicating with them. And it was when I first realized everywhere—everywhere—had spirits. Well, almost everywhere, I thought as I stared out across the field, towards the farmhouse. I wasn’t even getting a whisper of a disgruntled cow long turned into dinner. “Alright?” Ezra muttered. “You look concerned. Something I need to worry about?” “No,” I said. “Just feeling a bit off. Must be the long drive.” Julian made a noise close to a growl, still fiddling with wires and belts in the engine compartment. “You know what’s faster than driving?”

“If you mean driving in this car specifically, I’d have to say pretty much anything is faster,” I sighed. “Find the problem yet?” Julian nodded, stepping back to shut the bonnet once he was sure our hands were clear. “The problem is, I know absolute dick about cars,” he informed us. “So, hopefully some of the wire-wiggling did something. Otherwise, we’re going to wear out our shoe leather walking back towards the interstate.” He offered me a wry, apologetic smile. “My skill set is distinctly non-mechanical unless it is specific pieces of lab equipment or my old Nintendo. And to be completely honest, most of that involved just blowing into the cartridges and smacking the side of the damn thing whenever Mario froze mid-jump. So, hopefully some of the attempted car repair did something. Otherwise, we’re going to end up taking the walking tour of the Texas hill country.” He glared down at the bonnet as if the car had singled him out for this egregious offense. “Shit, I lost the light,” Ezra muttered. “What?” he asked as Julian shifted his death ray glare on to the camera in Ezra’s hand. “CeCe wanted some footage for the B-roll.” “You never used to say things like B-roll,” I teased, heading back to the enger side door. “You’ve gone all Hollywood on me, Ez.” “I’m getting paid ridiculous money to say things like B-roll now,” he shot back primly. “We’re recording our road trip for the show, and this is part of it.” He turned the camera back to Julian. “Jules darling, tell us what’s going on.” “Something physically inadvisable yet entirely possible is about to go on with that phone and one of your orifices if you don’t stop filming me.” Ezra snorted. “Sure, Jan.” He panned the camera across the empty field, pausing when he reached me. “Oscar, anything to report?” “I think I’ve got a bug bite on my bum,” I offered cheerfully. “Most likely a mosquito.” He turned the camera to face himself. “There we have it. One day into our road trip westward and we have a car on life , a crotchety professor, and one Englishman with a sore bum, though not for reasons he’d prefer. Oh, and we’re going to be eaten by a cannibal family and our skin turned into masks, so we’ve got that going for us.”

Julian muttered something under his breath that I’m sure had to do with the legitimacy of Ezra’s birth before striding to the driver’s side door. “Cross your fingers and pray to whoever you pray to that the car starts. There’s a Walmart up the road a ways, if I the map correctly. If we can make it that far we’ll likely be able to at least get a tow somewhere or, more likely, be able to leave the car in a well-lit lot overnight while we…” he trailed off, looking around the empty road and wide, shadowy fields despondently. “Sleep in the home furnishings, I guess.” “I can see why you like him so much,” Ezra muttered. “Regular ray of sunshine.” I knocked on the roof of the car to get Julian’s attention as Ezra ducked into the back seat, turning the camera so he could do one of his vlog entries. Julian glanced up at me and I could tell, without him even saying a word, that he wanted to take the camera from Ezra and accidentally-on-purpose lose it somehow. Maybe a tragic soybean field accident. Instead, he took a deep breath and pointedly turned his face away from the camera’s field of view, shifting as Ezra did. He still hadn’t made peace with this fresh path in his life—I didn’t have to ask to know. He’d been more amenable with CeCe than he had been with Jacob, and we’d so far managed to avoid a lot of the media inquiries about our part in what happened in Bettina a few months before. But it wouldn’t be long, and we all knew it. Soon we’d have to answer questions for some website or an entertainment show. The show was scheduled to air in a few weeks and was already being hyped on UnReality’s social media. The only thing that had stopped them from using the entire horrible incident in New York was a few sheets of paper from the New York state attorney’s office and some stern words from Harrison. There were all sorts of ways around them and the media sorts would be working on them diligently. Julian, though… I worried. I worried a lot. Ezra and I had stayed at his tiny apartment outside of Baton Rouge for a few weeks after Bettina, while we got sorted out. CeCe and Harrison worked on the visa situation for Ezra and me. In the meantime, we’d been tentatively poking at whatever this relationship between us was trying to become. The sex had been amazing—limited, thanks to a lack of privacy, but amazing nonetheless. But outside of that? We’d been

cautious. Julian had lost his previous job due to a fling and didn’t want to become known as the guy who shagged his coworkers, and both of us were hesitant to rush into something without knowing one another first. I mean, we knew one another but we didn’t know one another. It was like we were both too afraid to push, too worried that we were chalk and cheese to make inroads into finding out if what we both felt was something sustainable. I’d hoped maybe the road trip would be a bit of a chance to spend time together without being ‘on’ for work, maybe a bit of forced proximity to make us take off the kid gloves. So far though, it’d been seven hours of traffic, awkward rest stops, and arguing over music with Ezra or podcasts with Julian. The car trouble had been the cherry on top of a stressful day. Ezra wandered off a few feet, aiming the camera towards the dark lump of the apparently abandoned house across the field, talking about the scenery and how different it was from where we lived in England, really layering on the accent because it was, in his words, what the fans wanted. I seized the moment to talk to Julian. “I know it’s ridiculous to ask if you’re okay, but… you okay?” He closed his eyes for a moment, a tiny smile tugging at one corner of his lips. “Is yes, but no, but yes an answer?” I nodded. “Not a coherent one, but it is a response to a question, therefore it is an answer.” His smile grew just a bit, still small but definitely there. “It’s been a very strange year for me so far,” he itted. “And I’m not entirely sure how to feel about anything.” “Well,” I leaned against the side of the car, hesitant to rest my arms on the roof because I was pretty sure birds had been using it for target practice. “How do you feel about the next episode we’re supposed to film?” He opened his eyes, nose wrinkling and smile twisting into a moue of consideration. “It sounds like a classic ghost story, really. Haunted lodge in the wilderness, a gray lady on the stairs…” he shrugged. “I’ve read a hundred variations over the years. I suppose they’re classics for a reason, though.”

I hummed under my breath, a tiny part of me excited that he’d been giving the episode’s premise so much thought. “You think it’s too basic?” Honestly, I could do with basic. The location was an old ski lodge, one of the first in the state, and before that it had been some mining baron’s stately home. It had become a sort of locally famous ‘weird old house’ situation, the bread and butter of paranormal investigators, really. They just hadn’t expected the former owner’s wife and a few guests to still be in residence. Really, it looked to be a fairly basic haunting, in as far as these things went and I was looking forward to that. Something simple and easy. Something I could hopefully stretch my abilities back into shape with. I couldn’t begin count the number of times we’d met with lady-on-the-stairs type ghosts. Ezra tried to total it up once but lost count in the mid-twenties. Apparently, back home, the ghosts of ladies hang out on stairs quite a bit. I thought of suggesting to Julian that he write a paper about it—Common Hauntings and their Cultural Significance—but I wasn’t sure if we were at that place in our relationship yet. “Are you concerned about that? Whether or not an alleged haunting is too basic? I thought you were supposed to help any and all spirits that came your way.” “That’s… a gross oversimplification of what I do.” That tiny spark of excitement was smothered efficiently and ruthlessly with his words. “I think it sounds interesting, and if there is indeed a classic repeating haunt, I’d love to find out why and if the owners of the lodge would like her disrupted. If the ghost is intelligent and aware of her ing, then…” I shrugged. “We go from there. It doesn’t matter to me if the story’s been told a million times by a million people.” It was a soft and fragile thing, this tentative peace Julian was making with what I —what we, now I suppose—did. He still didn’t believe in ghosts, but he was less abrasive about it, at least so far. We’d yet to film another episode so that might change in front of cameras, but he’d at least stopped rolling his eyes whenever I mentioned a haunting, or when I excused myself to try and make with a spirit I was certain was nearby. Julian sucked on his lower lip thoughtfully, turning the full force of his gaze on me. Ezra’s voice drifted on a light, warm breeze, nearly swallowed under the rattling noise of what sounded like a thousand angry, giant crickets. Julian and I were in our own small bubble of time as quiet settled between us, that

thoughtful, intense stare pinning me in place, quieting whatever I might say for that moment. It was an odd mix of trepidation and affection, the urge to preen under his regard mingling with my knee-jerk reaction to turn into a hedgehog and go quills-out in pre-emptive self-defense. “What are your personal ethics when it comes to a ghost who doesn’t want to move on? What do you do then?” I blinked. That was unexpected. Hedgehog it is, then. “I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that. Most people want Granny to go to the light. And I’ve never had a spirit refuse help crossing over. The ones that crossed seemed relieved.” For the most part anyway, but I held that last bit to myself. Sometimes, I wondered, especially when it came to the less aware ghosts, if they truly wanted to move on from what they knew. I wondered, too, what they were moving on to. It always surprised people when they found out I had no idea what came next. I had a few theories but none of them were concrete and, to be honest, I was a bit of a skeptic in that arena myself. Who was to say it was some paradise over there? Or that whatever was across the veil was anything more than some sort of vast expanse of nothing where we’d all just float around in some unaware and muted bliss until… until something else. I glanced back at Julian to find he was staring off into the darkness where the dark smudge of a house was being swallowed in the dusk. “Hm. Do you supposedly help all of them cross over? I know what’s been on your web series, but those aren’t the only hauntings you’ve investigated before now. In all of those investigations, in all of your séances or whatever you call them, have you ever had a ghost refuse to move on, or do you help all of them along?” He finally looked back at me, a strange and almost flat expression on his face, like he was bored or disgusted and trying to hide it. “Do you force them out, in theory?” I stiffened. “Julian, what are you trying to get at here? Are you asking if I’m… what? Abusing ghosts or something?” He stared at me a long moment and slowly seemed to relax. It wasn’t anything as overt as a change of posture or even a smile. He just… became more like himself. “Sorry, my mind was wandering,” he muttered, looking away again, turning his attention back to the open bonnet. “I… It’s been a long, weird day.” He glanced back over his shoulder at Ezra, still rambling for the vlog or B-roll or whatever he was doing and sighed. “I’m gonna walk down the road a bit, see if I can get a signal or something, call CeCe and see if she can get AAA out here.”

He turned and called out to Ezra, and I felt summarily dismissed. A cold, greasy feeling shivered its way down my spine and settled in my belly. What the fuck was that?

“You okay?” Ezra hefted himself up onto the boot beside me, nudging me a bit too hard with his elbow and sending me tipping sideways. “I was until you tried to break my ribs,” I muttered, rubbing at my side. “Ow.” Ezra rolled his eyes. “Ah, yes, feel the wrath of my boney elbow. Fear me. Fear me,” he deadpanned. I elbowed him back, and we both pulled mean faces at one another before he slung his arm over my shoulder and pulled me closer. “I’m fine,” I protested. “Bullshit.” “It kind of is, yeah,” I sighed, resting my head on his shoulder. “It’s just been a lot lately.” “I feel like that’s partially my fault,” he itted. “If I hadn’t pushed about the show, we never would’ve been involved with that mess in New York and—” “And maybe those spirits would still be waiting to be heard. Or, worse, they’d be heard by fucking Mark Thomas.” Ezra made a cat-hiss sound and I giggled, unable to stop myself. “I’m just being maudlin,” I sighed. Glancing behind us, I saw Julian a ways down the road, staring off towards that hulk of a dilapidated house. I couldn’t tell if he was on the phone or not, but he was standing very still so he was either mesmerized or, hopefully, had gotten in touch with CeCe. “Come on, let’s do some of this B-roll stuff while we wait,” I said. “It’ll keep our minds off the cannibal farmers.” “Speak for yourself,” Ezra muttered, following the direction of my gaze. “You guys okay? You’ve been kind of,” he made a side-to-side motion with one hand, “for the past few weeks.” “We’re fine,” I said, smiling thinly. “Just finding our footing.” Ezra gave me a considering look before sliding off the boot and fishing his phone from his pocket. “Just mind you don’t slip.”

“What the hell does that even mean?” I asked, following him as he trudged towards the edge of the brittle-brown field. “Are you trying to be philosophical?” He sniffed, turning to face me with the camera at the ready. “‘Now my charms are all o’er thrown,’” he quoted loftily, throwing Shakespeare at me in the middle of simmering to death in our own juices. “Now, tell me, Oscar Fellowes, what’s your favorite kind of ghost?” “What the hell kind of question is that?”

Chapter 3

Julian

The thing people forget about Texas, it kind of sucks. It’s okay—I’m from Texas, so I’m allowed to say that. And I’m not just talking about politics. I mean, specifically, the weather. There is lots to love about my home state, but it was hard to as I experienced some sort of radiation criticality event on my walk to find some cell signal. Barely a hundred feet from the car and I already wanted to die a little. Late afternoon sun baked me in my skin, the day’s heat rising from the sharp-smelling asphalt road doing a damn fine job of making sure I got blisters even through the soles of my shoes. Oscar and Ezra, when I glanced back, were filming something for CeCe’s vlog, gesturing expansively at the farmland behind them. I wasn’t entirely sure, but I thought Ezra might have been mooing. I tromped another several yards, checking the bars on my phone and finding a flicker of one more bar just at the edge of a drainage ditch. I stood still, looking like an absolute jackass as I lifted my phone and lowered it, held it far out to one side, then up close to my face, chasing the elusive signal. “Son, what the Hell are you doing?” I nearly shouted, managing to swallow the sound just in time as I spun to face the man who’d managed to come up behind me. On a fucking horse. Because Texas. The man, wearing a dusty canvas coat and a battered hat, peered down at me from the back of his paint. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just trying to get a signal so I can call AAA for a tow. Our car…” I gestured back at the obviously immobile car,

and Ezra and Oscar who were now doing some strange dance for the camera. Ezra looked like he was being electrocuted, but Oscar’s movements had an odd formality to them, almost delicate. Or maybe it was the whole embroidered vest and lawn shirt thing he had going on, making him look like he was going to a fancy-dress event. The man grunted. “Not many folks come through town this way,” he remarked, leaning down across the horse’s neck to peer at me. “Y’all looking for something in particular?” “Er, no?” I took a step back, feeling suddenly too close. “We’re on a road trip on our way to a, um, job site. We were heading down scenic roads since they’re new to the area and I wanted to show them some…” I gestured at the brown, dry fields. “Wildflowers and such.” The man snorted and sat back upright. “Well, y’all would do best to stop in up the road for help. There’s a house about half a mile that way,” he pointed towards a slight curve in the road, where a small copse of trees blocked the view of what was beyond. “Might be able to use their phone.” He looked back towards Ezra and Oscar and made a thoughtful sound. “They’re… they’re bright, aren’t they? So bright.” They were done dancing and now Ezra was definitely mooing. “Brighter than you’d think,” I said, edging back again. Something about the man was unsettling but I couldn’t put my finger on just what it was. I wanted to run away, put as much distance between us as possible. Instead, I forced myself to stand still and scolded that niggling back-brain voice for being a jerk. He’s got to live out here. It’s not like he teleported in on a horse. Christ, Julian, get it together. “Not what I meant, but good to know,” he chuckled dryly. “Now go on up the road a bit. There’s a drive there. Old house, real nice. Go on now. Get off the road before dark. Wouldn’t want an accident to happen because someone didn’t know you were there.” He turned his horse, and they started walking across the field, back towards the copse of trees. The buzz of my phone startled me, and I nearly dropped it—it suddenly had full signal and a ton of emails and texts flew into my inbox, filling it up faster than I could read the notifications. Three texts were from Harrison, giving me a head’s up that Jacob’s team was definitely going to subpoena me and probably Oscar

and Ezra too by the end of the month. Fun. Several texts from my mother, a few from old work friends, one from Rey which I deleted without reading, and finally a text thread from CeCe, giving us hints and tips about the vlog, reminding me to check in with her, giving me her own itinerary for the trip. I opened the last text to reply, tell her what was going on, but as soon as I hit send, the phone lost its signal again. “Shit!” “Alright?” Ezra called. I nodded, glancing around again as if I’d see some magic floating Wi-Fi or something. “No,” I called back. “Not at all.” He waved merrily back at me and returned to whatever weird pantomime he and Oscar were acting out for the video. My phone buzzed in my hand, and I heaved a sigh of relief to see CeCe’s name and half a dose of bars. “Thank God,” I muttered instead of hello. “Guess where we are? Go on. Guess.” “It’s not Brenham, is it?” she sighed. “Are you trying to make better time and skipping the sites I marked? You are, aren’t you?” “No. I mean, a little, but not why I’m glad to hear from you. The signal’s shit out here so I need to call AAA for me. We’re in Budding, Texas, and—” “Wait! Hold up!” I could hear her frantically typing and, a moment later, her whoop of excitement. “Julian, you accidentally wonderful curmudgeon! That is perfect! Budding, Texas. Home to the Wandering Ghoul!” “That is not a great slogan. Someone needs to talk to their tourism office.” CeCe snorted. “I need an address to find you at. Are you going to a hotel or…” “We’re on the side of the damn road,” I sighed. “Um, there’s a farm like half a mile up though so maybe we can use that as a pick-up spot.” Please don’t be cannibals and want to wear our skin… Damn it, Ezra, we’re switching to rom coms when we get to Denver. I gave her the name of the road we were on, and

approximately how far we were from the highway turn off, and she promised she’d work on a tow for us ASAP. “But Julian, I’m serious. Wandering Ghoul. It’ll be gold for the promos. Don’t make me call Ezra.” “Good luck with that,” I muttered, hanging up as the phone started to fritz again. I looked towards the trees and there was the man on the horse. He raised one arm in salute before turning and disappearing into the shadows of the copse. An icy finger of something unpleasant ran down the back of my neck, waking up those ancient fight-or-flight instincts we all have and pushing the switch firmly to flight. I started walking back towards the car a little quicker than I’d walked away, my leg muscles fairly twitching with the urge to just run and get away from that feeling that was still settled just below my skull, that icy touch of unpleasantness that signaled some subconscious awareness that something was wrong. Ezra and Oscar had stopped filming and were watching me trudge back, Ezra with a definite air of boredom and Oscar more hesitantly, more concerned. Guilt began to nibble away at me as I dragged myself back to the car. Once we were somewhere with air conditioning, I owed Oscar an apology. But only after we’d cooled off physically because I was pretty sure I’d murder someone if we had to stay one minute longer in the heat.

Chapter 4

Oscar

Ezra’s narration of something to do with the grass and how he’d once heard grasshoppers spit tobacco juice—thanks to his childhood fascination with Little House on the Prairie —had become a sort of soft drone in the background. The heat of the late afternoon slipped into the heat of early evening, the only difference a slight hint of moisture in the air. I knew I was being foolish to hope for rain, or at least a nice cool-down, but a boy can dream. The soporific nature of the moment had let my mind wander in a thick, hazy way towards My Problem (capitals inherent). I’d told a bit of a fib to Ezra and an outright whopper to Julian. It wasn’t just a “bit difficult” communicating with spirits since Bettina. It was getting to be impossible. It’d begun with connectivity issues—yes, just like with Wi-Fi. For ages—pretty much my entire life I’d been able to just talk to the spirits, or at least recognize their presence, with barely any effort. Sure, sometimes I had to coax them a bit, or they threw up their own roadblocks to keep me out of their business, but it wasn’t like My Problem. At first, it had been just a bit of a hassle. Stress, I’d told myself. Maybe, too much sex—something I wasn’t sure whether to be upset about, really. But as the weeks went on, My Problem got worse. I was worried that, soon, I’d be unable to communicate with even the most attention-seeking shade. I’d be not-me. “I feel like I’m always having to apologize to you, and that makes me think maybe the problem isn’t an us thing, it’s a me thing.” It wasn’t often I was startled but Julian managed to get me, his approach so quiet

on the battered road that I didn’t hear his steps. Perhaps, it was less his stealth and more my absorption in my lack of seeing anything that made me so easily spooked. Ha. Spooked. Julian’s sudden (to me anyway) return from his Quest for Signal startled me out of the throes of self-pity. It took my brain a moment to catch up with what he said, and I’d apparently just been staring at him with my mouth open like an absolute twat because he was starting to scowl, that awkward expression he got sometimes where it was obvious he was about to bluster and grump his way through a bit of embarrassment. His words sank in fast, though, as soon as I shook the cobwebs from my brain. “I think maybe you’re being too hard on yourself,” I said carefully, sliding from where I’d sat on the boot and dusting my backside off ineffectually—whatever made up the dust on the car apparently had similarities to super glue because it just seemed to smear rather than brush away. “Besides, it’s not like this is your fault. Cars break down. It sucks but it’s a thing.” The fog in my thoughts was harder to shake than I thought—it was like trying to run in a dream as I struggled to bring everything back online, so to speak, and face Julian. He was frowning, more at himself than at me, and fiddling with his phone. “If you want to blame someone, I suggest CeCe,” I said, only half-kidding. “If she’d let us just fly there, we’d already be in our hotel room and Ezra would be in his…” I trailed off, managing a suggestive (I hoped) brow wiggle. Julian sighed, shook his head. “I don’t mean the car,” he said. “I mean the other shit I keep apologizing for. The us things.” Ah. He took a half-step closer to me but didn’t reach out to touch me, despite the fact we were so close now. the last hint of his spicy-citrus aftershave under the heat-drenched tang of his sweat teased my nose, and the faintest brush of his breath tickled my skin as he watched me for some response. My throat was suddenly dry and tight. I swallowed several times before I was able to talk. “Julian,” I finally managed. “You’re not always apologizing. I don’t feel like you’re… you’re…” I shook my head, unable to find what I wanted to say. “I don’t feel like you’re hurting me,” was what finally came out. “We’re finding

our footing with one another and, to be absolutely fair, we both came off one of the more fucked up experiences of our lives. It’s natural for both of us to be a little flaily.” His lips quirked just a tiny bit. “Flaily?” “It’s a word.” I sniffed. “Britishism.” “Mmmm.” Julian smirked openly at that. “Sure, must be why I’ve never heard it.” “Wait. What do you mean an us thing? I didn’t… You were thinking we had problems? Hold up, scratch that. That sounded wrong,” I said as his brow crimped and lips practically disappeared in a deep frown, an expression I hated to see on his nearly dear face. “I’m not saying it’s a one or another thing but just… It sounds like you were thinking we,” I gestured between us, “maybe had a problem. Like a problem.” Julian worried his lower lip for a moment, then sighed a gusty and deep breath of frustration. “I think,” he said slowly, “I’m picking the worst times on the planet to apologize.” “Hey—” “No, I’m not mad,” he promised, finally closing that distance and pressing a quick kiss to my forehead, sweet and somehow dismissive at the same time. “I’m going to try to get this stupid thing started. CeCe nearly had an aneurysm about the fact we’ve broken down here. She Googled. Unlucky for us, Budding is Home of the Wandering Ghoul,” he said in a cheesy telly announcer voice as he walked backwards towards the bonnet, arms waving to mimic… a ghost, I suppose. Or a chicken having some sort of a fit. I leaned on the side of the car to watch Julian mutter and fiddle with things, offering helpful suggestions such as, “You should wiggle the doohickey there. Maybe try reversing the polarity on the flux capacitor.” Julian didn’t reply but his raised eyebrow spoke volumes. After several minutes of what-the-fucking, he sat back and sighed. “I think I’ve done all the damage I can do here.”

Ezra came trotting back towards us, camera tucked away in the pocket of his shorts. His shirt was already sticking to his chest and back, same as me. Julian looked mildly mussed but not as if he’d been ridden hard and put away wet. Ezra flashed me a bright, happy smile and said, “Just as an FYI, I’m not walking back to town in the dark, so let’s either get this shit going or commit to camping in the car tonight and draw straws over who gets to be the Final Girl.” “Final Girl?” I made a face. “What kind of nonsense is that?” “You know,” Ezra said. “In horror movies, it’s almost always a girl who survives at the end. She’s bested the crazed killer and has either killed them herself or made it out of the situation while all the others have been slaughtered.” He made a shrill, high pitched repetitive sound and stabbing motions. “Are you alright?” He elbowed me gently. “Don’t be a twat. You’ve watched the entire Halloween and Friday the 13th series with me.” “Is Alien a horror movie? Would Ripley be a Final Girl?” I asked. “I quite liked her.” “Her and Jonesy,” Ezra confirmed with a nod. “She’s the ultimate Final Girl, with the Final Cat.” “Final Cat isn’t a thing,” I muttered, getting into the car. Julian climbed in beside me and closed his eyes, lips moving in what I assumed was a silent prayer to whomever he believed in (that was another thing—I had no idea if he was religious or spiritual or… ugh. More things to dwell on.) “It’d be me,” Julian said with confidence. “I’m the prettiest.” He winked at me, the first non-scowl I’d seen on his face since Beaumont. “Hey!” Julian turned the key, and after a rattling shudder and a rather asthmatic wheeze, the car rumbled to life. It didn’t sound quite right, but it was running. Kind of.

“He’d be the Final Girl,” Ezra confirmed. “The Final Girl is always able to get the car started to escape the monster.” Julian winked at me. “And, keeping with that spirit—no pun intended, gentlemen—let’s get the Hell out of Dodge.” He eased the car onto the blacktop road. We were all holding our breath, even Ezra. I could tell because he was uncharacteristically silent, though I did notice he was holding his camera up again, aimed forward to get the view through the windshield. We’d gone about half a mile, the car making a threatening rattling sound the entire way, when Julian sat up straight, his eyes narrowing. “Ah,” he breathed. “A Hail Mary.” On the right side of the optimistically termed highway, a wide dirt track opened. It took me a second glance to realize it wasn’t a road but a long drive, leading towards a well-lit, sprawling home. A white-painted fence framed the drive, and a gate stood open, a massive metal farm gate wrapped with colorful bunting, hung with a sign proclaiming Carstairs—1897. Gingerly, Julian swung the car onto the pebbly dirt road. It gave a mighty shudder and groan, the rattling sound now positively offensive. Julian gritted his teeth and forced the car a bit farther, just past the open gates, and finally pulled off onto the grass and shut off the engine. “Not to be stereotypical, but I’m hoping,” he said into the tense, burningoil tinged quiet, “Texas hospitality is still a thing out here and they’ll let us wait here for a tow.” “Texas hospitality, huh?” I teased. “That’s why you invited me to stay at your flat for ‘as long as I needed’?” Julian’s lips twitched but he didn’t reply. Well, unless you counted that look he gave me as a reply. The one that made certain body parts heat up uncomfortably in the late afternoon humidity. Texas might be beautiful, but it was not conducive to feeling at all sexual without air conditioning on full blast. Ezra climbed out of the car, his camera in hand. “This is wild,” he muttered, though whether it was to us, to himself, or the future viewers, I had no idea. “Oz, got any reception on your phone? Mine’s got zero bars.” I checked, as did Julian with his own. “Weak signal, but yeah,” I called back. Julian nodded. “Julian too.”

“Draw straws to decide who calls CeCe and who looks for a tow truck?” Julian asked, already opening up the browser on his phone. “Not so fast, Professor,” I scolded. “She’s your sister. You call her. I’ll google a tow service.” “She likes you best,” he muttered, but had already opened up the keypad to dial CeCe’s number.

The ranch was a riot of color and sound, tucked behind a thick grove of what Julian assured us were pecan trees on a gentle, downward slope. The winding gravel drive looked well-tended, more gravel than dirt and no potholes or ruts, like the people who lived here were houseproud. Our phone signals were still dodgy. but Ezra pointed out the devices weren’t totally useless—we could still use our recording apps, and they’d also do for EVP recording, in a pinch. Julian had left CeCe a message and sent a text to Harrison. “It’s past six, so CeCe’s either at some cocktail event or she’s locked herself in her bedroom with a face mask and a murder podcast,” Julian sighed. “What the Hell is going on here?” “Looks like someone’s birthday,” I said, staring up the drive at the lights and tent and massive barbecue thing that looked like half a barrel turned onto its side. “I really hope this isn’t a cattle ranch and they’re cooking the slow learners.” Julian inhaled deeply. “Might be beef, might be pork, but this isn’t a cattle ranch.” He gestured at the open pastures visible past the house. “That grass is way too high for a working cattle ranch.” Ezra shifted closer to me. “So, who’s going up to ask if it’s okay if we use their driveway?” “Hey, y’all! You from the church or the Rotary club?” A man in a grease and soot-stained apron, face red and sweaty, was lumbering towards us at high speed from the white pop-up pavilion stationed on the front lawn. Even in the late evening, Texas summers were hot, apparently, and standing over the barrel-o-fire hadn’t done this fellow any favors. “We weren’t expecting the first load of folks for another hour, not till the to-do at the church was done and—” he stopped several feet away. “Oh, my Lord! You’re Oscar Fellowes, aren’t you?” His face, ruddy and damp and oddly babyish despite his thick neck and buzz-cut hair, split with a wide, white grin. “I’m Yancy. Yancy Carstairs,” he said, reaching out and grabbing a hand I hadn’t thought to proffer yet. “I’ll be jiggered.” It didn’t happen often, even when the web series was at its peak, but when I did get recognized, it was a heady mixture of pride, ego, and awkwardness that always led me to say something ridiculous. “Yes, I suppose so!” Julian slowly turned his head to look at me. “You suppose you’re Oscar Fellowes, or suppose he’ll be jiggered?”

“Er… both?” Ezra snorted. “Hello, we hate to impose but we’re having car trouble and had to pull off the road onto your drive. Is it alright if we wait on your property for AAA to send a tow truck? They said it’d be a few hours—” “Nope.” The man shook his head, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Nope, that ain’t gonna happen.” “Oh. Well…” Ezra turned a helpless look on me and then to Julian. “I guess we’ll push it back onto the road?” “Oh, no! I didn’t mean that! I meant it’s not gonna be a few hours. You’ll be lucky if they show up before tomorrow. The only tow driver in the county’s currently on my back porch, three sheets to the wind, and they’re not gonna get one of the fellas from next town over out here, not this time of night.” He made a dismissive gesture at the protest Julian had started to voice and shooed us towards the tent like we were lost baby ducks. “We’re having a bit of a gettogether to celebrate MeMaw’s birthday—it ain’t till Sunday but there’s church for most folks, and besides, we can’t have any beer or liquor out here on a Sunday, so we figured we’d have a to-do tonight after the Summer Fest was wrapped up in town.” I found myself inexorably chivied towards the pop-up pavilion with its small swarm of red-faced, sweaty people setting up what looked to be a truly excessive amount of food and drinks. “Is there a hotel in town, then?” Julian asked, slipping to stand next to me as our apparent host stopped just inside the pavilion. “We really don’t want to impose,” he added, plastering on a smile I knew very well to be false. It not only didn’t reach his eyes, it barely reached his lips and the bit it did touch didn’t so much curve upwards as grimace and bear teeth. Our host blinked, drawing back just a little. “The only hotel in town is the old Budding Motor Court but it closed in 1984 after the killin’. Next town over has a chain motel and a bed-and-breakfast but good luck getting a room tonight—it’s the Klobasnek and Kolache Fest weekend and that place is wall to wall tourists.” He scratched at the back of his neck, looking a little shy when he added, “We got plenty of room here, fellas. Not just in the house but the whole bunkhouse out back. We keep it ready for guests ever since MeMaw’s sister Jackie got widowed and drops in unannounced.” He shrugged again. “Besides, even if AAA got one

of the guys from next town over out here, you still need a place to stay.” I groaned softly. “He’s right,” I murmured to Julian. “We really do. Even if CeCe got your message and is already on her way, she’s not getting here for hours and that’d still leave us with nowhere to sleep for the night.” Julian nodded, jaw tight. Turning to our host, he straightened his spin and said, “We don’t want to impose on your family gathering, but we’d be very grateful for a place to stay for the night. If you could just point us towards this bunkhouse, we’ll stay out of your way and be on our way once we have a ride in the morning.” The man laughed. “Hell, you won’t be in the way. We’re about to have most of Budding over here. Besides, all three of y’all look hungry. C’mon and grab yourselves a plate before the vultures descend. And you,” he jabbed a finger in my direction, “you give the old man a wide berth, okay? And maybe Enoch— he’s the scrawny one, you’ll know him when you see him—too.” “Any particular reason?” I asked. Yancy’s scowl lingered a few seconds longer before he sank into a sigh and another tight-lipped expression. He glanced past us towards the hustle and bustle inside the pavilion and sad, his voice much lower than before, “Both of them are very… keen… about ghosts. Enoch, he’s my brother and only sixteen so, you know how kids can be.” He made a see-saw motion with one hand. “Sometimes he’s playing it cool, being a little adult, the next he’s going gaga over his celebrity crush. Er, that would be you,” he added in a loud whisper. “He’s really into your show and the whole… thing you’ve got going on.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Kids, right?” Julian’s brows were arching upwards, and Ezra had one of his shit-eating grins plastered firmly on his face. “I have an idea, yes,” I ground out, my face heating. “But Pops… he’s… well. He’s not your target demographic,” he chuckled. “But he’d talk your ear off all night and once he gets going…” he trailed off. “Well. Let’s get y’all something to eat and find a nice place to hunker down a bit while the crowds get here.” Like his words were some sort of summoning charm, a van rumbled up the drive and stopped just past the pavilion. A lithe blonde popped out of the enger seat and shouted, “Hey, Yancy! You know y’all have some broken-down car just inside the gate? You need to call Sheriff Patrick and get that thing towed. Drug

dealers—” “It’s fine,” Yancy called back, his smile in place but words a bit strained. “Let me help you with that, Myrna.” He turned back to us one more time. “Grab whatever you’d like. Beers are in the cooler, sodas in the one next to that, the big carafes are sweet tea and, for the heathens, unsweetened. Make yourselves comfortable—I can show y’all back to the bunkhouse once we get everything underway, alright?” He didn’t wait for an answer, jogging over to help the blonde—Myrna, apparently—wrestle a small flock of children in some sort of scout uniforms from the van while she balanced a large, disposable cake pan in her arms and shouted at someone named TJ to, ‘Put that back, oh my Lord, you don’t know where that’s been!’ Ezra had his camera out again and was panning around the tent. “Don’t worry, I’ll blur out faces,” he assured us. “Oooooh, are those ribs? Yes!” He was off like a shot, narrating as he headed for the platters of barbecue. “Is this Texas hospitality, or is this cannibal farmers?” I whispered as Julian and I followed Ezra at a more sedate pace, well aware of the looks we were attracting. While Ezra blended in in his t-shirt and jeans, I had gone for a pair of cigarette tros and a ruffled lawn shirt, both in black, and a black waistcoat embroidered with roses and hummingbirds. Yes, it was a bit warm for the evening but, in all fairness, I’d fully expected to be spending the night in a nice, mid-range hotel in the Austin suburbs. Somewhere with air conditioning and take away pizza. Not standing in line behind Ezra with Julian beside me, both of us flexing fingers and making aborted moves to hold hands while we queued for plates of barbecue and some sort of starchy looking cubes covered in what seemed to be mayonnaise. “What is that?” I muttered, nodding at the starchy stuff. “Potatoes and…” “Potato salad. I know for a fact you have that in England so don’t try to play the stranger in a strange land thing with me, Fellowes,” he murmured back, a tiny smile relaxing the corners of his mouth finally. “Yes, we have potato salad. I’ve had it when Ezra and I go ‘round the pub near his parents’ place. But that,” I pointed subtly at the bowl, “is white and glueylooking and has… oh my God, are those raisins?”

Julian wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know whether to hope it’s raisins or bugs, to be honest. Potato salad should never have mustard or raisins involved.” I clicked my tongue, taking a step forward as Ezra scooted down the line of serving trays, talking to the camera held in one hand as he scooped food onto his paper plate with the other. “This relationship is over before we ever get it off the ground. Mayonnaise in potato salad…” I shook my head. “You pervert.” A soft, feminine laugh brushed past my ears and I paused. “Mustard in potato salad is the perversion,” Julian pontificated. “Especially yellow mustard. That shade of yellow is not found in nature and the entire thing tastes like vinegar and bad decisions.” He reached past me to pick up half a deviled egg, gave it a sniff, and put it back on the tray. “This is hardly the best temperature for easily spoiled foods. I wonder if I can get them to bring out a tray and some ice…” The soft laugh came again, and I knew we weren’t alone. Sometimes, it was difficult to pick up on subtle spirits, especially if there were a lot of living bodies around. Especially lately. This one, whomever she was, was not a strong presence but almost a wisp of memory. Enough substance left to react, but not quite enough to have a decent conversation with. At least that was the impression I was getting. She brushed against me then, a purposeful , and a wave of prickly awareness shivered through me and settled in my belly. It filled me with a buzzing sort of excitement, and I tried to reach out, to snag that connection and open to it, but she remained ephemeral, a bare wisp of smoke in the air. I must have made some sound or something because Julian paused midword and fixed me with an oddly stuffed expression. “Are you, ah, having a moment?” I made a face. “You make it sound like this is a hygiene commercial, Julian. If you’re asking am I communicating, not really. There’s someone here but they’re not reaching out and I don’t feel they need me to. They’re just… amused.” I hesitated, then added in a lower voice, “And I can’t make it work, not like usual. It’s like my signal’s jammed.” Julian didn’t say anything else, just looked at me for a long, quiet moment before nodding and returning his attention to the buffet line. A knot in my belly I thought I’d gotten rid of tightened and grew cold. The food on my plate, not exactly appetizing to me in the first place, suddenly looked nauseating. I shuffled behind Julian and Ezra as they made their way down the line, people starting to fall into queue behind us as more and more guests

arrived. Ezra spotted a relatively empty corner with some hay bales arranged as a sort of seating area, so we made our way over, gingerly settling on the prickly bales with our plates and drinks as the noise levels around us ratcheted upwards. Julian offered me a tight, small smile, but sat next to me so our legs touched knee to hip. Ezra gave me a look, the one that said alright? I nodded before turning my attention onto my food.

Yancy found us after another hour or so, the pavilion now packed to the gills and people spilling out across the lawn. The sun had finally set fully and strings of colorful plastic lanterns in shapes ranging from something barrel-like to teddy bears and stars and even a few repurposed winter holiday lights—snowflakes and elves—were strung between the pavilion and the house, some between tree branches. Someone had turned on some music, a mix of country and classic rock, and a few people had made a dance floor out of the space between the serving table and the drinks table. Most of the food had been demolished already, but more was apparently on the way. An older man, one of those people with a face that could be anywhere between forty and seventy, held court at the far end of the pavilion, down near the cooker. We’d finished our plates and had sat in awkward silence while the party grew around us. “Y’all get enough to eat?” Yancy boomed as he drew closer. Ezra nodded, tucking that damn camera away again, and Julian offered a polite smile. “It was delicious, Mr. Carstairs. Thank you so much for your hospitality. I hate to impose further but—” “Bunkhouse,” Yancy chuckled. “I got ya. Y’all got any luggage?” “In the car,” I said. “Ezra and I can go back and grab our overnight bags,” I began, but Julian shook his head. “I’ve got the keys. Let me head down. I’ll be just a few minutes.” Yancy murmured assent. “I’ll keep you fellas entertained till he gets back then?” he offered as Julian gave my arm a squeeze and ducked out of the pavilion. “Oh, you don’t need to bother with keeping us entertained,” I protested. “We don’t want to keep you from your actual guests.” “You’re not—you’re guests too now,” he reminded us. A frisson of awareness trickled down the back of my neck—someone was watching. Someone dead, rather. It wasn’t a feeling I got often, the intense awareness that someone on the Other Side was observing me. Watching. Waiting. Not just a curious shade or someone who had a request or message. It felt… intelligent, for lack of a better word. Calculating.

Predatory. I glanced at Ezra who had, while not the same measure of ability as I had, some touch of it. He was empathic when it came to spirits and would often pick up on the stronger traces of emotions that came with certain ghosts. He was staring at me with a furrowed brow and parted lips, as if he’d been caught out mid-thought and everything had gone offline for a moment. “Do you,” he began. I nodded once, sharply. I grabbed at it with both hands, trying to seize the sensation again, but like before, it was too thin, too much smoke to hold on to. The muffled feeling slid back into place and that knot in my gut tightened. Yancy looked between the two of us, his jovial politeness fading fast. In hushed, apprehensive tones, he asked, “Are you, um. Are you doing your thing right now?” He leaned in closer. “Is he talking to you? I was wonderin’ if he’d show up tonight, on of the party and all…” “Who?” I asked, pitching my voice low and quiet. “Who might show up?” “Mason Albright,” another voice chimed in. The older man—the one who had been holding court, and I assumed was the one Yancy referred to as Pops—was making his way across the uneven ground towards us, the click-clomp of his walker with each step suddenly loud in the inexplicably quiet pavilion. “He’s talking about Mason Albright. The man’s been dead damn near a hundred years, but he does love a good party.” His smile was slow and wide, damn near malicious though. “Especially one of ours. He’s always lookin’ to crash ‘em. Can’t get over the fact this place used to be his before my great-granddady.” He sucked on his teeth, then added in a low, gravelly tone, “Story was, my greatgranddad killed Albright in some sort of an argument over the cows.” Yancy’s face was a concerning shade of red. “Pops, that was just a rumor.” He turned a pleading, apologetic gaze to us. “People like drama, you know? Nobody got murdered. They inherited it fair and square.” Mr. Carstairs chuckled softly. “I think you boys should stick around. I have some questions for y’all.”

Chapter 5

Julian

Once I was away from the strings of lights and the glow of the ranch house’s front porch, it was disconcertingly dark. There was just enough ambient light to see the pale track of the drive, so I kept myself towards the middle—away from the drainage ditches dug to either side of the expanse—and started my trudge towards the car. A few trucks and an older minivan were parked along the side of the drive, but most people had been directed by a young, skinny boy who I assumed to be Enoch, based on Yancy’s description, to park in an empty pasture just past the house. This far out from the house, though, there was no one else. No other cars, no teenager directing traffic, just the smell of wood smoke and roasting meat on the slight breeze and the distant sound of the party going on and occasional animal rustling in the dry grass of the fields beside me. And the unnerving feeling of not alone. The human brain lives to fuck with itself—it loves to find patterns in random occurrences. It’s why people see Jesus in a slice of bread or hear voices in ocean waves. Brains crave order and will try to make things fit into neat boxes. See a random variation in the color of your jam on toast? Your brain says that’s a map of Canada complete with provincial capitals marked in seeds. Hear whispers in the night even though you live alone and don’t have the television running? That’s the old brain meat deciding the sound of traffic on the nearby highway is the same as the whisper of a dozen voices in the next room, trying to keep quiet so you don’t come check on them. Currently, my brain was trying to convince me I was not only being followed, I was being paced by someone just outside of my vision. Someone who slowed when I did and sped up when I did. You’ve been spending an awful lot of time with Oscar, I reminded myself. You know this is your brain playing tricks on you. Why act nervous? I forced myself to walk at a sedate pace back to the car and kept things calm and steady as I unlocked the car and retrieved documents

from the glove box then our overnight bags from the trunk. I grabbed Ezra’s half-drunk bottle of soda from the front seat and shut the car back up, making sure to lock the doors and set the alarm, for all the good it’d do us. All the way back to the ranch house, I felt the same watched-stalked-prey feeling seeping under my collar and down my spine. It was only when I reached the pools of light stretching from the pop-up and the ebb and flow of voices washed over me again that I relaxed, my chest aching with the first signs of a panic attack. Shit. It had been a very long time since I’d had one, and the last time had been for a damn sight better reason than I got scared of the dark like a toddler. Dredging up the rusty exercises my long-ago therapist had given me to deal with the attacks, I started running through the simplest one as I made my way over to where I’d left Oscar and Ezra. They’d picked up a few strays in my absence, apparently. “Mason’s harmless,” Yancy was assuring Oscar. “He’s never even left a cabinet door open or, I dunno, made walls bleed. He just hangs out. He likes parties.” Yancy shrugged helplessly, turning his baleful gaze onto his father. “Dad, seriously, he’s not here to work. Don’t embarrass Enoch,” he added in a tight, low tone. “You know how he gets.” “Julian,” Oscar said, sounding more than a little relieved. “This is David Carstairs. Mr. Carstairs, this is Julian Weems. He’s our professional skeptic on Bump in the Night and my… my…” he paused. “He’s my dear friend.” A little dart of something like pain hit me square in the chest, but I swallowed it back to examine later. Hell, we weren’t even officially boyfriends or partners or whatever phrase we might end up choosing—I shouldn’t even be thinking about being upset he called me a friend in front of others. Besides, I’d grown up in Texas, and as progressive as parts of the state could be, it was a very knee-jerk reaction for me to be nervous being openly queer in front of strangers until I’d sussed them out. And I hated that, and hated that even if Oscar had come over to me and slung his arm around my shoulder and announced we were together, I’d have been twitchy. Things no one ever explains to you about adulthood: you can be one hundred percent down with having someone else’s genitals in your mouth but still freak out about casual PDA even when you’re both very much into one another.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, realizing I had almost let the pause last too long. “Yancy’s about to show us to the bunkhouse, I think. Did, ah, did they explain our situation to you?” Mr. Carstairs nodded, lips pressed into a near invisible line. “And like I was telling Mr. Fellowes and Mr. Baxter here, your car problems ain’t normal. That’s Mason’s doing.” “Grandpa,” Yancy sighed. “Mason doesn’t do that.” I felt a shade off balance, realizing I was literally surrounded by people who were believers. Not well, maybe there’s something after this world but I don’t know, and it won’t matter once I’m dead sorts of believers. Not even I’d really like to see grandma again, so I’m going to let myself get conned by this charlatan believers. They were all, down to the letter, honest-to-goodness believers in what Oscar and Ezra did. Cautiously, I said, “I don’t know about the other things going on, but I can safely say our car problems have nothing to do with ghosts and everything to do with a poorly maintained vehicle that wasn’t meant to make a trip this far, something the rental car company’s definitely getting an earful about later.” I shrugged, the weight of Oscar’s overnight bag pulling hard on my shoulder. Whatever he’d packed in there had to be made of bricks. “We’ll be out of your hair in the morning. My sister is coming to meet us, and we’ll be heading out as early as possible.” Yancy and his grandfather exchanged one of those looks you see people give when you know whatever is about to happen next is going to end in a headache. “Yancy, why don’t you show the boys here to the bunkhouse?” “Oh, we couldn’t take you away from your party,” Ezra protested, twigging to the weird mood and the direction things seemed to be heading. “In fact, if you just point us in the right direction—” “The ground between here and there’s rough,” Mr. Carstairs muttered. “And I don’t think y’all realize just how many dangers are out there in the grass.” He turned his gaze to Yancy once more and Yancy sighed and nodded. “I’ll make sure Enoch is up at the main house by dark. Party’s wrapping up, so I’d best see to our guests.”

The party looked nothing of the sort. If anything, it looked like it was ramping up. Someone had brought out a fresh keg, a giant tub of ice cream was slowly melting as one of the Carstairs men scooped out paper bowls full for a small herd of kids. More people were dancing, and the music was louder. I glanced askance at Oscar, who was looking out towards the darkened fields beyond the house. There was no point in trying to demur—I knew what was coming. Part of me felt annoyed, an automatic reflex and something I’d been trying to unpack for a few months now, since meeting Oscar. Why did it annoy me so much when he engaged in his thing? It wasn’t hurting me, and he wasn’t like the charlatans asking for money or trying to scam people out of their livelihoods with visits from the ghost of grandmas’ past. If anything, even if I thought it was all smoke and mirrors, he was giving people some peace of mind. And, even if he wasn’t doing that, he was bringing enjoyment to people who watched him. The rest of me was already giving in to what was coming. We were going to do a ghost hunt tonight, or he was going to do a séance. Either way, we weren’t getting out of here without someone talking to a dead friend or relative.

Yancy Carstairs clomped across the strip of field between the main house and the bunkhouse with alacrity. He pointed out dark shapes to our right, proclaiming them, “The finest damned herd of Longhorn in the entire damn state.” Ezra slowed, peering out towards the pasture. “Aren’t Longhorns the ones with the, er…” “Long horns,” I supplied. “Often very long.” Yancy snorted. “The herd’s not for meat, so they’re pretty damn spoiled. Pops keep ‘em because he like the looks of ‘em frankly, and, hell, people expect to see some of these fellas when they come to a ranch out here, you know?” He slowed and looked back over his shoulder to flash a grin at us in the dim light. “We’re switching over to being a guest ranch right now. We used to be a beef and pecan establishment, back when my great Pops founded the place, but… well.” He shrugged. “The place used to run hundreds of head, back when my family first got hold of it.” Yancy sighed. “Times change, you know? And what with the whole thing going on…” he trailed off. “Come on, then. Just up here.” The bunkhouse looked nothing like I’d imagined. Hidden behind a stand of pecan trees, it was long and low but, instead of the raw boards or even logs I’d been picturing thanks to years of watching Westerns with my own grandparents, it looked like the offspring of the main house. Done in the same white clapboard siding with a pitched roof done up in dark shingles, it had a neat row of windows set at even intervals, each one with a flower box full of seasonal blooms. A security light flickered on over the front door, the shiny, dark green paint gleaming in the white glow. “We had it redone back in the spring,” Yancy said. “Gettin’ it ready for guests once we do our soft open this fall.” “I thought you said there weren’t any hotels in town,” Oscar murmured. “You’re a guest house!” Yancy grunted. “We’re not open yet. The bunkhouse is only half-done inside. You’ll see. And we’re waiting on our permits to get finalized before we can officially open for paying guests. But y’all will be fine out here for a night. There’re beds, and if there’re no sheets on ‘em, I can run back up to the house and grab some from the linen closet there.” He unlocked the door with a small brass colored key and pushed it wide. “Come on in then.”

Inside, it smelled like sawdust and the faintest trace of fresh paint. Yancy flipped on the overhead lights to reveal a long, low-ceilinged space that was likely once a single, open room but now had a partitioned off kitchen with a small stove and counter-top fridge, a cozy sitting area with an empty television stand, and a dining nook tucked under one window. “Bathroom’s through there,” he said, pointing towards a closed door past the kitchen. “And there’re the beds.” A double row of full-size beds, four down each wall, ran the rest of the length of the house off to our left. Back when it was in use as a real bunk house, the entire place would’ve been just… well, bunks. No amenities, no attempt to pretty it up. Purely utilitarian and not meant for much more than a place to sleep and literally hang your hat. This though, was nice. And would be even more so by the time they were done, I was sure. It was charming, really, all glossy paint and pale wood, everything looking like it was lifted straight out of a home interior catalog. The mattresses all looked new, though unmade, but a stack of linens was waiting on one of the beds. “Thank you,” Oscar said. “We truly appreciate your hospitality.” He smiled, polite and sunny, before glancing my way and straightening his spine. He wasn’t asking for permission with that look but telling me what he was about to do, whether I liked it or not. Beside me, Ezra huffed a tiny sigh. “I knew this was coming,” he murmured, barely more than a breath of sound. “Here we go.” “I’m guessing you wanted to escort us out here personally for reasons other than avoiding a potentially awkward encounter with your brother,” Oscar pressed. “Because of this Mason Albright person, perhaps?” Yancy gripped the back of one of the bistro chairs tightly, staring back at Oscar with a penetrating stare before wilting in on himself and nodding towards the small sitting area. “Well,” he said slowly, drawing the word out on a sigh. “He’s kind of locally famous, Mason is. He’s known as the Wandering Ghoul around here. Maybe you’ve heard of him?” “Briefly,” I offered. “My sister googled the area when I called her earlier and she mentioned it.” Okay, she gasped and shrieked a tiny bit, but that sounded way less professional. “She suggested we spend our wait in the area filming around town, maybe talking to the residents about the story.”

Oscar’s eyebrows shot up and beside me, like he was surprised I was even mentioning anything to do with the show or ghosts. I wasn’t sure if I should feel offended or smug. Or maybe smugly offended? “I was about to ask if that might be possible,” he said to Yancy. “What are the chances people in Budding might like to discuss your local legend with some total strangers?” His grin was fullforce charming. “I know you’re familiar with our work,” he gestured between himself and Ezra, “but I’d like to also assure you personally that we’d never do this to mock or belittle anyone. We’re not hoping to paint Budding as… as…” “Backwards,” I said. Yancy glared. After a long moment where Yancy seemed to be having some sort of silent inner conversation, he nodded, sighed well, and gestured for us to sit. “Mason Albright used to own this property and four others around it. He had a huge spread—not as big as some, obviously. When people hear ‘huge ranch’ they think like the Goodnight place north of here, or one of those Dallas monstrosities. But it was a big place. Ran lots of cattle. The best records we’ve found say he had two hundred head at his peak. Not the biggest herd this state’s ever seen,” he chuckled, clearly amused by the idea of that many cows being a lot, “but respectable for this area, considering he came from nothin’, the story goes.” “Is that unusual?” Ezra asked, fiddling with his camera and uttering a soft sound of satisfaction as it beeped once. “May I film you?” Yancy made a face. “I suppose,” he muttered after a hesitation. “Long as y’all aren’t going to, I don’t know, make me look like an idiot or something.” I smiled as kindly as I could muster. “Oscar and Ezra are very good at what they do, Mr. Carstairs. You’ve seen their show on YouTube, right?” He nodded, darting a glance at me from under beetled brows. “Then you know they’re not going to mock your beliefs or experiences.” Oscar and Ezra both stared at me, lips parted in near-identical surprised expressions. Not going to lie, I was a little offended. Did they—especially Oscar—believe I thought so little of them? I opened my mouth to say something, but bit it back hard when I realized what I was about to do: lash out to cover my own awkwardness, my own embarrassment that I had apparently made someone I cared about feel like I was going to belittle them and be surprised when I didn’t.

“Well,” Yancy sighed, oblivious to the short, hard moment that had just ed between the rest of us, “Mason died in 1896. His own cattle stampeded, apparently. There were rumors they were driven to it by some of the farm hands or a jealous neighbor but that was impossible to prove. Cattle.” He shrugged. “They’re animals, aren’t they? Everyone thinks they’re these big dumb goofballs, but they can be downright mean if they need to be.” He sighed and scratched at his short, dark beard. “Mason’s not gonna bother anyone. He’s been around here so long he’s like the cottonwood trees at this point. Always there, part of the landscape.” Oscar nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose that’s the best way to be, if you’re a ghost not ready to move on.” “Hm. And how… how do you know a ghost’s moved on?” Oscar’s brows arched dramatically. “Oh,” he sighed. “Oh… are you hoping to hear from someone, Mr. Carstairs? Someone you love?” He was in medium-mode. I mean, he was always in medium-mode, but this was Oscar turning it on. He moved to the small settee and perched on the edge, folding his hands on his crossed knee and tilting his head to one side in a sort of nonthreatening talk show host pose. I’d asked him a few weeks ago why he did that whenever he gave a reading and he said people expected it. “They want to see an attentive medium. They don’t want to know you’re listening to the ghost behind them or the one screaming in your ear the entire time.” Yancy raked his fingers through his sweat-damp hair and wilted a bit more. “I don’t think I want to hear from her, no. I just… want to know if she’s really gone.” His smile was thin and water. “Pops wants to know if she’s quiet.” The shift was subtle, but it was there. Oscar didn’t uncross his legs or untilt his head. Something about his gaze, though, grew keener and if I was one to believe in vibrations or auras or what-have-you, I’d have said it was suddenly brighter, hotter, whatever those things did. He was definitely on and focused on something I didn’t see or hear. “Who, Mr. Carstairs?” Ezra shivered beside me, rubbing his hands over his forearms and frowning. The room wasn’t any cooler than it had been a moment before, but he was definitely uncomfortable. “Need a jacket or something? I have a flannel in my bag if—”

“No, just… not feeling well,” he muttered. He turned and headed for the rows of beds, leaving me with Oscar and Yancy. “Sorry gents, I’m just gonna lay down for a mo’.” That seemed to be a cue. Yancy shook his head and smiled tightly. “Well. My apologies, Mr. Fellowes. I shouldn’t be bothering you while you’re in these dire straits.” He straightened and gave me a nod. “I’d best get back to the guests and leave y’all to it. If you’re feeling peckish later, come on down. Party’s wrapping up, but folks always like to linger. Breakfast is around seven tomorrow. Don’t be shy about stopping in—don’t even have to knock.” He gave us all another nod and let himself out of the bunkhouse without a backwards glance. “That was weird,” I muttered. Oscar shook his head. He worried his lower lip with his teeth, staring off into the middle distance. It wasn’t his I’m listening to dead people face but more of an I’m making one of those murder whiteboards in my head face. The same one he made whenever he was trying to figure out who’d eaten the last of the Sour Patch Kids. “No, it was desperate. He misses someone, but he doesn’t want to know if they’re okay or still here. There’s no message he wants ed on. And the comment about Mr. Carstairs? It’s like the old man wants to make sure whoever it is, is gone. Or at least quiet.” “That sounds grim,” I muttered. “Odd choice of words. Make sure they’re quiet… not ‘at peace’ or ‘in the light’ or whatever?” I leaned against the back of the chair Oscar had chosen and nudged him. “Isn’t it?” “Exactly,” he said, lighting up as if I’d said exactly the right thing. “He’s hiding something about whoever ed and he’s wanting to make sure they aren’t going to talk.” “Did you stretch before that reach?” I laughed, turning to head into the bunk area. “How’d you get that from that interaction? He just wants some sort of closure from the sound of things. You’ve spoken to dozens of people like that over the years, right? They want to make sure Aunt Martha is in heaven or Grandpa is resting in peace and not peeking at them with their girlfriend or something…” I glanced back to see Oscar staring at me with an oddly crimped expression. “What?” He sighed through his nose. “Nothing. Just been a long day, is all. Did CeCe say

when she was arriving?” “Around eight, if all goes well. Harrison is going to be driving her.” I checked my phone and saw I missed a message. “And the tow driver definitely won’t be here before nine, apparently.” Ezra, face down on an unmade bed, said, “He was at the party tonight, ? He’ll have to sleep off whatever he’s been drinking.” Oscar made a noncommittal noise and headed for the bathroom with his overnight bag. I lingered, putting sheets on one of the beds before chivying Ezra to his feet and making the other so he could collapse face-down again. I hesitated. Did Oscar want to share tonight, or would he be expecting separate beds since we weren’t, technically, in private? The thought of Carstairs busting in to wake us up and finding Oscar and I tangled together in the same bed wasn’t unpleasant, per se, but it made me feel uncomfortable. While I wasn’t closeted, the Carstairs bunch were an unknown quantity, and we were entirely without or help if things got ugly. And I hated that I even had to think that, at my age and in this year. After another hesitation, I made the third bed and padded over to the bathroom door. The shower was running inside, so I nudged the door open a crack and called out to Oscar. “Be out in a few,” he replied over the sound of the water. “I just wanted to let you know I made up a third bed but if you would rather…” He was quiet for a few moments. “Okay,” he said. And that was it. I didn’t know if I should expect him in bed next to me, or to sleep alone. “Could you close the door? It’s drafty with the window unit running.” Oscar was much longer than a few minutes. By the time he came out, I was already asleep. He chose the other bed.

“What the Hell is that sound?” Ezra groaned. “Christ, it’s cold in here.” I opened my eyes to see it was still dark out, though it had a definite plummy undertone to the sky that meant we were nearing dawn. “What are you talking about?” I muttered. “It’s quiet as the grave.” Oscar’s soft hiss came out of the dark one bed over. “Wait for it.” His voice hadn’t even faded before I heard it—the crunch of footsteps on pea gravel, then a steady thump-thump-thump of heavy boots on wooden boards. There was a moment of silence, then it started again. Pea gravel on the left, moving around behind the end of the house we were on, then the steps on boards near the front door. Then quiet again. “It repeats,” Ezra mumbled. “It’s been going on for about half an hour.” Oscar sat up, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Give me a sec to get my brain online and I’ll check.” He paused, then muttered, “Or try to, anyway.” “If it’s a ghost, it’s just annoying,” Ezra pointed out. “Sounds like a repeater. It’s just walking the same path ‘round.” He yawned so widely, I heard his jaw crack. “Probably some old cowboy annoyed that his bunkhouse is all fancy now.” Oscar huffed a tiny laugh. “Still. I can’t just let them—” “Before you go getting out the equipment and filming another vlog entry,” I interrupted. “Have you considered it might be someone left over from the party needing a place to crash after too much to drink? Or,” I hesitated. “Or maybe a super fan trying to work up the courage to get a peek at his favorite web series star?” Even in faint light seeping in around the window shades, I could see Oscar making a face. “You think it’s Enoch out there? I haven’t even met him.” “Yancy seemed very determined to keep him away from you,” I muttered, slipping out of bed and shoving my feet into my sneakers, leaving the laces flopping. “Enoch’s a teenager, right? Fairly isolated out here in bumble fuck nowhere Texas, a celebrity—” Ezra snorted loudly at that. “Someone he ires,” I said, rolling my eyes, “is out here, on his little corner of the world,

and he finds out…” I shrugged. “I’m just saying teenage brains don’t always work with all logic cylinders firing and sneaking out to bother his favorite medium after the household’s asleep might seem like a great idea to Enoch.” Oscar arched a brow in that way he had, that I was pretty sure I shouldn’t find very sexy but seemed to just do it for me, anyway. “Would it have been a great idea to you? When you were a teenager,” he clarified. “If your big celebrity crush popped up in town and you had the chance to meet them, would you have done that?” I made a face, my ears feeling hot under his knowing smirk. “No.” It was only a tiny lie. Mostly because my teenage-years crushes had all been historical figures or fictional characters, neither of which I would have had any chance with for obvious reasons. “But for a kid like Enoch, it might seem like a good idea. His brother seemed to think it was important you stayed out of his way, so either Yancy is weirdly protective or he’s worried Enoch might do something to make you uncomfortable if he knew you were here.” I tilted my head towards the door, where we could still hear someone moving around. “Like maybe sneak over at night to get a peek and maybe talk to you away from his overprotective brother.” The steps were still crunch-thumping around the bunkhouse in a steady rhythm. They didn’t speed up or slow down, and they never varied in intensity. It was kind of unsettling, truth be told. Oscar and Ezra both got out of their beds and shuffled over to me in the small seating area. Something moved past the window, a dark shape against a dark sky, but I couldn’t make out anything more than mass, than the fact it was darker than the world around it. The steps thumped on. “I don’t think it’s Enoch,” Oscar said finally. “It feels like a ghost. There’s definitely someone wanting my attention.” He reached up and tugged his ear, like something was tickling it or making it ache. “Though… maybe? I don’t…” He shook his head, his face screwing up into a moue of frustration. “This is weird. I feel someone trying to talk to me but it’s like they’re on the other side of a thick piece of glass. And they’re not…” The steps stopped. “They’re not the ones outside.” He cast his gaze about the room. “I think it’s my party ghost.” “Your what now?” Ezra yawned. “You didn’t tell me there was a ghost at the party. Or is this more like a party ghost in that it brings over illegal substances

and wears ski goggles even though we’re several hundred miles from the nearest mountain, calls you lovey-dear, and grinds their teeth too much?” “Er, the former,” Oscar laughed softly. “It’s a woman, and I’ve just heard her laughing, but this energy feels like it could be her. Maybe.” He frowned. “I think.” “Right, well. Y’all figure out what ghost Oscar thinks he saw or didn’t see and their party drug habits, I’m going to see who’s trying to scare us,” I muttered. “Wait here.” “What are you going to do?” Oscar demanded. “Go out and reason with something you don’t believe in?” “I believe in teenagers,” I shot back. “You worry about your bad connection, I’ll tell Enoch to give us some privacy and he can talk to you tomorrow.” Ezra let out a low whistle. “Hell of a time to pick to butch it up, Jules.” “Oh, for fuck’s sake…” I strode to the front door and, after a brief fumble with the lock, threw it open. The security light was on and had been for several minutes, something I wanted to point out to Oscar an alleged ghost couldn’t cause. Not if they were as ephemeral as I’d always been led to suppose. “Hello?” Nothing but the rumble-snort of cattle in the nearby pasture and night bugs making a racket. “It’s not Enoch,” Oscar hissed. “Shut the door before you let those awful mutant crickets in.” “You mean the cicadas?” I asked as the rattle of the big insects built to a fever pitch outside. I shut the door, though, and turned to face both him and Ezra. “What’s going on?” “I just hate those things,” he muttered, edging closer to Ezra. “That’s all.” Ezra was rubbing his arms again, even though the chill from the window unit wasn’t nearly as pronounced as all that. “I’m not feeling well,” he murmured. “Maybe I ate something weird.”

The cicadas fell quiet, a sudden silence like the world had been shut off outside the bunkhouse. The quiet lasted only a second, though, before it was broken with a reverberating crash that made the windows rattle and the door shake in its frame. “Holy shit!” I gasped, staggering back from the door as the second thump fell. Oscar groaned, clapping his hands over his ears and going to his knees even as Ezra flat fell onto the floor, his eyes wide and his lips parting in on a quiet scream. He arched and gasped, fingers scrambling at his hair, his throat, his chest, then he fell limp. The cicadas roared back to life after another few moments. Oscar scrambled to Ezra’s side. “Julian, help me here. He’s fainted or something! Ezra. Ezra, wake up! Ezra!” I crouched on Ezra’s other side and checked his pulse. “It’s strong and steady,” I said. “Is he breathing normally?” Oscar hesitated, then nodded. “When… when I first got to him, it seemed like he was choking a little, but he’s steady now.” I carefully moved Ezra into recovery position, just in case he got sick. “Does he have epilepsy? Any recent head injuries you haven’t told me about?” Oscar shook his head, eyes bright and wet. “No, no, and no. Not as far as I know, anyway. He’s never… This is new.” He scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands as he added, “He’s fainted before—he’s like one of those goats, I swear. But it’s never been like this.” I nodded, ing how he ed out at Hendricks House, just dropping stone cold to the ground. There hadn’t been anything like we’d just witnessed, and Oscar had seemed to take the faint in stride, worried for his friend but not on the verge of panic as he was now. Ezra stirred, a low, guttural groan rumbling up as he struggled to sit. “Just a sec,” I soothed, pushing gently against his shoulder. “What happened? Can you tell us?” Ezra turned wide, unfocused eyes on me first, then Oscar. “What…” he stared at Oscar for a long, long moment. “You glow. I didn’t realize. You glow so much.” His smile was crooked and boyish as he reached out one long finger and brushed

it in the air beside Oscar’s face, turning it to look at the pad as if he’d gathered up something and wanted to examine it further. “So much.” “Ezra, what are our names?” He stared at Oscar for another open-mouthed second before his eyes narrowed, then opened, and his body shuddered with an in-drawn breath. “Oscar Michael Fellowes, my best friend and platonic life partner. And you are Julian Pain in my Ass Weems, Oscar’s man crush and the guy who makes him make those disturbing noises when you think I’m asleep in another room. Sidebar, mate, your apartment walls are thin as paper, and I can definitely hear everything.” He slid his gaze to Oscar. “Everything. You’re both dirty, dirty boys and I’m kind of into it.” He closed his eyes again and groaned. “What the hell happened?” My face was hot as I ed, a bit unwillingly, the last time I’d had Oscar in my bed back home and just what Ezra probably heard us doing and for how long. I cleared my throat, and he smirked. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. What do you ?” Ezra sighed. “The car breaking down, the party…” he frowned. “Kind of hazy, but I’m pretty fucked up right now. I everything, even the footsteps a few minutes ago, the banging… But it’s like watching it happen to someone else.” I sat back on my haunches, considering. “I think maybe it might not be a bad idea to go to the emergency room. You had what appeared to be a seizure out of nowhere and—” “And,” Ezra cut me off, “we’re most likely an hour or more away from the nearest emergency room. I’m not terribly familiar with the world out here but I’m willing to bet it’s a small-town ER, so they’d shunt me on to a big city one, which would be even further out. I’m feeling better,” he continued, turning to Oscar. “I promise. It was just a weird episode and I’m fine.” His smile was shaky and didn’t reach his eyes. “How about I promise if it happens again, we go straight to the nearest ER even if you have to, I don’t know, fucking helicopter me there?” Oscar made a wet, sad sound. “Don’t even joke about that, arsehole.” He flung his arms around Ezra and the pair of them fell into an embrace, murmuring to one another low enough that I couldn’t make out individual words. Feeling

superfluous, I pushed myself up and went to check out the front door one more time. The cicadas were rustling back to life, and the soft lowing of the cattle was oddly comforting. If they weren’t afraid, then nothing was amiss, I thought. Though what was there to be afraid of? A drunk party guest who lost their way? A fanboy teenager? I shut the door and locked it behind me, turning to face Oscar and Ezra who had curled up around one another like otters on one of the beds. I wasn’t jealous—I knew their relationship was nothing carnal or even vaguely romantic, but I did feel a pang of something. Something that felt like loneliness, or maybe it was some form of envy. “I’m going to go back to bed,” I announced. “Okay,” Oscar said on a yawn. “Good night, Julian.” I nodded. “Yeah. Night…”

Chapter 6

Oscar

Breakfast came at seven a.m. Whether I liked it or not. A paper-thin voice just loud enough to tease me out of sleep notified me of that at exactly five till the hour. “Wakey wakey,” they whispered, still no visible sign of him but his voice close to my ear. “Breakfast is about on the table, and I bet you’re hungry. You had a shit day yesterday.” He sounded almost sympathetic, at least as much as someone can while being, you know, dead and also whispering. I groaned and rolled onto my back. It took a moment for me to realize it wasn’t Ezra I was hearing, but someone who wasn’t there, not in the flesh. “Why can I hear you and no one else?” I complained, so groggy I wanted to cry a little. The weird, muffled feeling I’d been dragging for days was persisting “And why are you whispering? No one else can hear you.” Hell, I was verging on shocked that I could, but I wasn’t going to let on. He snorted softly. “You’d like to think so, huh? But get up, get up, get up,” he sing-songed in that raspy whisper. “You’re gonna need food in your belly to deal with the bullshit comin’.” “What do you mean?” He was quiet for a long time, but his presence was there, pressing against the thick, muffled wall around me, waiting. “Mason Albright’s all het up,” he finally said. “He’s angry and he… he wants to hurt someone.” Ezra shifted on his bed and cursed under his breath. With a soft swear of his own, my new ghost-friend disappeared. The sudden lack of his presence left me feeling weirdly bereft. Not being able to use my abilities as usual was like missing a vital part of myself. These little visits from my new friend were teasing me, I thought bitterly. Reminding me of what I was unable to do and making me feel less-than in ways I had never imagined possible.

Ezra got up and started dressing, talking under his breath as he looked for his clean clothes and disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes for morning necessities. For a few moments I thought I could burrito myself in the quilt and doze, miss breakfast entirely, and let them get me when CeCe arrived, but Ezra had food on his mind. “Come on, I’m starving,” Ezra moaned, pulling on my arm until I sat up. I hadn’t really gone back to sleep after his episode, not entirely. I’d drowsed, ears keen for any sound that was outside of the normal. The footsteps, the laughter, none of it came back. I couldn’t shake the watched feeling, though, or the unsettled feeling being unable to sense any ghosts was giving me. “Gimme a minute,” I mumbled, rummaging for a change of clothes. The bathroom door was shut, so I assumed Julian was in there doing his morning routine, having slipped in there after Ezra, which somehow always took forever but ended with him smelling really good and his face being super smooth and… well. I’d save my thoughts on what I liked to do with him first thing in the morning for later. After we were in a hotel room with a door between us and Ezra. Finally dressed, I met Ezra in the sitting area. “You’re wearing that?” he asked, checking out my skinny jeans and deep red cut-away velvet frock coat. “Aren’t you going to sweat to death?” “I never have before.” Doing a little spin to show off the way the tails flared, I gestured to the bathroom. “Once he’s out, we can get going.” “Oh. He left like half an hour ago,” Ezra said, brows drawing down. “I thought you heard him?” Oh. “Well. No use waiting around then. I hope they have tea.” Ezra inhaled as if he wanted to say something, but thought better of it, grabbing his overnight bag from the coffee table and opening the door to wave me through first. “How are you this morning?” I asked as he slogged through dew-damp grass and surprisingly slippery mud on the way to the main house. The space where the massive tent had been set up the night before was empty, the grass and mud churned up as the only evidence it had ever existed. It made the space seem strangely lopsided, the huge house on one side but nothing more than kicked up

dirt and divots of grass where the party had been. “After that incident last night —” “I’m glad he didn’t wait for us,” Ezra blurted. “I know it sucks, and it hurts your feelings and whatever is going with the two of you isn’t as subtle as you think because I can absolutely see how you’re both trying your damnedest to fuck this up before it even gets going, but I need to talk to you and if him going off in a snit this morning because something crawled up his arse last night is what it takes to get you alone for a minute, then I’m sorry but I’ll take it.” I stared at Ezra. “Feel better?” He nodded. “A bit, yes.” “So, what is it you wanted to talk about?” “You’re going to ignore the rest of that? Seriously?” “It depends,” I shrugged. “Is that what you wanted to talk about and you’re suddenly terrible at lead-ins, or is it something else and you’re trying to avoid the topic and hope I pick an argument about what you said regarding Julian and me?” “The former.” “Well. How about if I promise to be in a snit later, then?” “Okay. That works.” He closed the distance between us by another few steps and lowered his voice to a whisper. “I think… I don’t think I’m alone.” “Um. You’re demonstrably not,” I hedged, though a sinking feeling had opened in my gut and was rapidly becoming a whirlpool of anxiety. “You know that’s not what I mean, damn it. When we stopped last night, out on the road… I felt strange. Julian did too. I could tell. He got all spacey while the two of you were talking, didn’t he?” When I nodded, Ezra made a satisfied little sound. “I can’t explain it but it’s like… like a buzzing in my head. And I don’t feel like it’s mine.” “Ezra,” I said softly, “are you saying you’re… possessed?”

He barked a laugh. “No! Oh my god, how awful would that be? I’m saying… I’m saying…” he flapped one hand at the house, at the world around us. “I’m saying this place is strange, and something is happening. I was fine until the car crapped out, but now I feel so weird, Oz. I don’t feel like myself anymore.” I nodded. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to talk to CeCe—” “No, Oz, listen—” “No, you listen. Watching you last night, hearing you this morning… Something is wrong, Ez, and I’m not going to trip along blithely like it’s not. Your health is not worth it. This show is nothing compared to making sure you’re alright. Either CeCe will get that, or we’ll have to break our contract.” “Oz,” he groaned, “it’s not that bad…” “Don’t lie to me. Don’t pretend like you’re not scared, Ezra.” A low buzzing rumble came from somewhere to my right, growing louder by the second. Ezra sighed. “Company.” “I’m talking to CeCe when she gets here,” I muttered. “I love you, you twat.” A shadow of his usual smile creased his lips. “I’m the only twat you love, you giant—” “Hey!” An ATV stopped yards away from us and a teenage boy swung off the seat, his grin so wide it must’ve hurt most of the muscles in his face. “You’re really you! Oh my god!” “You must be Enoch,” I said, forcing my own smile. Beside me, Ezra made a choked chuckling sound, and I stepped on his toes to shut him up. It didn’t work. Enoch approached rapidly, on legs so long I wondered how he could possibly move without tripping over himself. Sticking one hand out, he introduced himself. “Enoch Carstairs. My Pops owns this place,” he said, gesturing with his free hand as he pumped mine hard with his other one. “I heard y’all were here and—” his grin faded a bit. “Well, I overheard y’all were here and figured I’d

come out to make sure y’all knew breakfast was on. We’re having some horses delivered today, and I was supposed to go help at the stables, but I wanted to… to…” His face flushed a deep pink. and he did that awkward teenager-facing-aperson-they-like shuffle that would’ve made me tilt my head and say awww, bless if it wasn’t directed at me. I don’t do awkward well, unless it’s Julian. And he’s a special case. “Thank you,” Ezra said, cutting off his slow slide into awkward flailing. “We were just heading up to the main house. Have you eaten?” Enoch shook his head. “I was out feeding the cows and just heading back.” Ezra shot me a look. Yep, I could see it, Enoch seized the opportunity to come talk to us—to me—while his family thought he was better occupied with chores. I wouldn’t have been surprised, as egotistical as it sounded, to find out he had rushed through the feeding to make sure he had a few minutes to stop by and catch us before we were surrounded by the buffer of his family. “Well, we’ll follow you up to the house then,” I said brightly. Enoch glanced at the ATV and for a horrible moment I thought he was going to offer to let me ride pillion. Instead, he nodded, and his smile came back full force. “Sure. Hey, um, before y’all leave… can I talk with you? I have some questions about what you do and—” “Enoch James Carstairs!” Mrs. Carstairs’ voice carried in the still morning air, that distinct parental tone making even Ezra and I straighten guiltily, as if we had been the ones sneaking to bother guests. “Shit,” Enoch sighed. “See y’all up there.” He waved at the figure standing on the side yard between the bunkhouse and the main house. “Coming, MeMaw!” Ezra and I exchanged glances and started up the slope towards the house and the waiting Mr. Carstairs. “Fanboy or something else?” I asked quietly. “Bit of both, I think. A dose of fanboy, a dash of teenage crush, a serving of desperate curiosity, and likely a touch of being a sensitive himself.” We were nearing the house and Ezra slowed his steps again. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m getting a definite not-great feeling. Not related to whatever happened last night,” he added hastily. “Something else.”

I nodded. “This place has a strange vibe to it, alright. I keep getting a feeling there’s someone trying to break through and talk or at least initiate , but it’s like a terrible connection. A laugh or two, the watched feeling.” I hesitated for a moment before adding, “Early this morning, a ghost woke me up.” Ezra stopped mid-step and turned with an expression of excitement blooming on his features. “Oz! That’s great!” “I mean, yeah, for sure but…” I shook my head. “It was weird. That smothered feeling hasn’t gone away, and the visit wasn’t like my usual experiences.” “Maybe it’s just the type of ghost this one is. You’ve talked before about how there seem to be different sorts. We’re in a whole new country,” he grinned. “New types of ghosts, too. You know how Americans are—can’t drive on the proper side of the road, smother everything in ketchup, have weird ghosts.” I snorted and we resumed walking. “I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but it didn’t feel like a ghost feels for me. Hell, I thought it was you whispering to me before my brain kicked into gear and I realized what was going on.” I trailed off. Another few steps and Carstairs would be able to overhear us. “This is a strange place, Ez. Something’s going on that feels wrong on several levels and I’m going to be try to charm it out of Carstairs over breakfast.” Ezra nodded. “Unless Julian’s managed to already?” Both of us were still laughing over that when we reached Mr. Carstairs.

Breakfast was a bit of a spread, though not as huge as the night before. Mr. Carstairs, Enoch, a woman they both called MeMaw but I found out was Mr. Carstairs’ mother, Yancy, and a grim looking man named Gerald—who was apparently the sole ranch hand still on the payroll—were moving around the kitchen in a complicated ballet of familiarity and speed, going between the counter and the table and back again, occasionally breaking off to swing by the fridge or stove. Julian was pressed into a corner, clutching a mug of coffee and doing his best to phase through the wall and into the other room which seemed to be empty. “Morning,” I murmured, scooting in close beside him. He didn’t flinch away, but he didn’t lean into me either. “Alright, darling?” His quick glance up at the Carstairs family before he leaned slightly against my side told me an entire saga. “Ah,” I sighed. “Okay then.” “Not okay,” he grumbled. “It’s stupid.” “We’ve all got our hang ups,” I said. “What’s in your cup?” “They said coffee, but I’m pretty sure it’s laced with rocket fuel.” Ezra made a happy sound and headed for the silver kettle on the stove. “Ez,” I called, “are you sure—” The look he sent me quelled the rest of that question. Do not stand between him and his tea. “We’ll keep an eye on him,” Julian assured me quietly. “Um, sorry I slipped out this morning.” He pressed against me a little more overtly. Not quite a hug, but in the same arena. “I wanted to see if there were footprints outside from last night.” “And?” I watched Ezra pour himself a cup of tea and turn to answer a question from Yancy, something about England I didn’t quite catch all of. Gerald, with his dour expression and hunched shoulders, lurked like a particularly annoyed gargoyle at the end of the kitchen bar, glowering at everyone but especially me. When his dark gaze found me, a slick-oily shiver ran down my back and pooled at the base of my spine, a gross wave of queasy awareness shuddering through me. Something was off about him, something I couldn’t name…

He wants what’s his popped into my thoughts, though it wasn’t a memory or even a ghost. It was sheer awareness. Gerald met my gaze and his scowl deepened, forcing me to look away. “And there weren’t any,” Julian was saying. “Just ours from coming and going last night. I even checked to see if there was a way someone had smoothed them out to cover their tracks, but the ground and gravel were undisturbed. No signs of steps or smoothing.” He took a sip of his coffee and frowned bitterly. “I didn’t check the roof, though…” “I appreciate your commitment to accurate skepticism, but you know damn well the steps weren’t coming from overhead.” He nodded, glum. “I know, I know…” A soft buzzing came from the breast pocket of his shirt, and he peeked inside. “Shit. CeCe. This is going to be her saying she’s running late.” He slipped the phone out and, after the briefest hesitation, brushed a kiss over my cheek and headed for the front door to step outside and have some privacy. “Have some toast,” Ezra called, and I realized breakfast was officially fully underway. Yancy and Enoch were crowded around the kitchen island while the older adults had taken seats at the butcher-block table. “Here,” he added, holding up a plain white mug. “Mrs. Carstairs has quite the tea stash.” She smiled, her softly wrinkled face pinking as she turned it up towards me. “Coffee’s fine when you need a boost, but there’s nothing like a nice cup of tea, is there? I told your friend y’all are welcome to whatever bags you’d like. I had some nice loose-leaf but ran out a few days ago. If I’d have known I was having other tea drinkers over, I’d have made sure to add it to the list for Yancy to pick up in Austin! The grocery in town is fine if you like plain black tea or just want the fixings for sweet tea, but anything else, you have to go farther afield.” She shook her head mournfully. “I keep meaning to place an order with the store manager, but by the time I get hold of him on my weekly shops, I’ve forgotten.” “You know, MeMaw,” Enoch offered, “you could just order it online from the retailer directly. I can show you how—” “Enoch Carstairs, I know how to use the internet. I’m not a Luddite. I just prefer it from the store. Something about tea being mailed just makes it taste wrong.” She shrugged. “Besides, if I order it in the huge quantity the supplier requires for

a shipment, it’s not as special. I’d end up drinking it all the time and then it wouldn’t be my little treat. Or my guest tea!” “I’ll make sure it’s a standing order, MeMaw,” Yancy promised before shoveling a large bite of what looked to be white sauce and bread into his mouth. Enoch muttered something dire and angsty under his breath, focusing on his own plate with its pile of food. Beside him, Yancy elbowed him in the ribs and shot him a glare that had him apologizing to his grandmother in wounded tones. Beside me, Ezra hovered into view, breaking the awkward tension of the moment. “I’ve been assured it’s delicious,” Ezra informed me, handing me a plate filled with the same stuff the Carstairs were eating: the flattened looking American-style biscuit, white gravy, and a side of something porridge-y, studded with what looked to be chunks of sausage and even more sauce. It was possibly more carbohydrates in one spot than I’d seen in my entire life. “I’d also have a cup of coffee after unless you want that blocking up the pipes for the foreseeable.” I rolled my eyes. “Charming, you are.” We found space at the table, Ezra tucked between Mrs. Carstairs and Gerald, and me between Mr. Carstairs and the wall. “Thank you again for allowing us to stay, Mr. Carstairs,” I began. He waved me off. “It wasn’t a hardship. And…” he glanced up at his mother, who nodded once, very small and tight. “And frankly, it’s not entirely altruistic.” Enoch had gone very still, his spoon poised halfway to his mouth and dripping the meat porridge goop. Fear was writ large in his eyes, wide and staring at us at the table. “Pops…” he whispered. Beside him, Yancy made an abrupt movement that knocked into Enoch’s arm and sent the spoonful of food splattering back into the plate and Enoch’s shirt. His thin cheeks turned dark pink in embarrassment, and he ducked his face, but he didn’t get up from his seat. “Pops,” he tried again, “I told you…” Mr. Carstairs cleared his throat. Beside Ezra, Gerald was determinedly cutting his food into small, starchy bites with a machine-like determination, not looking up or slowing down. I wondered how small he was intending to make those bites, or if we’d end this encounter with a plate full of microscopic bits of food in a neat stack on his plate. “You already know we’re well aware of who you are,” Carstairs began. “And… well, I might have been a bit less than honest

about that. We let you think it was just Enoch who was a fan. All of us here,” he gestured to his family and Gerald, “we’ve been following your work since you had your little show online.” Ezra met my wide gaze with one of his own. This was officially entering creepy territory. “I… I’m glad you’ve enjoyed our work,” I said carefully. “Might I ask where this is going?” Carstairs nodded. “Well. It’s like this… We all here, we know ghosts are real. We know all about Mason Albright walking the land and waiting for his chance to go. Hell, he’s called the Wandering Ghoul around here—so many folks have seen him, usually right around when someone dies. We know all about the Tonkawa that are down by the crick and the murdered lady at the motor court.” Gerald dropped his cutlery and glared at Carstairs. “David,” he growled, “ease up.” He turned his hooded glare in my direction and added, “Deb Carstairs had been missing a bit over a year now. It’s been pretty much radio silence from the local authorities, but people think… Well, they think the worst might’ve happened. He wants to find out what happened to her.” “She’s not dead,” Enoch shouted, bursting to his feet like a flock of startled birds in motion. “She’s not dead! She’s just hiding!” He slammed his hands flat against the island and made a strangled, wet sound in his throat. “She’s not dead, Pops! Stop saying that!” Enoch choked on a sob, flinging himself away from the kitchen bar where he’d been perched on and running for the front door. No one called out to stop him, even though he’d left a mess of cold, glopping food splattered across the island and onto the floor. Yancy sighed and closed his eyes. “I’ll go.” “Let him cry,” Carstairs barked. “He’s too old for coddling.” Yancy’s jaw tensed and something like anger flashed in his expression. “You don’t need to be cruel, Pops. He’s still a kid.” “And he’s gonna stay that way if he doesn’t start owning up to what happened!” Gerald growled a string of curse words, shoving away from the table and grabbing his plate and mug. He stalked to the sink and started scraping detritus off into the sink, running the disposal as we all sat in awkward quiet until he was

done. “Enoch’s a child, David. A child. She ain’t been gone that long, not to him.” He swept a sour look over the room, lingering on me for a moment, before striding off in the same direction Enoch had fled. “Is he gonna go after him?” Yancy muttered. “Christ. I’d better…” he made a helpless gesture at his food. “I’ll be right back.” Mrs. Carstairs got to her feet and started clearing the food away—I was distantly surprised to see it was almost all gone, the Carstairs and their ranch hand having consumed it like so many locusts. Carstairs himself rested his head against his doubled fists on the table, a man grieving, and took a shuddering breath. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you if she’s moved on or not,” I murmured. “Sometimes, even if a ghost is still around, they don’t want to speak with me. Is there a particular reason you think she might be lingering?” Carstairs lifted his face. “She was murdered. I always thought… I’d been told murdered haunts, they stay behind. They want justice or some such.” At the stove, Mrs. Carstairs clattered some pots and pans. It felt needlessly loud, like she was trying to interrupt. Sure enough, she shot a glare over her shoulder that felt at odds with her cherubic round face. Carstairs ignored her or seemed to. “The problem is. The problem is…” “Oh, for land’s sake,” Mrs. Carstairs muttered. “She’s not the only one. She was murdered and Dewayne Hicks did it. We just want her body back, but he topped himself last year before we could find out where she’s buried!”

Chapter 7

Julian

I’m not a proud man. Okay, that’s a lie. I’m extremely proud when the moment calls for it. However, hearing the shouting coming from the house after I’d stepped out to call CeCe, I was not ashamed to it I hurried away from the porch and made a beeline for the gravel drive, putting myself at a distance that would make overhearing a family fight impossible. A tiny part of me felt a pang of guilt—I should go back in, I thought, and interrupt, see if things were okay. Maybe even just give Oscar and Ezra an excuse to book it out of there and not be forced to sit in mortified polite silence as what sounded like Enoch and his grandfather screamed at each other. But I turned my back on the house and kept my phone pressed to my ear, my deep aversion to other’s awkward moments making me downright queasy at the idea of purposefully stepping into that argument. Besides, I reasoned with myself, CeCe was already behind schedule. I checked the time as I dialed her number. She was half an hour late. CeCe running late didn’t surprise me. CeCe being unable to find an entire damn town, however, did. “How can you not be able to find this place?” I groaned. “It’s tiny, but not invisible. Did you take the South Road exit from the freeway?” “Yes,” she hissed. “Harrison, slow down, I see a sign! No, it’s not the same one I saw earlier. Slow—Oh. Okay, yeah, that is the same one. Sorry. Where the hell did all the Factotum stations go, anyway? I haven’t seen one in business since we were like… six.” “Cec, focus please,” I snapped. The tow truck had showed up just as I’d stepped out onto the porch, and now the car was long gone, the driver giving me a receipt with a mechanic shop address in a town called Reefter, which was apparently

“up the road a ways.” We were officially stuck until CeCe got there, and I told her as much. “I’m sorry,” she groaned. “But seriously, ask Harrison! We’ve been circling this area for an hour now and there’s not a single turn off into the damn town! Even the GPS gave up and just keeps saying it’s recalculating.” I walked a bit farther down the drive, wary of the tenuous connection my phone had. It was flickering between two and three bars and the sound quality was shit —I had a feeling I’d be losing the call soon and the thought made me unsettled. It felt too much like we were being cut off, even though I knew better. The farmhouse had a landline, Carstairs had mentioned having a satellite phone they used when repairing fences out on the back end of the property since it was so remote and could be hazardous depending on what time of year it was. We had options. Hell, if we had to, we could all pack on to one of the ATVs I saw parked by the house like we were in a remake of Grapes of Wrath and meet CeCe and Harrison halfway. Halfway to where, I wasn’t sure. But it’d be halfway away from here, and at the moment that seemed more important than a definite destination. “Okay, how about this: pull over at the next business y’all see and regroup? Re-enter the address and start from there.” “The only business we’ve seen out here is a roadside stand selling pecans and jam, manned by a kid and an old lady.” “Did it occur to you to ask them for directions to Budding?” “Would you?” I didn’t have to see her face to know the expression on it. CeCe and I had never been good with people, especially strangers, and the idea of approaching not one but two to ask directions was nerve-wracking even in theory. “Fair.” CeCe and I both shared an aversion to asking strangers for help, even in dire situations. But, unlike CeCe, I’d come to grips with the fact sometimes life was a slap in the face with a dead fish and you had to do things that made you wish you could rip your nails out instead. “Well, needs must, favorite sister. Tell Harrison to do it if you’re too nervous. Wait. He’s not on the clock right now, is he? This isn’t going to be something he’s charging hourly for?”

“No,” came Harrison’s low voice down the line. “I’m doing this because I had nothing better to do on a Thursday and the idea of driving around the Texas hill country while CeCe shotguns slushies in increasingly neon colors sounded fun.” His dry tone could have either been honest or the most brittle sarcasm ever. It was near impossible to tell. “Thanks for telling me I was on speaker,” I sighed. “Look, my phone’s having a crap time with the service out here, so I don’t know if you’ll be able to get in touch with me later. If I don’t answer, try this number.” I read off the car shop’s number to her. “Ask for Wally Carson and tell him you’re the sister of the guy whose car he brought in, and you need help getting here to pick me up, okay?” “That sounds like a lot,” she muttered. “Seriously?” “Ugh, fine.” Her sigh rattled on the weakening connection. “If I don’t see you in the next four or five hours, try to call me again.” “That means you’ll need to actually answer a number you don’t recognize since I might need to use a landline.” “Fine…” She made a kissy noise at me and hung up, already telling Harrison to turn left again. I tucked my phone back into my breast pocket and turned to look back up at the house. Enoch was striding across the field, away from the house itself and towards an overgrown patch of pasture that slowed downwards, towards a dark scar on the landscape I took to be the creek Carstairs had mentioned. He was alone but apparently talking to himself, waving his arms and throwing his head back as he strode through the high grass. Enoch looked back over his shoulder but kept going, maintaining a steady pace. Yancy came out of the house and ed the parade, albeit at a much slower pace, head hanging and shoulders hunched. A man resigned. I wondered if Enoch had himself an old fort or clubhouse he retreated to, a holdover from childhood he couldn’t let go. A rustle in the grass beside me jerked my attention away from them as I hurried to get back to the center of the drive, away from the possibility of attack snakes. When I looked back to see how far they’d gotten, Yancy had stopped and was facing the house, facing me. Enoch was long gone.

“Y’all want to go into town?” Yancy called. The forced jollity was plain in his voice even over a distance. “I have some errands to run and figured y’all might like to talk to some locals about the Ghoul for your show thing.” He started towards me with one last look over his shoulder in the direction Enoch had likely gone in. “Um, I think that would be great, sure. Is, ah, is everything okay?” Yancy was close enough now that we didn’t need to shout. “Fine, fine. Kids, you know? Well. I don’t guess he’s much of a kid, is he? Teenagers.” He shrugged. “I, uh, don’t suppose you had much experience with them, teaching college and all?” “I had a few freshman seminars,” I itted. “But mostly upperclassmen in my lectures while I taught.” My face felt hot, and it had nothing to do with the sun. I wondered if Yancy had heard about my ignominious booting from academia last year. It hadn’t exactly been part of the show’s promo package but, after the incident in New York, people were definitely starting to google names. The second suggested search that popped up under Ezra Baxter was Ezra Baxter single? And Oscar was Oscar Fellowes real medium hot, sexy gay. Mine was Julian Weems skeptic boring. So, you know… word of mouth was really great. Yancy grunted. “Well. You ever have one of your own, they’re a pain in the ass. I love him, but…” he trailed off. “Well. Let’s get our shit together and head into town before it gets too late. I still have chores to get going on with and MeMaw’s gonna want the groceries back in time for lunch.”

The drive into Budding was shorter than I expected but seemed terribly long given how tensely quiet it was at first. Ezra had one hand pressed to his forehead as if it ached, and Oscar, after an initial attempt at conversation with Yancy which was rebuffed with a one-word reply, stared out the enger side window. The curving blacktop road cut through summer-dry fields and the occasional oddly green patch with massive, self-propelled, watering tractors. “Corporate farms,” Yancy muttered. “They’re growing soybeans.” Which, given his inflection, was the worst thing you could do in cattle country. “Seems like a waste of water,” Ezra said. “Can’t they grow something more suited to the local environment?” Yancy snorted. “What’s that song, tale as old as time? That’s farming, least out here. Land’s not cheap—never has been—but it’s cheaper here than in the Midwest, for example. These companies love to come in and buy up struggling family farms and pop ‘em into their corporate models. Some of us,” he gestured vaguely as we came to a stop for a train crossing, “we’re part of a co-op group and we’re not in danger of being bought out. Our farm’s still barely considered one but we do keep the pecan groves going and Pops sells off one or two calves a year and has a few bulls that produce show-quality calves so he sells their semen and—” “I’m sorry, what?” Oscar looked aghast. “He sells bull semen?” “Well, yeah. How do you think you get baby cows? Setting the mama and daddy up on a date and hoping for the best?” This seemed to tickle Yancy so much, he chuckled the last mile into town and was still grinning when he dropped us at the square in the center of Budding. “I’ve gotta go by the grocery, the water office… Hell, a lot of places. Meet back here at half-past twelve?” Here was a bandstand. An honest to God, rural Americana, where’s-RobertPreston-and-the-singing-quartet, bandstand. A swag of red, white, and blue bunting still hung over the entry from the Fourth of July over a month before. “Holy shit,” Oscar muttered as Yancy headed the opposite direction, leaving us to stare like we’d never seen a bandstand before. And to be fair they weren’t exactly thick on the ground where I’d lived. And by

the looks of things, where Oscar and Ezra had lived, either. “This place looks like something out of a movie,” Oscar half-whispered as though people in the surrounding shops might hear and converge on the square in order to do something song and dancey, telling us about how great Budding is and maybe throw in a verse about their resident ghost. Ezra took point on the recording, positioning himself in front of the bandstand so the Budding, Texas sign hanging from the roof was clearly visible. “Hello, poppets!” he started, ignoring my snort. “We’re in Budding, Texas, home of the Wandering Ghoul!” He wiggled his brows and made spooky jazz fingers with his free hand. “According to our sources—” “CeCe,” Oscar muttered, and Ezra ignored us harder. “This ghost has been haunting the area since the late nineteenth century and has been spotted all over town and even as far as some of the farms outside the town-proper. We’ll be talking to some locals to get their perspective and maybe even some personal s of this Wandering Ghoul, and maybe get to see him ourselves.” He shut off the camera and glanced at where Oscar and I were standing, staring at him. “What?” “That was way more telly host than I was expecting,” Oscar itted faintly. “I thought this was just like a travel blog or something…” Ezra shrugged. “We’re doing it for promo, right? May as well make it interesting. Just footage of us traipsing about town and asking people if they believe in ghosts isn’t going to get numbers.” “He’s been spending way too much time with CeCe,” I sighed. Ezra turned a full circle, camera out and recording. “Julian, you’re from Texas,” he began. “I’m from Houston. This,” I waved a hand at the Americana on display, “isn’t the same.” “It’s adorable,” Oscar cooed. “Seriously, it reminds me of that movie with Sandra Bullock where her husband leaves her, and she moves in with Gena Rowlands.”

Ezra lowered his camera. “Hey, Oz. You, ah… you know?” Oscar’s face fell. “No. Nothing.” He darted a glance my way and looked, for the first time since I’d met him, nervous. Not uneasy. Not mildly disturbed. Outright nervous. “What’s going on?” Oscar sighed, rubbing his arms distractedly. “It’s just that problem I mentioned the other day. It hasn’t cleared up.” “Prob—Oh. Oh.” He didn’t look at me and, in a heart-sinking moment, I realized he doubted my response would be a caring one. “Oscar, it’s okay if you need a break,” I offered. “There’s nothing wrong with resting or just stepping back for a little bit, especially when you’re dealing with stressful situations. Sometimes, the human brain can do stupid shit like forgetting basic information or—” “Or forgetting how to talk to ghosts?” he asked with more than a hint of archness in his tone. “Just what am I so stressed about that my brain flips the off switch on that?” “Bettina?” I suggested, though it came out more as a question than a statement and he rolled his eyes. “That was a fucked up situation and there’s no shame—” “You’re right,” he interrupted, waving me off in that imperious way he sometimes had. “I’m just tired. It’s been a long few days with the road trip, the car issues—Hell, probably even the heat.” He offered me a ghost of his usual smile and laid his palm, surprisingly cool in the morning heat, against my jaw. “Don’t worry, Julian. I’m fine. Just stressed. I’ll be okay.” “Hey.” I reached up and caught his fingers before he could pull away. “What did I say? Did I… Did I insult you? What’s going on? You’re giving me that fake show-smile you do when you’re annoyed and want to wrap up a séance.” Six months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine saying that sentence with a straight face. Now… I had an odd little internal shudder when I realized I meant it without irony or sarcasm. Séances had become part of my life and I wasn’t feeling as annoyed by it as I would’ve been less than a year ago. Oscar closed his eyes and, for a moment, pressed his fingers a bit more firmly to

my face and just seemed to wilt a little. “No,” he sighed. “No, you didn’t insult me. I’m not feeling myself lately and I don’t know what to do about it.” “We can go back to the ranch. I’ll tell CeCe she can forget about her vlog thing for this leg of the trip. Or we’ll just film the fucking cows or something.” “That’ll cost extra, if they’re fucking,” Ezra muttered. “Ew.” Oscar’s laugh was a little shaky, but genuine. He dragged his hand out from beneath mine, resting it on my chest for just a moment before stepping away. “Come on, then,” he said with a gusty sigh and almost believable cheer. “Let’s ask some unsuspecting townsfolk about a ghoul. I don’t need to use my abilities for this. We’re just chatting, right?”

Lee’s wasn’t what I was expecting, and from the mild surprise on Ezra and Oscar’s faces, they weren’t expecting it either. Instead of the greasy spoon with worn vinyl floors and chipped Formica tables I’d thought we’d be walking into in a tiny rural town, the place looked like a hipster cafe in a big city. Soft white walls, artfully arranged black and white photos, a sleek wood-cased jukebox that looked more like an old-fashioned stereo cabinet than something that would blast Old Time Rock & Roll until my ears bled (for the record, the number of times that takes is one). The street-facing windows were done up with sweetly gathered eyelet curtains, pulled back to let in the natural light and keep the dark wood of the floor, tables, and service counter from making the space overwhelmingly dark. “Holy shit,” Ezra muttered. “I feel bad thinking we were gonna get a gumchomping waitress named Flo who’d call us hon and have her hair all big and fluffy.” “We still might,” Oscar soothed, patting his arm. “Courage.” “Sorry, y’all, but I think we seat ourselves here and order at the counter.” I pointed to the small, cursive-printed sign by the door instructing patrons to ‘grab a seat and ponder your order before headin’ up to the counter to talk to Cookie.’ Ezra looped his arm through Oscar’s and made a beeline for a table right by the window, leaving me to trail along after. I was only seconds behind them but by the time I got to my seat, they’d already decided on a plan of action. “We’ll grab something to drink and some, I don’t know, toast or something because I’m so full from breakfast I might actually explode if I tried to eat anything more than that,” Ezra informed me. “After we’re paying customers, Oscar’s going to ask the lady behind the counter if she knows of any ghoul stories.” “I get to ask because I’m charming,” Oscar informed me primly with a tiny wink and a nudge of his toes against my ankle. A warm flush stole up my throat and I know he noticed, judging by that dimple-popping grin he flashed me before sliding out of his seat to approach the counter. “I’m willing to bet he doesn’t follow the plan,” Ezra sighed. “Not taking that bet. I only brought my card with me, all my cash is back in my

luggage.” Oscar returned a few minutes later with a rather smitten-looking young lady he introduced as Sandy, the owner’s daughter and the hostess as well as cook-intraining. “You’re both British?” she gasped when Ezra said hello. “Oh my God.” When she turned wide eyes to me, I offered an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I’m from Houston.” Her own smile faded, and she gave me a considering look. “Well. Least you’re not from San Antonio,” she sighed before turning her eager expression back to Oscar and Ezra. “Y’all really want to hear about the Ghoul? Though I don’t guess he’s really a ghoul since those are like… corpse eaters, you know?” “She’s right. Ghouls are traditionally depicted as creatures that live in burial grounds and feed off the dead. The name comes from Arabic and—” I stopped myself. “Well. The word’s also been used to just refer to something like a ghost or other scary creature.” Sandra nodded, resting her hip on our table and settling in for a chat. “See, Carol?” she called towards the kitchen, “I told you! Now,” she turned back to us, “If you’re wanting ghoul stories, I got one for you. It happened to my mom and sister, though. I was, like, four and had to stay home with Dad while they went to Austin for one of Becca’s baton twirling things. Mom and Bec both saw the ghoul out off Main Street and Darling Road, near the Hannover Ranch’s old truck patch.” “I’m sorry, their what?” Ezra asked, frowning behind the camera. “Truck patch. You know, small garden? Grow enough veggies to sell out of the back of your truck? Truck patch? Y’all don’t have those in England, I guess.” “No,” Oscar said faintly, leaning closer. “But go on.” Sandy shrugged. “Mom and Bec had just turned off onto Darling, heading towards the highway so they could cut around Smithville and still make good time to Austin. It was super early, like just past dawn. Mom said she still needed the headlights, but it was getting bright out so when she saw him, she thought maybe it was a trick of the light or a scarecrow or something.” Ezra fiddled with a setting on the camera. I was pretty sure he was zooming in on Sandy’s distant expression and Oscar’s intent stare. It took a moment, but I

realized Oscar wasn’t looking at Sandy. He was staring at some spot in the middle-distance, like he was trying to focus on a fuzzy picture. As Sandy went on about how her mother and sister saw the ghoul and he was staring at them, like totally right at my mom’s face and she was super scared, I watched Oscar. Oscar’s furrowing brow, his deepening frown. Sandy shrugged again, sliding her gaze back to Oscar and Ezra. “Anyway, that was the same day Carl West—he’d married one of the Dint girls—died and my mom swore the Ghoul had been there to pick him up, like he did just about everyone who’d been married into one of the founders’ families.” “Founders?” I asked. “Of the town, I’m assuming?” She shrugged again, distracted by the wall of a man who’d lumbered out of the kitchen looking for her. “Yeah,” she said, already walking away, checking her apron pockets for who knows what. “The old farmstead’s off that way,” she gestured vaguely towards the east, where the Carstairs farm lay, “The Carstairs place, the Hicks’ old wreck, the Dints—they have acreage across the creek from the Carstairs—and the O’Hallorans, who had a spread on the other side of the Hicks place. They were all the families who ended up starting the town, and one or two of ‘em always die when the Ghoul shows up.”

Oscar and Ezra fell to their interviewing with enthusiasm, people finding excuses to stop by the table after Sandy had hurried back to the kitchen. Within half an hour, people were stopping by from elsewhere, coming in to see the medium and his sidekick according to one couple I overheard. Not everyone there was a believer—in fact, I’d feel safe in saying most weren’t, or were at least apathetic towards the idea. Several were laughing as they told the stories, repeating popular ones, some fantastical even by Oscar’s standards from the slight smile that fought his scowl from earlier in the morning. But there were a small handful that were devout. One or two had heard of Oscar and Ezra, had seen their show and were waiting for the episodes of the new one to air on UnReality. One young man enthused how he even got ‘one of those streaming sticks’ just so he could watch the show when it was on. I took the opportunity to stretch my legs a bit, get out from under the small crowd gathered around the table. Oscar shot me a glance, but I nodded, a silent you okay and I’m fine, really. He swept a look over me, head to toe, and frowned slightly, but went back to listening to one of the Buddingites talking about the time the Ghoul was spotted near the motor court, just the night before the murder of Casey Dint, who was apparently the ghost Yancy had mentioned to us the night before, and the last granddaughter of one of the founders. “It was just so sad,” the man murmured. “Casey, she had a hard life after her family lost their ranch. She tried to make it in Dallas, tried to go to school but just didn’t have the funds for it. Back in those days, women didn’t have as many options for jobs as you’d think. Not here anyway.” One of the other customers ed in, a man who looked even older than the first. “Casey Dint? Hell, Hube. She didn’t go to Dallas for school! I was in high school when she went off, tried to take up with a rough neck and he knocked her around, so she came home. No one here would hire her because she’d had that baby,” he paused and added as an aside, “that was the rumor anyway, that she’d gone up to Dallas to give birth, but no one was ever able to run down what happened to the kid after that. Frankly, I think that was just a load of horse shit and there was no kid. I mean, if there had been—” “Anyway,” Hube chimed back in, cutting off his friend, “Casey, she was the last of the Dints, and they used to own about a thousand acres south of town. Ran cattle, just a few hundred head, not a big operation but it kept them steady for a

while. She was the last of ‘em left though and took to, er, some unsavory goingson, trying to keep her head above water.” His friend nodded. “Sad time. I her though. She was so pretty. Always trying to get out of here again. When she got killed…” he trailed off, seeing something that happened over fifty years ago play out all over again. “Well. Lots of people were sure the Ghoul was behind it. He always showed up before one of the founding families was gonna have a death in it, you know? Sure enough, the night Casey got killed, lots of folks saw him near the motor court.” He paused, then added, “I saw him. I was riding my bike to the little theater that used to be off Peach Street. He was just… just standing there. Almost thought he was real like me for a second.” Around us, everyone had gone quiet as he sighed and continued in a soft tone, “I didn’t realize what I was seein’ till I got up on him and he just looked at me and smiled. Lord, I got so cold. So damn cold…” Hube shifted uncomfortably, fidgeting with the well-worn ball cap on the table before him before slapping it back on his head and saying in a false-hearty tone, “Well. Poor Casey Dint, she got herself pushed out the window, didn’t she? Didn’t even scream, they said. Dead by the time she hit the ground.” His friend glanced up, looking startled to be surrounded by people in the cafe and not on his bike, decades ago, seeing a ghost seeing him back. “Weirdest part was the fall shouldn’t have killed her. Hurt her, yeah, but not killed her. But once she was gone, that was the end of the Dint family.” He paused again, then shrugged. “Less she really did have a baby up in Dallas. Then I suppose it wasn’t. Though Casey, she don’t rest easy. Lots of folks have seen her at the motor court. It’s why they closed. People couldn’t stand the crying.” There was an awkward quiet as the two men muttered their farewells and headed for the door, leaving an uneasy feeling in their wake as they hurried out into the warmth of the day, away from the ghosts they’d summoned from memory. “So, the Ghoul is associated with the deaths of specific families,” Oscar said loudly enough for me to hear from my spot, examining an array of photos on the wall by the jukebox. “That sounds like it’d be an interesting thing to study, if one were into that sort of thing.” I didn’t bother trying to hide my smile. “Aren’t we both into that sort of thing, just from different angles?”

Oscar’s expression lightened a bit more. “True.” His attention was diverted back to one of the townspeople just dying (ha) to tell him about their personal Ghoul sighting and I was left to stare at the collection of tasteful, modern black-andwhite photos made to look old-fashioned. The landscapes I’d fetched up in front of apparently comprised a series of photos of the seasonal progressions of a huge tree, arranged to show the cycle of bloom and die off from spring to winter and back again. “Wanna see something kind of cool?” Sandy asked, sidling up to me. She had an empty tray under one arm and an earbud in one ear, tinny Slipknot playing between us. “This is the only known picture of the Ghoul and it’s why a lot of folks think it’s Mason Albright. Looks just like the only actual picture they have of him at the Budding Community Museum and Ranch Club.” She tapped one neatly short nail against the picture of the tree in full leaf. “You kinda gotta squint but he’s there.” I leaned in and, sure enough, a dour-faced man who could have been considered handsome if he didn’t look so angry was staring at the photographer from a distance, partially obscured by the shadows of the leaves. The image was blackand-white, so he was also in grayscale. Nothing about him screamed undead cowboy to me but then again, I wasn’t expecting it to. He looked like every other middle-aged man in rural Texas to me, from my Uncle Roger to the guy who talked to me when I was trying to call CeCe on the side of the road. Sandy was still talking about it. “When she took the picture, there was no one there. It was, like, seven in the morning because she always tried to go at the same time and the Hicks’ place hasn’t run cattle in forever, so it’s not like someone was out there working.” She shrugged. “It’s pretty spooky. She even sent it off to one of those paranormal investigation groups to see what they thought but no one ever got back to her.” She cut her eyes over to Oscar and Ezra. “Do you think—” “Their specialty isn’t really in photography,” I murmured, peering a bit closer. The man wasn’t fuzzy around the edges or translucent or any of the other things people might expect a ghost photo to look like. No, it looked just like a grumpy man caught standing under what looked to be a mesquite tree, glaring at someone taking his picture. “Does Albright still have any descendants in the area?”

“Huh? No. I think he had some kids but after he died the farm got chopped up so there was no reason for them to stay, and I don’t think there’s any Albrights even left in the county.” She made a face, wrinkling her nose in thought. “Maybe one of the cousins, but if they’re the ones I’m thinking of, they’re not Albrights, they’re Donaldsons and, like, cousins twice removed or something so I guess the answer is no?” She didn’t sound super sure but honestly, her explanation kind of exhausted me, so I just nodded. If this guy looked enough like Albright for the photo to gain some fame as the only photo of the alleged ghoul himself, I’d be willing to bet Sandy’s mom caught some descendant of Albrights checking out old family history. Lord knows my own mother was fond of that sort of thing when CeCe and I were kids, taking us on drives to see where Aunt So and So lived back in the day or the place where Great-great-grandad’s store once stood. I’d like to say those road trips are what started my love of history and anthropology, but really they were just the seeds of my hatred of road trips. “I know a few people back in Houston who do forensic analysis and—” “Forensic analysis?” She scowled. “It’s not a crime photo! Why would we need them to do an analysis of it?” The words fell out before I could stop them, and I really tried to stop them. “Well, they can tell if the image of the man was added after the original photo was taken and—” And I swear to God I was going to say ‘and provide verification if you’d like,’ but Sandy’s offended gasp was the equivalent of a record scratch. The small crowd around Oscar and Ezra swung their heads our way and Sandy hissed, “Are you accusing my mother of faking this photo?” she demanded, jabbing her finger at the picture. “Asshole!” Oscar was on his feet and smiling his charming don’t be mad at me, I have floppy hair and a sexy accent smile. “Our resident skeptic,” he said with a slight roll of his eyes, “is an absolute bear before he has a second cuppa.” “I meant no offense,” I said stiffly. “I was—” “He was just doing his job,” Oscar said with another eye roll, one that said isn’t he just adorable, thinking he’s a big boy and doing work. I bristled but bit my tongue. Yeah, I wasn’t exactly out here curing cancer, but pretending like I was

making shit up? Definitely fucking having a talk later. Oscar and Ezra ed out business cards with the production company email on it, promising they’d get any messages with their name in the subject line should folks have more stories to share, and they hustled me out of the diner like I was a misbehaving child. We made it as far as the bandstand, where we’d started from, before I shook them off. “What the Hell?” I demanded. “I know you think it’s a pain in the ass that I’m having to try to do what I do, but you don’t have to pretend like I’m just an inconvenience or making it up! I didn’t say one damn thing to that woman that wasn’t true!” “Sometimes,” Oscar bit out, “we need to keep our loud voice quiet and our quiet voice loud.” “Guys,” Ezra said. “Guys…” “I didn’t say her mother was a liar,” I snapped. “I said there are all sorts of reasons for the picture, not just a ghost!” “Oz,” Ezra said a bit more sharply. “Something’s wrong.” He swayed hard, then fell, tumbling into Oscar’s startled grasp. “Shit! He’s having another seizure,” Oscar hissed. “Julian—” I was already helping him get Ezra to the ground. “Are you sure he doesn’t have epilepsy or a seizure disorder?” “Are you calling me a liar now?” Oscar snapped. “Shit. Sorry, sorry, not the time. Shit! Ezra, come on, talk to me!” Ezra’s head rolled to one side, and he shuddered, drawing in a deep breath. As he exhaled, his eyes opened and he stared up at me and Oscar, a smile spreading across his face. He showed too many teeth, too much gum. It was a grimace, a rictus grin, not a real smile. “I’m so glad y’all are here,” he drawled in a voice unlike his usual one. “I’ve been running out of time, but y’all got here right in the nick,” he laughed. “Just in time…” “Ezra, no!” Oscar grabbed for Ezra’s face as he turned away again, and Ezra arched as if shocked. A bright flash of orange light blinded me for just a second, someone’s headlights or something cutting across the square, and when I blinked

my eyes clear, Ezra’s head was in Oscar’s lap and Oscar was pale, trembling. “Ezra,” he whispered. “Ezra, are you… are you?” Ezra groaned softly. “I feel like absolute shit,” he muttered in his own voice. “Fuck.” Oscar looked up at me, eyes wide and a little wet. “We need to get him to a hospital.” “No,” Ezra protested, sounding stronger than a moment before. “No! I’m fine. I came over funny for a moment. I’m okay. I swear.” Oscar and I exchanged a long, speaking look. “He’s an adult. We can’t force him to go. But I think he should seriously consider it.” Ezra shook his head. “I’m fine. I’m fine. It was just… I just need a nap or something.” He was talking fast, shaking. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he looked like he was tweaking out or something similar. Yancy’s truck rolled to a stop beside the bandstand, and he rolled down his window. “Y’all ready?” Ezra nodded, struggling to his feet. “More than.” Oscar and I followed more slowly, both of us wearing near identical expressions of confused concern.

Chapter 8

Oscar

Ezra made a beeline—albeit a wobbly one—for the bunkhouse when we returned to the ranch. Julian made a small show of calling CeCe in front of Yancy as if to reassure him we really were trying to leave, his problematic houseguests would be out of his hair soon. By the time Julian caught up to us in the bunkhouse, I’d wrestled Ezra out of his shoes and socks and gotten him to lay on the bed nearest the window unit so cool air would blow on him directly. He protested but was already drifting into a fitful doze. Julian shut the door quietly behind him and watched me as I set Ezra’s shoes beneath his bed and brushed some of his wild hair back from his face. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and all but threw myself into Julian’s arms. “What the fuck,” I muttered. “What the fuck is happening?” His arms tightened around me, and I felt a spike of relief—part of me had been afraid he’d be stiff with me or push me away. I knew I’d hurt his feelings by playing off his comments as a joke, as something we just had to deal with, but he did not know yet how to handle an audience, how to give information without hurting unnecessarily. How to play the game, as they say. Whoever they were. “I know you want to trust him, but I think Ezra’s… I think something is wrong.” I laughed wetly at Julian’s pronouncement, and he gave me another little squeeze, his fingers moving gently in my hair, soothing me. “You know what I mean. This isn’t just a dizzy spell or being tired. I don’t know a lot about neurology, but what he did last night, and again today? That’s not healthy brain activity.” “I can hear you, you know,” Ezra muttered from where he’d buried his face in the bedding. “I’m fine. I just need a nap.”

“Yoo hoo!” “For fuck’s sake,” I muttered as Mrs. Carstairs knocked, then opened the door. “Boys, Yancy said y’all had a bit of an awful morning in town. Now, this seems like a perfect occasion for a slice of cake and some coffee. Let’s head for the kitchen.” It wasn’t so much a gentle suggestion as an order. She hurried us back into the house and got us settled around the table. Yancy had gone to tend to chores once it became apparent Ezra was going to live, and Carstairs was walking the pasture with a sheriff’s deputy after finding signs someone had been camping on their property near the creek. “I tell him every time, it’s just teenagers in town thinking they’re all grown and being sneaky. But every time he insists on calling out the deputies to look. I honestly don’t know what he thinks they’re gonna find. Some kids canoodling? Oh, do they say canoodle anymore? Well. Now, who wants cream and sugar?” Mrs. Carstairs asked, bringing a coffee tray over to the table. “Ezra, honey, want me to bring you a cup?” We’d set Ezra on the living room sofa, and he was propped at an angle, trying to look engaged but looking more like he was barely awake. He shook his head before he answered. “No, ma’am. Thank you for asking though.” She clicked her tongue but ed out the other cups and set a tray of sweets down in the middle of the kitchen table. “If you change your mind, you just holler, alright?” Julian dosed his with an obscene amount of sugar and added enough milk to make it turn beige before nudging the tray in my direction. I dropped in two sugar cubes and hoped for the best—coffee had never been a favorite of mine, and I knew no matter how much sugar I added, it would taste bitter and acidic. Mrs. Carstairs hummed to herself as she sliced pieces from a loaf cake that smelled absolutely amazing. “It’s a lemon ginger poppy seed cake,” she announced proudly. “I came up with it myself after a little mishap in the kitchen when Deborah was, oh… ten? Eleven? I asked her to get me the lemon zest, and she grabbed grated ginger instead and, well… here we are!” She tittered happily, settling her soft bulk into the chair at the head of the table. “Now, boys, we’ve had way more excitement here today than the past six months combined! I feel like I should apologize for this morning. Between our… well, rather abrupt

request, Enoch showing his tail like he’s doing… Well, it’s been a day, hasn’t it?” She sighed, tears welling up in her eyes and a quaver racing in her words. She glanced between me and Julian, her expression becoming wistful and a little distant as she reached out and laid her hands atop both mine and Julian’s and gave us a squeeze. “Now, don’t you think we’re some of those folks who get all sniffy about who you love, alright? I know you have it bad for each other—don’t deny it! I can see it in your face whenever you look at him. I noticed it at the party last night. Saw that sweet look you kept giving him and I said to myself, Karlotta, those boys are head over heels for each other.” She patted my hand and drew back a bit, her expression falling once more. “I hope you don’t think we’re all ignorant here. It’s a tiny town, but… Well, we’re not monsters.” Julian gently set his cup and saucer aside and addressed her earnestly. “I appreciate it, Mrs. Carstairs. I grew up in this state and I know it’s come a very long way since… Well, even since I was in high school. And I’m not so naïve as to think everywhere is safe. But thank you for assuring us.” “Karlotta,” she insisted, dabbing at her eyes. “After all of this, it’s the least I can do, let you call me by my first name!” “Karlotta,” I repeated with a practiced smile. “I was wondering if I could ask you about your daughter. We, ah, we didn’t get much of a chance to discuss the issue this morning and seeing as how we’re staying at least one more night, maybe I could help you out.” She looked arrested for a moment, her expression and posture frozen. Karlotta.exe has stopped running, I thought with a hint of hysteria. She relaxed, though, and her smile slipped into sadness. “Maybe… I should get David, though. Deborah was—is—his daughter and…” “And we’ll get him in a moment. Whenever I do a séance, I like to speak with family separately.” That wasn’t exactly true. I’d been known to do it if there was some question as to the motivation behind the séance—were they trying to do an end run around a will, perhaps? Or were they simply wishing to talk to a dead loved one? But for the most part, I simply did my job without theatrics. Okay, with a tiny bit of theatrics. Maybe a medium bit. I’d read the room before deciding.

Karlotta hemmed and hawed for a few moments, then sighed and threw up her hands. “Let’s do it. I don’t want to sound cavalier about my Deborah’s ing but… Well, at this point, we just want to know she’s okay. Or as okay as can be,” she added in a rush. “Oh, that didn’t sound right, did it?” Ezra smiled reassuringly, lurching his way from the living room and attempting to lean nonchalantly against the kitchen door. He looked more drunk than casual though and I edged a bit closer, ready to catch him if he pitched over. “It’s alright, ma’am. We understand. Do you mind if we record the session? Just for veracity’s sake,” he added when she frowned. “In case there’re questions later.” She nodded reluctantly, and Ezra pulled out his phone as Julian moved to help clear the table and get Ezra settled before stepping back. It wasn’t ideal as an EVP recorder, but we could pull the audio and run it through some scrubbers if we had to. We set up in the kitchen, clearing the table of coffee and cake before arranging the recorder and Ezra’s small camera to capture everything. I wasn’t sure how much time we had before Carstairs returned and whether or not he’d have the deputy with him, but I was loathe to hurry. Rushing a séance never ended well—either the ghosts got snippy, or you just plain got no answers You’d think they’d be more easygoing about things, considering they don’t exactly have a lot of people to talk to who can talk back. So I took a breath, and settled into myself, letting that part of me that could interact with the dead open up. Immediately, I heard the soft laughter from the party, the ghost who had seemed tickled at just about everything. She wasn’t urgent, just present. She moved through the room without manifesting beyond that quiet giggle. It was almost childlike, I thought, listening as it trilled again. She was amused about something, or maybe just happy. She moved away, an ephemeral thing, maybe no more than the remains of a laugh at her core. I took a breath and closed my eyes, the soft ping of the recording app on Ezra’s phone coming on signaling it was time to begin. “Now, Mrs. Carstairs. Karlotta.” I opened my eyes to find her staring at me intently, almost eagerly. “I understand from our earlier conversation there’s some question as to whether your granddaughter, Deborah, has… moved on?” Karlotta nodded. “Yes. She… she died over a year ago, close to two now. We never found her body, and the police stopped looking after a letter…” she trailed

off, her complexion going an unflattering, concerning shade of red. “Well. There was a letter that was supposed to be from her, but none of us believed it. Dewayne, though, he’d always been awful to Leonard—that was Deborah’s husband, he ed when Enoch was… oh, three? No, two. And Yancy was already in middle school by then. Yancy was just inconsolable,” she sighed. “He was such a daddy’s boy.” “And Deborah?” Julian urged gently. “What about her and Dewayne?” She clicked her tongue. “Dewayne drove poor Leonard to his death, and we all know he’s the one who did Deborah in. He’d been coming ‘round and riling up the cattle, cutting up through the back forty like he always did from his place. I swear he just liked coming ‘round to piss us off. Pardon my language, boys.” “No offense taken,” I soothed. “Why would he come bother Deborah?” The laughter was gone, and something heavy and oily was seeping around the edges of the room. Something threatening. The fine hairs on my arms and neck raised, my skin pebbling painfully as I waited for Karlotta to respond. “Well,” Karlotta hedged, “I don’t rightly know. I tend to think he just enjoyed the drama of it, liked how he was still plucking at Leonard even with that poor boy gone.” “And his sons?” I asked. “Yancy and Enoch. Did Dewayne bother them, single them out?” “I don’t know what that has to do with Deborah,” Karlotta said cautiously. “Is she… does she say it does?” Her gaze darted around the kitchen as if she could see her granddaughter standing there if she just looked quick enough, catching her before she vanished again. I shook my head. “Just getting the lay of the land. Now,” I said, briskly, “Tell me about Deborah.” I felt a soft click somewhere in my brain. It was hard to describe, but it was a feeling that came when I’d hit on something, when I opened a channel that had been previously closed. Like a lock turning. That click popped as soon as I asked about Deborah specifically. Someone was reaching out, a tentative tendril through the veil.

The stifling sensation that had been plaguing me since Bettina had lifted a tiny bit, enough for this tender little shoot of to work through, and I was terrified the doors would slam shut, and I’d be stuck with nothing for Karlotta. Nothing for us. I refocused my attention on Karlotta and prayed the tenuous connection would hold a little longer. “Deborah was such a sweet girl. Sad, but sweet. You know how it goes,” Karlotta laughed nervously. “She was a quiet girl, always kept to herself. Loved helping me in the kitchen and had her own little garden patch ‘round back—we let it grow over after she… after she went. I couldn’t bring myself to touch it, and Enoch… Well, she loved her boys and they adored her, but Enoch was the baby, you know? He damn near watered the plot with his tears. David turned it under in the winter after she disappeared.” “Disappeared?” “Two years next month,” she murmured. “Dewayne stopped coming ‘round about then, too. We waited for a while, sure he’d turn up to rub it in, torment us a bit. I don’t know why he hated us so much,” she added on a soft sob. “When he didn’t turn up and they found all that blood at his place…” she shook her head. “Please don’t make me.” Ezra reached out and patted her arm. “Thank you, Mrs. Carstairs. Oscar’s going to attempt to Deborah now, alright?” She sniffed wetly. “Alright.” I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, slowly. The weak ‘signal’ I was getting allowed me to reach out and call to Deborah or try to. Deborah wasn’t there. In fact, only that oily-heavy-gross presence lingered. It moved around me like a heavy cloak, wrapping and tangling, poking at my thoughts without giving me anything in return. Still, I spoke aloud and hoped for a response. “Can you tell us your name?” The little red light on the voice recorder stayed steady. Nothing. “I’m Oscar. The Carstairs family are very hopeful to hear from their loved one, Deborah. Deborah, would you like to say hello?” I went through the motions, the heavy smothering feeling once more settling over me, driving the breath from my lungs and ratcheting up my heartbeat. “If you’d like to say something—”

A sharp gasp from Ezra made me open my eyes. He’d gone pale again, as he had last night and again this morning. He was arching back in the chair, his neck bent to a near obscene angle and his chest heaving. Karlotta let out a tiny screech and scrambled away from her chair, clutching at her bosom and screaming for help. Ezra’s head snapped forward and he stared at me, unseeing. “If I had something to say, I’d say it.” “Ezra…” My heart, which had been rabbiting against my ribs a moment before, felt as if it had stopped. “Ezra, what’s going on, mate? Talk to me.” Julian moved forward. I had almost forgotten he was in the room; he’d been standing so still and quiet behind me. Now, he was at my side as if he could stop whatever was happening to Ezra. “People don’t listen. I’ve been trying to talk to you for years, but you just don’t listen.” The accent, the sound, was Ezra, but the cadence was wrong. The intonation was sharp and angry, not my friend at all. He slammed his hands down on the table and growled at me. “They love to put on airs about it, don’t they? They can see me, they know I’m there. But hell, trying to get one of them to goddamn listen!” Ezra’s hands came down hard again and the pain made him gasp, the sightless stare snapping out of his eyes, replaced by wild-eyed fear. “Oh my god,” he breathed. “Oh my god…” “Ezra?” My voice was tiny, shaking. “Ezra, talk to me.” He finally focused on me. “I wasn’t possessed,” he swore softly. “I was in my head the whole time, I swear. I could hear him talking, hear me talking, but it was like I was standing to one side and… Oh my God…” “I believe you.” He looked too afraid for it to be a lie. “What happened, Ez?” “Whatever happened last night and this morning… They were trying to do this again. Talk, use me to talk to you…” “Channeling,” I muttered. “They can’t or don’t want to use their own voice to reach out. Why…” He laughed shakily. “Is because they’re an asshole one of the reasons?” Karlotta shrieked as the front door banged open. Carstairs, and a man in a police uniform, trundled into the kitchen, both of them scowling. “Found evidence of

some encampment by the creek,” the deputy announced. “Looks pretty recent. Not much we can do about it other than clear it out and keep an eye on the place, folks.” He turned his gaze on us. “Deputy Mayhew, Budding Sheriff’s Department. Who might y’all be?” “This is Oscar Fellowes and his friends Ezra Baxter and Julian Weems. They’re on television,” Karlotta announced a bit proudly. Julian murmured a hello, shaking the deputy’s hand and doing one of those chin up nod things all the men seemed to do there. Ezra just nodded, still pale and shaking. I started to smile but thought better of it—who knew what expression my face would make? I didn’t trust myself to move just then. Ezra, being used as a conduit was not only new, it was terrifying. Most ghosts weren’t strong enough to use a human conduit, much less a conduit who hadn’t been prepared and willing. The deputy swept his gaze between Ezra and me, before turning his attention back to Carstairs. “I can’t spare the manpower to keep someone on duty here twenty-four seven, but I’ll make sure to stop by when I can. In the meantime, get one of your boys out there to keep an eye on the back fence. Looks like that’s where they got in.” He nodded to Mrs. Carstairs and gave Carstairs one of those bro-slaps on the back before letting himself out. Carstairs shook his head, padding over to us in the kitchen. “I’ll be praising Jesus in the streets the day they finally tear down the Hicks place.” I thought of the dark, empty farmhouse we’d seen just yesterday, the one we’d laughed about looking like something from a horror movie. “Is the Hicks place that one about a mile up the road? With the overgrown fields?” Carstairs nodded. “That’d be the one. Why do you ask?” “We ed it on our way here. I’d wondered why it was just sitting empty.” Karlotta made a nervous clucking noise in her throat. “No one wants to buy it. On of it being… well… haunted.” Ezra lunged to his feet, swaying and panting. “I need to go. Now. Now, now, now.” Julian made a grab to stop him, but Ezra was fast. He pelted out the front door and was halfway to the bunkhouse before Julian or I could stop him.

Chapter 9

Julian

Oscar swore he’d never played rugby in his life, but he executed a perfect rugby tackle to bring Ezra down halfway to the bunkhouse. “Ezra, listen to me! You need to focus on my voice! Ezra!” I dropped to my knees beside the struggling pair. Ezra was snarling like a trapped animal, baring his teeth at Oscar and laughing breathlessly. “This,” he panted, “is the most fun I’ve had since Reba O’Halloran finally kicked it. Damn bitch took forever, just kickin’ and cryin’ till she finally got the idea and gave up.” He twisted and nearly broke Oscar’s grasp. “Let go of me, you little freak of nature!” “Hey!” I pressed down on Ezra’s shoulders to stop the worst of his thrashing, trying not to see the hurt, shocked expression on Oscar’s face at Ezra’s hurled words. “Ezra, listen. I might know a little of what you’re going through, okay? You know I’ve got my own mental issues. I’ve never made it a secret. There’re things that can help, and we need to get you to a doctor who can—” “Oh my god,” Ezra groaned. “Seriously? I’m fine. This idiot boy is fine. Swear to god, you’re all so blindingly earnest it makes me wanna puke.” Oscar hissed something under his breath, and for a moment, I thought he was angry at Ezra, at me even, but I realized he was muttering to himself, frowning at something between Ezra and me. “Oscar, seriously?” “He’s back and won’t shut up,” he muttered. “Ezra, listen to me. No, shut up,” he hissed at the spot between us again. “I can only deal with one crisis at a time and you, Mister No-Name, are not it right now!” “Oscar! For the love of god, focus!”

He glared at me. “Call an ambulance,” he ordered. “I love you, Ezra, but no fucking way are you sleeping this off.” As if summoned by magic, an ambulance came rolling up the drive before he’d even finished speaking. “You’re good,” he muttered. “How the hell…” I shook my head. “Carstairs must’ve called, or Karlotta. I’ll wave ‘em over. Hold tight.” The EMTs were unloading a gurney as I jogged up. “He’s over by the bunkhouse. Some sort of seizure episode last night and this morning and he seems disoriented. I think it might be some sort of mental health crisis.” The nearest tech looked at me with a slightly amused but mostly annoyed expression. “Look, I don’t know about that. We’re here because an elderly lady fell down some stairs.” “In here!” Carstairs flung the front door open, pale and shaken. “She’s in here!” “‘Scuse us,” the second tech muttered, shoving me to one side. “What happened?” I asked, the gears in my brain grinding to a halt. “Mr. Carstairs?” “Ma, she… she was going up the stairs to grab one of Deborah’s old medals. Used to do gymnastics. She thought maybe Oscar could use it as a, what’s it, a focal point or somethin’. Get a better reading. She was halfway up, and I heard her scream ‘no’ and…” he choked on the words. “She wasn’t moving.” I nodded. “I’m sorry. Let me get out of the way.” I jogged back, letting the techs have space to bring her out. She was motionless, a plastic collar locked around her neck and a board beneath her back on the gurney. She didn’t look like she was in her own head, her body still and expressionless and gray. Fucking Hell… Shit. Ezra! “How many ambulances does the hospital have?” “What the fuck kind of question is that?” the first tech demanded. “I ain’t got time to play pop quiz with you!” “No, my friend, he’s having some sort of a problem and needs help!”

The second tech, the one arranging leads on Mrs. Carstairs rolled her eyes. “Two. Should take a few minutes to get here. Tiny town, we’re not really far from the hospital. Now get the hell out of our way.” The ambulance doors slammed and, a moment later, they were taking off down the drive, Carstairs and Yancy after them in Yancy’s truck. “Julian!” Oscar shouted. “Julian!” I raced back to his side, out of breath by the time I was back on my knees beside him. Ezra wasn’t fighting him anymore, but he was very still and pale, his breath shallow and fast. Thick, cold sweat covered his face and neck and he stank of it. Panic sweat, I thought, a stink like when animals are afraid. “Mrs. Carstairs fell down the stairs. The ambulance was for her. She… she didn’t look good, Oscar.” “Fuck!” I fumbled my phone out and breathed a sigh of relief to see a whole bar of service. I called 911 and gave them our location. After a moment of disbelieving silence, I was informed an ambulance was on the way. “Hang tight, Ezra,” I muttered, scooting closer to Oscar and slipping my arm around his shoulder. “Hold on.”

This past year, I’d spent more time in and around hospitals and ambulances than any person had a right to. Oscar went with Ezra and I stayed behind, unable to cram into the back of the ambulance and without a way to get there on my own. I texted CeCe an update but soft-sold it, telling her Ezra had a bit of a dizzy spell and maybe a seizure, so he was getting checked out. I wasn’t in the headspace for my sister’s freak out at that moment. I trudged back towards the bunkhouse, sick of the late afternoon heat, sick of feeling my clothes sticking to my body, sick of pretty much everything I could think of. I wanted to help Oscar and Ezra (especially Oscar, I itted to myself. Especially him.) I wanted to go up to the hospital and, I don’t know, hold his hand, make sure he knew someone was there to lean on. Make sure he knew I was there to lean on. We’d been bouncing off one another like poorly mated magnets for weeks, the attraction unavoidable until one of us turned the wrong way then we’d push away. I was tired of it and I know Oscar was, too. I stopped at the door to the bunkhouse and pulled my phone out again. I had a bit of a signal still, so I sent him a text, not sure if he’d even have his phone on inside the hospital. Julian: Oscar, wanted to check in with you. I couldn’t think of anything to add that didn’t sound distant or cold via text, so I left it at that, pushing the door open only to draw up short. The place had been ransacked. Our bags were spilled open across the bunkhouse, Ezra’s bag of road snacks torn open and wrappers all over the floor. The stench of something rotten hung in the air. “Shit, shit, shit!” It had to be Enoch, I decided. Had to be. Maybe he’d been looking for money? Something to get him out of town? Was he trying to run away from his family? Shit. I fired off another text to Oscar. Julian: I think Enoch came by the bunkhouse while we were out. Ate Ezra’s snacks, looks like he went through our things. I’m going to look for him while I wait for y’all. I paused, then sent:

Julian: Be safe, Oscar, okay? Don’t come back here till you hear from me. I hung my phone up before I could say something too much, too soon.

Chapter 10

Oscar

When I opened my eyes, the room was thick with gilt-edged shadows. A puddle of pale, gold light spilled through open blinds, making a streaky pattern on the floor that looked like someone had tried to scrub away the thickening puddles of dark. It was late in the day, that odd stretch of time just before twilight when the sun was below the horizon, but the sky was still light enough to fool you into thinking you had more daytime left. That span that could last minutes or hours depending on what time of year it was. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but after trying a few more times to reach Julian or CeCe, I’d given in to my exhaustion and let a loagy sort of drowse overtake me. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out before the voice calling my name woke me. A nurse was standing beside the bed, one of those portable trays beside him as he checked Ezra’s IV bag and made some notes on his tablet. “Sorry,” I muttered. “Didn’t mean to doze off.” “Don’t worry about it,” he soothed. “I’m Jack, his nurse for the moment. I just need to change this out and get his next bag of fluids going. His vitals are looking good, no fever, still waiting on some preliminary scans and blood work to rule out viral infection or any other cooties. Did the doctor give you the rundown about the tests he’s going to need after you get out of here?” “Mentioned having a PET scan…” “Ah.” He frowned to himself, swapping out the IV bag for a fresh one and making a few more notes before turning back to regard me with a serious, concerned look. “So, here’s the thing. And keep in mind I’m not the doctor in charge here so any official word is gonna come from her. Your friend sounds like he’s got a hell of a lot going on, and that can either be very treatable, or it can be a sign of something very scary. Like long-term, ongoing scary. His age, and his reported health status, chances are it’s in the treatable camp. But to be sure, they want him to get some scans our little hospital just doesn’t have access to doing, like the PET scan. Because sometimes tumors can make behavior change, cause

hallucinations…” he trailed off sympathetically, giving me one of those concerned looks I used to see often when Grandmere was sick, and staff thought I should be more afraid of her impending demise. I nodded and sighed. “I thought as much.” I ed how to play normal human well enough to make sure staff didn’t think I was a cold arsehole or just plain weird for not being worried. I knew Ezra’s issues weren’t a brain tumor, but I couldn’t tell the nurse I’d been mostly worried that the ghost had caused some sort of damage, like a stroke or something. “Are you two very close?” Jack asked, resting his hip on the edge of Ezra’s bed. “I mean, I know you told the EMTs you’re brothers but…” he chuckled. “I know a lie when I see one.” “He’s my best friend. He’s the closest thing to a brother I have.” Jack nodded. “I get that. But you’re not together.” “Ah. Um.” Was he hitting on me or genuinely concerned? I mean, if he was hitting on me, I was flattered but yikes, unprofessional. But also flattering. Still unprofessional. My face felt warm as I answered. “I’m pretty sure I’m involved with someone, yeah. He’s back at the ranch waiting for me.” “The ranch? No offense, but you don’t look like one of our local farm and ranch guys,” he laughed, patting my arm. “And I should’ve guessed you were taken— the rainbow isn’t very bright out here in rural Texas. There’s a few of us, but seeing a new face in the area is rare as hen’s teeth.” Yep. Definitely blushing. “Well, I’m pretty much just here till he’s released. We’re heading out tomorrow, if all is well. Work thing,” I added, shrugging. Ugh, why was I so awkward? He laughed softly. “Can’t have all the luck, can I?” he said, winking. “You said you were at the ranch. Which ranch is that?” “The Carstairs place. It’s, ah, kind of hard to find. My friend’s sister is trying to make it out here to pick us up, but it’s like the place is Brigadoon or something.” Jack quirked a brow. “It’s right there on Cinder Road. Cinder turns into Main when you get to the town itself. In fact, all you have to do is come out of the

hospital parking lot, turn left, go down to the four-way traffic light, turn right, and you’re on Main. Stay on it for about six miles and you’re there. My mom used to be friends with Deborah Carstairs,” he added. “Before the whole thing.” I straightened so fast, I nearly knocked over Ezra’s IV pole. “Sorry, but this is kind of serendipity.” “Ugh, hot and knows the big vocabulary words. Curse my luck,” he laughed. “Why is it serendipity?” I extemporized, “Her father was mentioning this morning how much they miss her.” “And?” “What and?” “And,” Jack murmured, glancing to make sure no one was lurking in the doorway as he lowered his voice and leaned in, “and you don’t get all excited about someone knowing Deborah Carstairs then give a limp noodle reason like that. If it was just because he missed her, you’d say, ‘oh, I was speaking with her father just this morning and she sure is missed.’ No.” He shook his head, gathered up his tablet and leaned in again. “No, you want to know the dirty details, don’t you?” “Er…” “Don’t give me that look. I’m not going to be all gross with you. No, I get off shift in ten. I need to wrap up and clock out, but I’ll stop by on my way out and fill you in. Now.” He stepped back, his timing impeccable, as a patient aide stopped outside my door with a food cart. “Make sure he eats his dinner—those antibiotics can make you feel like crap on an empty stomach.” Dinner was typical hospital fare, nothing to get excited about and perfectly edible if a bit beige. Ezra was still zonked out, so I ate his to put it out of his misery. By the time I was done and figured out how to get the tray balanced on the tiny nightstand beside the bed, Jack had made it back in civilian clothes, a messenger bag with a small, rainbow pin on the strap slung around his chest. He smiled when he noticed me noticing and gave it a tap with one finger. “My secret Bat Signal,” he said. “Like I said, not a lot of us, but we’re out here. So, you

wanted to know about the whole sordid Carstairs affair. But first I have to know why you’re staying with them if you don’t know the family that well.” “Long story short, car broke down and they were the closest place to ask for help. We crashed the party for Mrs. Carstairs by accident and they let us stay in the bunkhouse till our ride could get there.” Jack hummed under his breath. “I hear they’re trying to turn the place into a guest ranch.” “Mr. Carstairs mentioned that.” “It’s so weird. That ranch was one of the first in the area. Seeing it turned into a glorified hotel is going to be a trip. Especially because that whole family hates pretty much everyone. Except Yancy,” he laughed. “Yancy’s a sweetheart. Maybe Enoch is too, but he never comes to town unless he’s with his grandfather.” I thought of Enoch that morning with Yancy and Gerald trailing after him. I wondered if they were trying to keep him on his grandfather’s leash too, or if they were genuinely concerned. “Enoch seems like he’s got a lot going on.” “I wouldn’t know,” Jack sighed. “Even before Deborah vanished, the whole family was just weird, apparently. At least according to my mom and Lord, she’d know.” He laughed, cheeks coloring slightly. “Not a lot to do in a town this size other than gossip. Mom was a little older than Deborah and said it was a huge scandal, the way everything went down. Deborah took up with Leonard Newton, this guy who worked at the supermarket in Reefter. It was the Fast N’ Fresh, and literally the supermarket. If you think Budding is tiny, you’d be appalled at Reefter. Anyway, the guy who owned it was a total asshole. Owned the store, I mean, not the town. I mean, obviously. Anyway, Deb and Leonard had been college sweethearts at the community college. Mom said it was a huge scandal when Deb turned up pregnant,” he chuckled wryly, rolling his eyes. “It was 1997, not 1897, for land’s sake, but,” he sighed, “small town Texas, you know?” I didn’t but I was getting the picture. “Leonard was a good guy, wanted to do right by Deb, so they eloped, and he really threw himself into being a good father for Yancy and being a good husband for Deb.” Jack darted a glance my way as if gauging my reaction. Whatever he saw must’ve been alright by him because he straightened his shoulders, took a fortifying breath and continued.

“By the time I was old enough to play with Yancy, Leonard had taken a turn for the mean. Being in a shitty situation wears on you, you know? Even if you’re a real good person at heart. And Leonard had grand ideas that just weren’t panning out. He couldn’t keep a job, Deb couldn’t finish school because of the cost, and he felt guilty about that… Mom said it was like he blamed himself for their lives being so hard, even though Deb never seemed to blame him. They moved in with her dad and grandma at the ranch and I going over to play a few times. Mom had been a year or two ahead of Deb in high school and felt like she should reach out to her or something. Let her know there were people she could talk to, I guess. Anyway, Leonard was pretty sick by the time I was old enough to really him.” He made a drinking motion with one hand. “Selfmedicating his depression is what Mom and I both think. When he died, the old man blamed the neighbor, said he’d been harassing the family over some land dispute. When the county did the easements back in the nineties, they mismeasured and gave about half an acre or so to the Carstairs ranch. Hicks—that was the neighbor—lost his freaking mind over it and wouldn’t let up. All the Carstairs needed to do was file some paper with the county, but it became this huge thing.” He smiled a bit sheepishly. “Small town drama, right? Not a lot else going on out here unless you want to drive the three hours to Austin, and even then, it’s iffy. But the rumor was Hicks had some sort of blackmail on Carstairs and was threatening to run with it if Carstairs didn’t do what he asked.” “Why would the neighbor harass Leonard Newton? It wasn’t his land.” “Ah.” Jack settled back into the guest chair, his smile smug. “But Deborah was his girlfriend.” I blew out a sigh. “I thought that might be where we were headed. Why was she with Leonard then, if she was dating the Hicks guy?” “Like I said, small town drama. The bloom was off the rose with Leonard, from what I my mom saying. Whirlwind romance, young love, surprise baby—that was Yancy—and you gotta do the right thing, you know? That’s the mindset some of these folks have. You get pregnant, gotta marry the father, even if he’s kind of a jerk. They moved in to the Carstairs bunkhouse and it was miserable. I visiting with my mom a few times when I was in middle school. Yancy was around my age, and he was so shy. Always acted like a whipped dog, just waiting for someone to go after him. He hid from me, so I just kind of played out in the dirt, went to go look at the cows…” He shrugged. “I

think he’s better now that Leonard’s gone, and he’s grown, but I wonder sometimes…” “Deborah was having an affair with Hicks?” I prompted. He sighed. “That’s the going theory. At least if you ask my mom and the church ladies she hangs around. There was some question about Enoch, but no one ever tried to push it. By the time people started to wonder, Leonard was dead from cirrhosis complications when they couldn’t get a donor match in time, then Deborah disappeared, and Dewayne Hicks died right after.” He screwed up his mouth in a thoughtful moue. “It was always so weird. He just up and did it like that, left the house and farm and everything. It’s just rotting away out there.” An overhead page startled us both. “Well,” he said, standing. “It’s been a weird afternoon, huh? Look, I know I’m spilling all sorts of beans about the Carstairs, but you should know they’re… a lot. They’re not a social bunch, but that’s about as strange as they get. They’re very protective of Enoch since he’s the baby, and they’re a little woo,” he made the universal gesture by his temple, “because of the whole ghost thing, but…” “Ghost thing? Mr. Carstairs mentioned a sort of family ghost…” “Mason Albright,” Jack laughed. There was that name again. “The Wandering Ghoul? How much truth is there to the stories about him?” “That he shows up whenever there’s a death of someone from the founders?” I nodded. “I ain’t ever seen him myself.” Jack shrugged, looked almost embarrassed by that ission. “The town is named after his mama, you know that?” “Is it?” “Mmhmm. Caroline Budding. Married Franklin Albright. The town started out as a sort of halfway point from nowhere to nowhere. Franklin Albright owned a large cattle ranch out here and set up a general store, and when the railroad was put through nearby, a small hotel that’s near where the police station is today. When Mason was grown, they had enough money to gift him with a parcel of

land just outside of where the city limits are today. It included what became the Hicks and Carstairs properties. It was a lot more than that though. There was not much town to speak of back then, and even with the store and hotel, it wasn’t exactly a bustling place. Not close enough to any of the cities to matter, not on any of the major cattle drive routes.” He shrugged again. “Kind of like today. We’re just kind of… here.” “You’re not from,” I hesitated, not sure if the question was going to prickle his pride or not. I decided to just bite the bullet and go for it, layering on a bit of charm to soften any potential insult. “You’re not from one of the founders, then? Your family—” He laughed. “Lord no. My family ended up here when my great-grandparents ran out of money on their way to California and decided this was as good a place as any to settle down. Might’ve had something to do with my great-grandmother hating the idea of California since that’s where the in-laws lived,” he added with a small smirk. “At the risk of sounding like an absolute bell-end, do you know who I am?” Jack hesitated, then nodded, ducking his head. “Yeah, I have to it I’ve seen your YouTube videos and your web series. I thought it might be you when you came in earlier, so I did a quick Google, and your fan boards are all buzzing with rumors you’re in Texas.” “I have fan boards? Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. And please, do not tell Ezra when he wakes up!” Though I did harbor a tiny spark of amusement at the idea of telling Julian later, just to see the look on his face. “Well, then you know I know at least a little about ghosts. In my experience, ghosts don’t hang around this long for no reason. The Carstairs say Albright was trampled by his own cows. Why would a guy who died in an accident like that hang around for a hundred years?” Jack scoffed. “That’s what they told you, huh? Rumor is that it wasn’t an accident at all. Cattle just don’t stampede out of the blue. That stampede was a murder. Committed by none other than Jamie Carstairs and Vincent Hicks, Albright’s foreman and best ranch hand.” Jack tapped the foot of my bed again, oblivious to my startled silence. “Well. I probably won’t be seeing you again, so good luck out there and be safe, okay?” I

nodded and he heaved a small sigh. “Seriously just my luck.” He winked and left, shutting the door behind him.

Chapter 11

Julian

Fuck . My search around the property had turned up not hide nor hair of Enoch, and it was well into the evening. No one had come back from the hospital yet, and I hadn’t gotten a text or call from Oscar. I wanted to scream, curse something, kick something. Instead, I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe. It didn’t help much but at least I wasn’t having a tantrum like a toddler. Pacing the dirt between the bunkhouse and the main house wasn’t going to help anything, either, but I couldn’t stop myself from making several laps. Anxious, nervous energy bubbled inside me, fizzing away and demanding to be burned off. As I paced, I thought of Oscar, of how we’d left things earlier. Both of us hurt, angry, and frustrated, both of us stubborn jackasses in our own ways. But… but. Maybe, I thought, maybe I was making it worse. Instead of just butting heads a little, agreeing to disagree, simply not believing the same thing he did, I had made it into a fight. There was a difference between being a skeptic and being an asshole. I had crossed firmly into asshole territory. My anger at my life before the show and hell, my anger at my current life and all the changes being thrust upon me—well, I lashed out. I hadn’t asked Oscar to ‘rein it in’ or hide himself, but he had. When we returned to Louisiana, then Houston, he’d still been Oscar Fellowes, but there was something off I hadn’t been able to place—hadn’t wanted to place. When the cameras weren’t on, it was easy to forget, or pretend to forget. He

presented himself as a medium and allegedly spoke with the dead. He rarely made comments about a spirit saying this, or a ghost doing that, when it was us alone. I’d worried, in the run up to this road trip and episode, seeing him in action again would rile up thoughts I’d rather leave alone. I’d been right. I’d been focusing more and more on his belief in ghosts, on what he did for a living and had done his entire life. It was beyond the just being my job to ‘prove him wrong’ on the show… it actively went against what I believed in. And I was pretty sure I was being an asshole about it. Not because I wanted to be ‘right’ or prove him wrong, but because I felt powerless. And I needed to make it right with Oscar, if I could. I needed to… to undo things. Or redo them. And I needed to it to myself that there was every possibility Oscar might not want to go forward with us, just keep things professional, because I hadn’t been there for him. When he’d opened up about feeling his abilities were blocked, feeling like he couldn’t do his job as a medium, I had brushed it off, minimized it. Fuck. My head throbbed and I wanted to cry, glad there was no one around to see me having my meltdown over realizing I was a massive jerk. The evening heat was unpleasant and made me feel angry on top of my self-pity and guilt, so I turned towards the bunkhouse and decided to regroup. The bunkhouse was dark. I relished the cool quiet, curling up on the sofa and closing my eyes for a moment. I almost missed the sound of steps on the floorboards. “Enoch?” I called, my heart lurching. “Enoch, people are looking for you! I’m not mad you’re in here. Come out, okay?” The steps were in the bathroom, heavy on creaky boards. A sharp knock sounded at the door as I headed for the bathroom, hoping that was Enoch in there, trying to hide, and not, I don’t know, Gerald on a tear or a suddenly very clever bobcat with a deepseated hatred of humans. The knock fell again, and I stopped. “Just a sec!” Everything happened at once. The front door rattled in its frame as the bathroom door swung open with a loud bang against the wall. I turned in time to see a tall woman with a long, ash blonde braid slipping out the front door. A strong, unpleasant odor wafted towards me—unwashed body, old dirt, blood, and what had to be bodily effluvia. The door hung open in her wake and I was on my feet,

chasing after her as she walked at a slow but steady pace towards the pasture behind the house. The cattle that had been there the night before had moved farther afield, dark smudges some distance away, leaving a wide-open space on the other side of the fence with nowhere for her to hide. “Hey!” I shouted. “Hey! Ma’am? Hello!” She didn’t slow down. “What the hell is it with these people and walking away from shit?” I muttered, jogging a bit faster and regretting my choice in footwear. Leather, slip-on loafers are meant for comfort, not speed. The woman was approaching the split-rail fence and showed no signs of stopping. “Oh my God, don’t make me climb in these things,” I groaned. She did. Well, she didn’t make me so much as I felt compelled to follow her, even in the damn loafers. She scrambled over the fence with an uncoordinated flail of limbs, falling over the other side only to lurch back to her feet like she wasn’t quite sure how to make her limbs work together. She started walking again, heading for that same dark scar Enoch and the others had been aiming for earlier. My own maneuvering was less graceful even than hers, ducking between the rails instead of trying to go over and still managing to fall on my face. The strong smell that had followed her in the bunkhouse grew worse as we moved across the field. Had she gotten into something and was just looking to shower? Was she ill and needing help and I’d scared her off? The way she was moving was definitely not typical—her steps loose and floppy, like her feet and ankles hadn’t quite sorted out what to do, and her arms hanging limp by her sides. Her head rolled slightly, reminding me of Oscar when he tried to sleep in the car and would jerk awake now and then. A slow tilt to one side then a sudden righting of the posture so her head was up and forward. She slipped in something I hoped was mud and let out a sharp, rattling cry as she hit the ground. I put on a burst of speed and ended up slipping and sliding myself as I got closer. She struggled to her feet and, as close as I was, it was clear her shirt wasn’t the pale yellow I thought but had once been white and was discolored with God only knew what. Her jeans had that waxy look filthy denim and overpriced trendy jeans tend to have, and her feet were bare and caked with what I hoped was just mud but judging by the field around us likely was worse.

Please let it be some ridiculous trend, I thought wildly. Organic mud baths for sexy summer toes or something asinine from one of those fashion sites CeCe loves. Her hair in its long braid was limp, her scalp visible where the unwashed strands had started to clump together on her head. “Ma’am,” I said loudly. She hesitated this time, stopping mid-step. I slowed, nearly choking on the smell as I stopped just a few feet behind her. “Ma’am, are you alright? I don’t mean to sound rude, but you look like you could use some help…” She shifted from side to side, slowly turning towards me like her body didn’t know how to move right. It reminded me of those little game pieces shaped like gingerbread people and stuck on a plastic base, turning by shuffling side to side with a stiff-legged gait. Finally, she faced me, and I nearly screamed. She looked entirely, impossibly, dead. Skin sallow, deep and bloodless wounds open on her cheeks, lips cracked and bloodless, she stared at me with eyes that were stained yellow with healing burst vessels. The smell grew nearly suffocating when she exhaled and took a shaking step towards me. “You,” she said in a thick, rough voice. “You…” “Ma’am.” My voice shook. I wanted to look back at the house, see if anyone had come back. I wanted to run for it, but I had a horrible flash of the zombie movies I’d watched with Ezra over the summer and thought I’d for sure be the asshole who slips and falls when he tries to run away, the revenant suddenly able to move quickly and grab the poor bastard. Me, in this case. “You know me?” she finally rasped, her fingers flexing and squeezing at her sides. “No. No, no, no. Nobody…” she hissed and rattled a cough, something wet and dark flying from her mouth and hitting the ground between us. I realized, with horror, it had been a tooth, or what was left of one. Christ. “Ma’am, I’m going to use my phone and call 911, okay? Just… just stay here.” I took a step back, and she moved with me, her arms coming up exactly like a horror movie ghoul. “Ma’am!” “No,” she groaned. “Can’t. Can’t!” With that horror movie burst of speed I’d feared, she grabbed at me, her jagged nails—what had once been a set of acrylics but were now sharp and broken and disgusting—raked across the back of my

hand and caught the side of my face, knocking my phone to the ground. She howled and lurched at me, catching me full in the chest and taking us both to the ground. “No, no, no!” Her grip was weak, but she managed to press her thumbs against my throat, just enough for me to choke on my own breath. “Can’t! Can’t, can’t, can’t!” I shoved at her, sending her sprawling to one side and scrambling back before she could come at me again. The rustle of the dry, tall grass beyond us underscored her rattling breaths as she crawl-surged towards me. I put my hand down in something wet and soft that I told myself firmly was not cow shit but was just a mud bath for sexy summer fingers and tried to get my feet under me without turning my back on her. I wasn’t fast enough. She growled and flung herself forward, grabbing hold of my ankles and pulling towards her, her mouth gaping open on a wordless, horrific cry. I shouted again, praying someone in the house might hear me, or Enoch or Hell, even Gerald was close enough to at least know something was wrong and call for help themselves. I twisted, trying to buck free of her grasp, only to feel a sharp, deep pain shoot up my leg. She’d fucking bitten me! I screamed again, managing to get one leg free and shove hard against her chest with my foot. She cried out and fell back, blood staining her mouth. A wheezing sound rumbled in her chest and I realized she was laughing. Arms flopped wide on the ground, her emaciated body twisted in a strange way, she was laughing. Or was she sobbing? “Fuck this,” I muttered, the pain in my leg settling into a hot, shrieking throb. I didn’t want to think of the bacteria flying through my bloodstream. I focused on getting to my feet and backing away, keeping her in my sights until I was far enough away that she disappeared into the grass. Then, I finally turned and started my lurching run towards the house only to be met with the tall, stark figure of Enoch Carstairs, staring at me from a few yards away. He looked horrified and I held out one hand towards him. “It’s… It’ll be okay,” I lied, my body wanting to just fold over and cry at the pain in my leg, at the fear in my breast. “We need to get to the house, Enoch. I dropped my phone, but we need to

call for help, okay? No one will be mad at you. They’ve been looking for you, Enoch.” He nodded faintly. “I know,” he murmured, a far-off look in his eyes before he focused on me again. “I know they have. But I can’t let them find her.” “What?” Everything that had been beating and throbbing, telling me to run like hell, went cold. “What was that, Enoch?” He sighed. “They can’t find her, Doctor Weems. I promised.” “Enoch…” “I’m sorry.” He lurched towards me, one hand coming up with a heavy-looking club of wood clutched in it. He sobbed as he hit me, first on my arm as I threw it up to block the blow, then against the side of my head. I went down fast, everything black and hurting.

“Seriously,” Enoch was whispering. “Come on, answer me! I know you’re there!” I tried to roll onto my back, but found I was stretched against something wood, something rough. My eyes didn’t want to focus for a good few moments, but finally my vision cleared enough to see I was on rough, wooden floor. It was filthy, and there were mouse droppings far too close to my face for my liking. A soft, shuffling sound came from somewhere nearby, then Enoch’s voice again. “No, no, no,” he muttered. “I said no!” The last was a shout, making me jerk then moan as my body protested the sudden movement. The shuffling nearby stilled, then became a frantic sort of sound before stopping again. “It’s okay,” Enoch soothed, coming into view. He stepped over me and knelt near my head, facing whatever had been making that sound. “It’s okay. I’m not leaving, alright? He’s… I couldn’t leave him out there. He was gonna call the cops or something and that wouldn’t be good. They’d take you away from me.” “Enoch,” I tried, keeping my voice quiet. My head felt like it was going to explode, and my leg was burning, pain spreading up to my thigh. Nausea threatened as I finally pushed away from whatever I’d been laid against and made in onto my left side. Enoch was kneeling by the woman who’d attacked me. She was curled on a disgusting looking sleeping bag, staring at me with her bloodshot-hollowed eyes. If I hadn’t seen her move, I’d have assumed she was dead. But her fingers uncurled and stretched towards Enoch as they both stared at me. “Enoch, let me help you,” I tried. “I don’t know why you hurt me, but I promise I won’t press charges if you just let me get some help. And get this lady some help.” “They won’t help her,” he snarled. “They’ll take her! They don’t believe me or her. When she—” he closed his eyes, his own fingers curling around hers now. “I’ve been trying, okay? Trying to keep her safe. But he’s strong. And I don’t work like that. I hoped… Fuck!” The woman made a soft, protesting noise. “Sorry, Mom.”

“Mom?” I pushed myself up and almost regretted it, bile surging up my throat and the small, dirty room spinning even after I closed my eyes. “Mom?” “She’s not dead,” he said, sounding like he had a smile in his voice. “I’ve been telling folks, but no one believes me. Just like no one believed her about how we can talk. I tried, Mom. I tried to explain…” She groaned and the shuffling sound came again. I slowly opened my eyes to see she was trying to scoot closer to him but couldn’t get her limbs to move the right way. He sobbed jaggedly before carefully stretching out beside her and brushing her lank, dirty hair back from her eyes. I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say but it sounded like she was soothing him. “Enoch, listen to me—” “No,” he said, sitting up and scooting closer to me. “No, you need to listen, okay? I was hoping Mr. Fellowes could help, okay? He’s the best medium in the world, isn’t he? I was hoping he could get rid of Mason Albright or maybe, I don’t know, break this hold he has on her. On all of them.” He shook his head bitterly and bit his lip. “But I can barely get him to talk to me. It’s like he’s ignoring me, and I’m so fucking pissed!” Shit. “Okay, look, I know Oscar pretty well, okay? And he wouldn’t be ignoring you if he could help it. He wants to help people,” I said, and I knew how true that was even as the words tumbled out. I’d known it after seeing him at work for the first time in New York. Hell, I think I’d even realized it when I saw one of his videos before meeting in person. He wasn’t trying to be famous on purpose, but he was riding the wave, so to speak. He was using his popularity to help others, in his way. Whether he was really talking to ghosts, he was giving some peace of mind and comfort to the grieving and, hell, at worst he was being entertaining when he talked about haunted historical sites. He never demanded payment; he didn’t put on a flashy show about it. He just listened. When he had a séance, he just… listened. He let people have their grief and ed it, let them talk about their dead loved one, and just… listened. A tiny bit of my heart chipped away at that thought, leaving a raw nerve exposed. “He’ll listen to you if he can hear you, okay? So why don’t we head back to the house, and he’ll listen to you.” Enoch snorted wetly. “I’ve been trying. It’s like he’s at the bottom of a well or

something.” He smacked his hands against his temples, grimacing. “This doesn’t work right since she got hurt!” “What doesn’t work right, Enoch?” The woman moaned, reaching for him, trying to pull him back, but Enoch shook her off gently. “Mom and me, we had the Gift.” I could hear the capital. “She said it skipped sometimes and that’s why Pops and MeMaw don’t have it. They couldn’t carry it cuz they weren’t strong enough.” He laughed, manic and high. “She showed me, you know? Tried to show Yancy but he doesn’t have it either. But you know who else did? Fucking Mason Albright. Folks like us, we glom up together. That’s what she told me. We find one another. And Mason, he had it. And he still does. That’s why he can… he can…” He paused, his eyes going wide as he seemed to finally see me again. “Damn it,” he muttered. “I haven’t been paying attention.” He lurched to his feet and thundered past us, into what looked to be an old kitchen with the appliances yanked out. Gas jets dangled limply from the walls and the floor bore deep scratches where heavy things had been dragged. I managed to lean forward far enough to see Enoch had plastered himself to a grimy window, kneeling on an old worktop beside a deep farmhouse sink. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered. “He’s back. Okay, that’s… that’s kind of good, right? That means he ain’t taken anyone else.” “Enoch, what are you talking about?” He didn’t reply, just stayed staring out the window. After a long while, my eyes drifted shut to the steady thrum of pain in my body and I couldn’t open them up for a long while.

It was evening when I woke again. Or I thought it was. It could’ve been dawn, I realized, as I didn’t know how long I’d been there. I was thirsty and had to pee, and my stomach was roiling with nausea. My leg was definitely well on its way to being infected, and the concussion I’d sustained was humming along merrily, making my brain feel like oatmeal. I thought of trying to call Oscar, call 911, call fucking anyone then I ed my phone was out in the field, where the woman had attacked me. The woman who was still curled onto her side a foot or two away, looking and smelling like death warmed over. She had her eyes closed and except for a faint rustle of breath now and then, she was still. Enoch wasn’t at the window anymore but instead sitting in the doorway of what I realized was the pantry where he’d stashed us, blocking our exit. “When I was five,” he said quietly, “I had a dream that I saw Yancy fall into the pool at the community center. He was walking on the edge and slipped, fell straight down into the deep end by the diving board. No one saw him but me. But I wasn’t there, I was dreaming it, right? But I screamed for Mom and told her Yancy was dying, told her he bopped his head on the side of the pool at the rec center and no one was helpin’ him. Pops told me it was a nightmare but Mom, she went all white-faced and I thought she was gonna die, she was shaking so hard. She called 911 and said there’d been an accident at the town pool, and they sent an ambulance. By the time they got there, someone finally saw Yancy on the bottom and dragged him out.” He shifted his gaze to me. “That was the first time I didn’t stay in my body. At least the first time I . When Yancy got home from the hospital and everything was okay again, Mom told me she could do it, too, and it scared people to find that out. And she promised me she’d teach me how to do it. But,” he sniffed, shrugging, “she didn’t know a lot about it. So, we’d look up stuff online sometimes. We found some people like us, but most people who said they could walk out of their heads were full of it, or meant something else like imagining real hard or they had something wrong up here,” he tapped his head. “There’s a few of us though, who can do it. One of the guys Mom talked to online called it Ghosting because really strong ones of us, we can be like ghosts. Make people hear our voices and shit, but they don’t see us.” I nodded carefully, regretting it even as I did it. “And is that… is that how you’ve been communicating with Oscar?”

He looked away, the picture of teenage awkwardness. “Tryin’ to. Mom, she could do it better. And when she helped me, I was good at it. But it got real hard after she died. I tried talkin’ to some of the folks online, but they were all like ‘oh sorry about your mom,’ and some of ‘em suggested talking to a medium like Oscar. He’s got a big fanbase, you know?” “I’m starting to think it’s bigger than CeCe realized,” I muttered. “Huh? CeCe?” “My sister. She’s producing the show we’re making.” Why lie, I thought. Chances were getting better every minute this was going to end badly, so why go out dishonest? Enoch grunted. “Right. Well. He’s pretty well known by, like, real psychics and mediums. Hey, you should tell your sister that they need to make sure not to call him a psychic on the ads and stuff, you know? Psychics are totally different.” “Is that what you think you and your mom are?” I asked, trying my best not to sound like I wanted to die, like I was sure I was going to die. He stared at me, his lips crimping into a deep frown. “We’re not psychics. Psychics can, you know, read minds and shit. We can just…” He waved one hand. “They call it astral projecting but that makes it sound all spacey and woo woo, you know?” I made a thoughtful noise, biting down on my first inclination to explain how astral projecting couldn’t be real because, you know, science. Instead, I asked, “So you and your mom can do this projecting thing and you think maybe Mason Albright could, too?” “No, I know he could. But he’s, like, super good at it, you know?” He sounded almost iring. “He’s figured out how to bring people back with him, or use their space, you know?” He tapped his head again. “Mom figured it out after…” he trailed off. “After stuff happened.” He glanced up and frowned. “Albright stays away from here if I’m here. Or he used to. He’s been trying harder now.” “You, ah, your presence keeps him away?” “Back when she could talk more, Mom was kind of sure he just didn’t want to

hurt a kid. He always waited till they were older, you know? Till they were grown-ups. But I think he’s getting desperate now. He’s almost done.” “Almost done with what?” Enoch sighed, sliding his glance to the woman—I couldn’t believe she was Deborah Carstairs, not if she was supposed to be dead. “Done getting revenge. He’s been killin’ off the families that killed him, you know? It’s just me, Yancy, Pops, and MeMaw left.”

Chapter 12

Oscar

“A gain, Oscar.” I sighed but did as Grandmere bid. Without stopping, I pulled three spirits forth into the circle Grandmere had inscribed on the floor. They were tired, old spirits, nearly worn through with time and their own sorrows. I suspected the man with the heavy, fur-trimmed cloak would be impossible to call next time I tried. None of the spirits seemed to see me, staring off at some distant point only they could recognize. One, a woman in a Regency-era gown, drifted towards Grandmere but it seemed unintentional. She didn’t reach for Grandmere or even pay her any mind. She moved towards the hearth, then paused, bent low, and flickered out of sight, reappearing a moment later in the spot she had been summoned to. The third shade simply stood there, expression deeply grieved, tears streaking their face. They were so worn out I could barely make out their features beyond being vaguely human. If I hadn’t known what I was looking at, I’d have assumed they were a trick of the light. “Now,” Grandmere ordered, “release them.” I nodded, letting the thin thread of power I had holding them in place snap. The woman, midway through her trek to the hearth again, looked briefly annoyed, but then she was gone, and it didn’t matter. “May I rest now, Grandmere? I’m quite hungry.” She sniffed and checked her watch. “It’s not quite time for tea, but I suppose you’ve earned a bit of respite.” She moved past me, breaking the circle with the toe of her shoe, and pressed the bell to summon a living human this time. Within moments, her housekeeper, Sinjun, appeared with a tea cart and a small smile for me. He knew I was always starving, especially when it came to the petit fours his wife Rebecca made and kept stocked in the kitchen. “I took the liberty of bringing tea a bit early, Mrs. Fellowes.”

She nodded curtly. “Very well, Sinjun.” He set about arranging the small tea service, a relic of a much older and larger one that had suffered breakage and loss through the ages. Now, all that was left were a few cups and saucers, discreetly chipped but not good enough for guests to use. It was the one reserved just for Grandmere and me when we shared tea in her study, after my lessons. Whenever Ezra was over, we were relegated to the mismatched mugs and saucers Rebecca kept in the kitchen, ones that didn’t matter if two young boys chipped them when pretending to be pirates and ‘toasting’ one other a bit too hard with our drinks or knocked over while trying to wrestle a Nintendo DS from one another’s grasp to take a turn next. I felt a bit special, using this set with Grandmere. Like I was… not a grownup, really, but possibly someone she could respect when I was one. Today, it felt different. Sinjun arranged our tea and set out the plate of petit fours for me and a small dish of sliced fruit and cheese cut so thin it was nearly translucent for Grandmere before seeing himself out with a murmured promise to return for the items in a bit. Tea with Grandmere lasted precisely half an hour. No more or less. She’d been known to cut someone off mid-sentence if they clock hit the thirty-minute mark and they were still speaking. Grandmere enjoyed structure and was determined to ensure the world around her met her strict standards for order, whether it wanted to or not. Which, I suppose, is why she decided to start me early on my lessons in mediumship, as soon as it became apparent I not only saw ghosts but was quite the dab hand at calling them forth. I nibbled one of the confections—a little white cube done up to look like a present with a red icing bow on top—and wondered if maybe I could get Rebecca to make me a whole pike of these for my birthday coming up in a week. I was so intent on the fantasy of swimming in a pile of cakes so tall I could be fully submerged, I almost missed Grandmere’s pointed sniff. “Yes, Grandmere?” I asked belatedly, setting my petit four down. “When you brought the spirits forth today, it wasn’t difficult for you.” “No, ma’am. It wasn’t.” This wasn’t news to her. She just wanted to make sure I was being truthful. If I hemmed and hawed, said it was a little hard, tried to be

modest about it, she would send me upstairs to practice until I was exhausted, just to teach me not to lie. She nodded to herself before taking a sip of the bitter, dark brew she preferred. “There’s a soiree at the Davises’ next Thursday evening. They have requested my presence. I’ll be bringing you so you can learn how to do what I do.” “I thought I was learning,” I protested. “My lessons—” “Your lessons are preparing you for this,” she said sharply. “You will do as I do. I will teach you how to do this safely, effectively. You will not be like some of the others, inciting fear and… and…” she set down her cup so hard, it sloshed. I’d never seen Grandmere so flustered, and it made me nervous. “When you’ve finished your tea, go to your rooms and start your academics. I’ll not have you falling behind because of this. Is that understood?” “Yes, ma’am.” I snuck two of the cakes with me, not minding at all they were smashed when I got them out in my room later. A few days later, at the Davis soiree, I made my debut as a medium, a small mimic of Grandmere. And that’s how I stayed until she died, and I realized maybe there was more to being a medium than polite messages from dead relatives… “Oi! Oz!” I jerked awake from my uncomfortable half-doze. “Sorry. Christ,” I muttered, scrubbing my hands over my face and feeling the rasp of stubble and an embarrassing sticky patch of drool. “When did they bring you back?” “A few minutes ago,” Ezra said, yawning. “I didn’t think getting brain scans would make you sleepy but here we are.” “It’s not the scans, it’s what led to them,” a nurse said, bustling into the room to check Ezra’s vitals and make a few notes on her tablet. “The doctor will be by on rounds this evening and can go over results with you then but in the meantime, we’re keeping you under observations, alright? Someone from the labs will be

by in a bit to get more blood.” She offered us a tight, professional smile, and hurried out to head to her next room. “I feel like a pincushion,” he muttered, shifting carefully on the bed. “Oz—” I knew what he was about to say. “No. You’re not leaving here until they’re sure it’s all okay.” “You know they’re not going to find shit on those scans,” he groaned. “There’s no test for being possessed, is there?” “Ez, you know there isn’t. But what if it’s not that? Or,” I spoke over his protest, “what if what happened did some damage, hm? We’ve never experienced this before. Maybe it hurt you somehow.” He huffed a breath but was quiet for a long moment. “I know what you’re planning, and I don’t want you going by yourself. I’d rather you take me with you, if you don’t have Julian in tow.” “I might—” “He hasn’t answered his texts, has he? Or calls.” “Don’t look so smug about it,” I muttered. “If you’re going off to hunt him down, then I’m coming with you.” He started to move, but the IV in his arm tugged and he hissed. “Fuck my life.” “Ezra, I promise you, I’m not going to do anything stupid.” “One might argue that talking to dead people is exceptionally stupid, especially when one of them is actively murderous.” That brought me up cold. “What?” “Fuck. Okay. I didn’t want to tell you because—” “Because you’re a massive bell-end,” I muttered. “Because,” he pressed on, ignoring me, “I thought I was making it up the first time. Like maybe my head was just throwing that out there. But in the square…

Ozzy, this ghost, he wants to hurt people. Specific people. It wasn’t just I’m angry and want to do bad things. He had a focus. An intention. And he wanted to have a body to do it.” “I… How is that possible? Even in the few rare cases of possession documented, the spirits can’t force the host to do something entirely against their will.” And I did mean rare—mediums information around. We have our little cliques, sure, where we shit-talk the others sometimes, but general knowledge, like the fact spirit possession is so rare as you can count cases in the past decade on one hand with fingers left over, and what most people think of as possession is channeling, which is a different beast altogether. Ezra blew out a breath that made his fringe flutter and shot me his best, most exasperated, glare. “I know what I felt. And I could hear him thinking, ‘Start with the root to kill the tree,’ and I know he had a specific person in mind, not just… Not just murder for fun or something.” He fidgeted with his sheet for a second before itting, “When you told me you had a ghost talking to you, I was scared. I thought maybe it was the same one, maybe it was trying to trick you somehow and use me to get to you.” He glanced up and asked in a small voice, “Oz, you promise me you’re not gonna follow this ghost blindly and get yourself hurt? Or… or…” “I just… I don’t know what this ghost is doing, Ez. And the fact he can talk to me even when I have this block going on? I don’t know what that means. And that scares me, frankly, but I don’t think he wants to hurt me. Or, for that matter, you.” Ezra fiddled with the sheet again, frowning. “Maybe it’s not so much your abilities are muted but he’s not the kind of ghost we’re used to.” “What does that mean? I think we’ve literally met every type of ghost it’s possible to meet.” I hadn’t kept an official ledger, but I had a decent idea of the variety I’d encountered on my own, with Grandmere, and then later with Ezra. Not to categorize them overmuch, but there were some fairly broad groups I could sort them into, and one of those groups were the unquiet dead. The dead who were angry, even in the afterlife. So angry they could affect the world around them. So angry they could cause physical harm to the living.

The ghosts in Bettina had been in that nebulous category. To be fair, they weren’t alone in that. There were stories the world over, from across virtually all eras, of ghosts harming the living somehow. Usually through things like thrown objects and occasionally scratching or striking. The one common denominator, though, was that the ghosts didn’t kill anyone in these stories. There was a smaller category though, one that people loved to consider for horror movies or made-up stories on camping trips or wherever this sort of thing seemed like a good idea. Ghosts who actively tried to kill. Ghosts who had so much anger, so much hate in them, they were able to manifest enough energy to not only attack the living but end their life. I’d never known it to happen in my personal experiences, but Grandmere had. One day, towards the end of things when she’d had less control over her filter, she’d told me the story of her girlhood neighbor, a sweet older man who had lost his wife to some wasting disease. It took a year of the man being bruised and scratched and terrified in his own home for the truth to come out: he had murdered her, and her ghost wasn’t about to let that go. She killed him with a shove down the stairs, and Grandmere was the only living person who knew it hadn’t been an accident because the man told her after he died. The dead wife knew Grandmere knew and threatened her regularly until Grandmere moved away and never returned to the house in Chelsea. She had feigned indifference to the incident, but I knew she feared angry spirits. Perhaps that’s why she preferred the old lady and poodle party circuit. Far less a chance of murderous spirits during cocktail hour. An uncomfortable thought occurred to me then, watching Ezra avoid my gaze. Had her fears led her to limit my education? Had she held back because she wanted to make sure I was safe, that I could only do the same thing she had? Grandmere had been powerful, perhaps one of the strongest mediums in Europe, but from the moment she knew I was like her, she focused her teaching on showing me how to hold a séance, how to be ‘what they want to see, dearest.’ I glanced down at my attire and felt a bitter twist of humor in my gut. How much of me was me and how much had been carefully nurtured into Oscar Fellowes: Medium by a scared old woman who feared the extent of her own powers, who feared the ghosts who sought her help?

“Oz?” I shook off the growing fugue and forced a small smile. “I need to go back, Ez.” “Don’t let’s do this again,” Ezra groaned. “I need you to trust me, Ezra,” I urged. “And know that I know what I’m doing.” Though I wasn’t entirely sure I did now, not after that disturbing little thought about Grandmere’s teaching. “Do you have a plan of attack here, or are you just going to wander about until you see your fanboy?” “I was thinking… hoping, really…” I trailed off, raising a shoulder in a shrug. “Asking the ghosts,” Ezra sighed. “Of course.” He rubbed a hand over his forehead absently. I don’t think he was even aware of the gesture. “Um, look—” “I’m not summoning, only asking ively,” I promised. “And your block?” he asked, voice flat. “Did it miraculously vanish, Oscar?” “No,” I muttered. “But that… spirit who has been talking to me doesn’t seem bothered by it. He’s been able to talk to me…” “Can’t you talk to him here?” Ezra demanded on a whine. “I’m having a really awful feeling about this, Oz. Like, a feeling.” I nodded slowly. Ezra’s abilities lay more in line with strong empathic ability than anything else, but they weren’t always ‘on.’ When they were in gear, though, he was dead-on. “I promise—” He heaved a sigh. “You can’t promise me you won’t do something stupid, Oz. Because I know you, and I know us. I know ‘doing something stupid’ is kind of our MO. So, get out of here. Just promise me one thing… bring me some decent food later because if hospital food here is anything like it was in New York, it’s gonna suck.”

“Shit.” “Problem, sir?” I glanced up at the young man behind the desk and smiled tightly, the effort hurting my head. “I just realized I don’t have a way back to the place I’m staying. I don’t suppose your town has an entrepreneurial minded wanna-be taxi driver hiding in the ranks?” “Um, no? But we do have the Brandon twins. They’re starting a ride share business. I think one of them is on duty today!” He reached for the desk phone, then paused, his face falling. “Oh, dang, sorry, I forgot. Both of them are at UT for the game this weekend.” “It’s alright. I’ll figure something out.” “Oscar?” Yancy, looking as if he’d just climbed out of the grave himself, stood between me and the exit, jingling his keys in his hand. “I heard you lookin’ for a ride out? Y’all are leaving.” It was a flat statement, not a question. I nodded. “Yes, as soon as I grab our things and Julian, we’ll be gone.” Julian… Fucking hell… Yancy didn’t look interested in my freak out, and I doubted he’d care about the fact I couldn’t get Julian to answer his damn phone, much less a simple text. Now would be a really good time for you to pop in with some good news, mystery ghost. And oh god, that was another crisis, wasn’t it? My ‘friend.’ He wasn’t a ghost at all. My head throbbed with an ice pick-sharp pain, making me hiss and grab at my temple as if I could protect myself from it. The smothering feeling pushing against my abilities was growing excruciating, a physical pain as I forced a smile at Yancy and asked, apologetically, “Could I please get a ride back to the ranch? You won’t even see us leave. We’ll be gone before you know it.” Please don’t let me be a liar. “I’ll even ride in the bed of your truck, and you don’t have to talk to me,” I added desperately. Yancy sighed, wilting in on himself for a moment before making an angry gesture towards the

parking lot. “C’mon. The sooner this is all over…” I nodded, scrambling after him a bit too much like a puppy for my liking. He didn’t slow down, his long legs getting him to his dusty red truck first. He had the AC blasting by the time I fumbled the enger side door open and climbed the wobbly metal step up into the cab. “Thank you,” I breathed, jamming the seat belt into place. “This—” “I don’t want to talk about a damn thing,” he snapped, his usual friendly tone long gone. “Everything was fine until y’all showed up, you know? It was fucking fine!” He swung out of the parking lot and nearly fishtailed, sending me rocking against the enger door. “Now MeMawis… Fuck, she might be dead, okay? She hit her head real bad when she fell. And Enoch is still out there somewhere! What the Hell…” His breath came in a short, choked sob and he shook his head. “Just don’t talk to me, okay? I’m done with this ghost shit. Enoch, his whole life, okay? His whole damn life, he always believed Mom that he had some woo woo special abilities. We all seen Mason Albright, so yeah, we all got it I guess, the whole damn town, but that’s not what she was on about. She told him he was so damn special because he could touch other people. He had this stupid idea he was psychic or something. Said he could talk to ghosts, talk to people…” He sniffed hard, braking at a stop sign and sliding me a sharp glare. “Enoch’s not right, okay? In the head. He’s… he’s always been a little different but we just kind of ignored it because he didn’t have the easiest time growing up. He didn’t fit in at school, didn’t catch on to a lot of stuff like other kids did. He’s real trusting, you know? A sweetheart of a kid. And when Mom died… God, I thought he was gonna off himself. Or just kind of cease to exist.” Someone honked and Yancy jammed on the accelerator, jerking us across the intersection and off onto the curving road that led to the ranch. “Enoch worships you, you know?” My stomach lurched. “I, um, I understood that he was a fan of the show and—” Yancy shook his head sharply again. “Look, I gotta find him. And he thinks he’s some sort of fucking psychic protege and I need you gone faster than fast. If you’re still around when I roust him out of wherever he’s gone to ground, he’s gonna take that as another goddamn sign about Mom or…” he trailed off, shaking his head again. He didn’t speak for the last few minutes of the drive. When we reached the ranch, he didn’t bother parking neatly on the front drive or under the carport, just put on the brakes and motioned for me to go. “I’m gonna

find my brother. You get your… your boyfriend and head on out before I get back. Got me?” I nodded. “Got you.” Yancy stared at me for another moment before sliding out of the truck and striding towards the house. I stopped to fumble for my phone and dial CeCe. It went straight to her voicemail and, as loathe as I was to do it, gave her a precis of the day. I hesitated before deciding to leave out the part about Julian being out of and instead just said I was going to get him and to come meet us at the ranch ASAP. Shoving my phone back in my pocket, I looked up at the house one more time and felt a distinct frisson of watched move through me. For the first time in my life, I wanted to be as far from ghosts as possible.

The bunkhouse was empty, which was at once expected and disappointing. Part of me—a very large part of me—had hoped Julian returned while I was with Ezra at the hospital and was waiting, packed and ready to go. But I’d known in my heart that he wasn’t, despite my fervent wishes otherwise. If he’d been there, he’d have called or texted. Or found a way to get to us. To me. But it took barely a moment of looking at the bunkhouse to know he had left and was either in a hurry or under duress: our bags were half-packed, some of them turned over and the items scattered across the floor and beds. The smell of something rotten (death, dead, moldering) hung in the air. Julian was gone and I don’t know which I was more afraid was the truth: a human had hurt him, or a ghost. Speaking of ghosts… “If you’re listening, my friend, now would be a fantastic time to talk to me,” I muttered. The pressure spiked again, a gasping hot sensation that made me double over, vision blurring from the pain for a moment before I could gather myself and push back. The pressure lessened a bit but left me breathless. I fell back on my arse, sprawling on some of our scattered things, and closed my eyes. My brain felt like it was short-circuiting, a strange mix of pain and exhaustion that felt electrical. I thought of the dream-memory I’d had in the hospital room earlier. I never dream of Grandmere. Not like that. In all the years she’d been gone, she’d deigned to visit me exactly twice. Once, shortly after her ing, to inform me I was not to hold a séance to summon her, ever (which was really unnecessary as she’d also included that in her final directive and it was a topic we’d discussed many times over the years—how we wanted our physical deaths to be handled). The second time had been around the time Ezra and I were planning our trip to the States. She’d come to me in the pokey, little flat I shared with Ez in Sussex, while he and I were packing things up for storage. She hadn’t said a word aloud, but I knew her disapproval when I saw it. She hated that I chose not to live in her home—the home where I’d grown up—and left it to be cared for by her staff. She hated that I wasn’t living as she deemed proper. But she didn’t say a word.

Just stared around at the mess of boxes, at Ezra’s pile of dirty clothes he’d left on the floor by the tumble dryer, then at me. I’d started to ask her a question, to demand to know why she was there now and not when I was in a panic after she died, but a raised brow from her worked as well in death as it had in life, and she’d faded out as I just nodded and sighed. Not important in that moment, anyway, but definitely for me in the long run. Had she stunted me, made sure I was a little cookie cutter of her? She had done that to herself, I was sure of it. The spirit she’d seen when she was a girl, the one who’d scared her so badly, the one who actually killed someone, had made her afraid of her abilities. I was sure of it. She’d said as much on one of her last days. And I was mad at her, mad at myself, for not pushing harder. For letting myself be stunted like that. Rootbound. The further I pushed outside of my safe bubble of séances and the tame ghost hunts Ezra and I had done for our original show, the more I was feeling like I wasn’t as in control as I believed for so long. That maybe I wasn’t what I’d believed. I was a medium, yes, but I didn’t know nearly as much as I should. I had no idea what a ghost like Mason Albright was capable of, if what he was doing was even uncommon. For all I knew, it happened all the time and I just never knew it because Grandmere made sure I wouldn’t. Had my entire life been shaped around her fears, her self-doubt? The pressure came back, and I screamed, the sound torn from my throat and lungs and leaving me panting from breath as I shoved myself onto my hands and knees, then rocked onto my feet. “Stop it,” I snarled, pushing back. Again, Oscar. Grandmere’s voice. Memory or real? Again. I cried out, a sobbing and broken sound I hadn’t made since my parents died, since the night they didn’t come to me to say goodbye. Since the night I went to live with Grandmere. “This is you, isn’t it? Trying to mold me still?”

The pressure dialed back. “No.” I raked the back of my hand over my hot, wet face and grimaced at the gross feeling of snot and tears. “No,” I repeated. “I refuse to let you do this anymore!” A faint whiff of Cornubia and orange blossom, linen water startled me before it faded out just as fast as it’d come. “You cannot do this,” I said. “I can’t do this.” I closed my eyes, trying to unscramble everything in my head and feeling like I was trying to grab onto a slippery rope with wet fingers. Each time I seized on something, it tugged away. “You might have caused people to get hurt,” I said, aiming for stern but sounding, even to my own ears, tired. “Enoch, Julian, Ezra… I’m not good for much, Lord knows, thanks to the fact you kept me from even trying to stretch beyond this, but the one damn thing I can do, you managed to keep me from doing it, didn’t you? Why? For once in your existence, give me an honest answer!” I was shouting, I realized, shouting at the top of my lungs. And on my last word, I felt as if I were burning from the inside out. A hot wash of something raced through me and an orange flash, like what I’d seen with Ezra in the town square, blinded me for several seconds, and the soft sensation of something snapping, hands clapping, pressure releasing, popped somewhere behind my eyes. With the absence of the pressure, which had been a nearconstant since soon after leaving Bettina, came a shock of pain, of loss. The lack of it made every other sensation tenfold more intense. Quiet. Absolute quiet flooded my head. My entire body tingled from the inside out. Then it was done. I was alone. The chaotic quiet in my head had shaken itself out and a susurrus of voices was ramping up, bare whispers turning into urgent pleading and relieved voices. See me, hear me, help me… But one stood out. Stronger, not the strange and staticky sensation of the dead but a whisper in my thoughts. Mr. Fellowes. Oscar. The whisper-rasp of my undead friend was barely audible, but it shivered along my awareness and settle in the base of my skull. “I’m here.” The pressure tried to push again but I flung up a hand. “No,” I spat. “No! Not now, not anymore! If you have something to say to me, face me! I know you can do that! I’ve seen you twice before!” Are you there? I… something’s the matter.

Turning mentally to the voice, reaching out and making that link click, should have been as natural as breathing. I’d been doing it since I was a toddler, if not before. But reaching for my friend, it was a struggle. They slipped and slid out of my grasp, at once too hard and too ephemeral to hold on to. “I can hear you,” I said through my teeth. “I can hear you, but I can’t focus. Talk to me.” Doctor Weems is hurt. He’s in trouble and it’s my fault. He’s coming! Shit, shit, shit! I spun, as if I could see the voice if I snuck up on it, surprised it. The room was empty still, in disarray and smelling of faint rot and wet earth and old blood, and now my panic-sweat and a trace of Grandmere’s perfume. “Where is he? Where are you?” He’s— A rustle of voices bloomed around me a moment before shades shimmered into sight. Two thin and worn-out looking specters, dressed in clothes of a century or two ago, a more recent young man with wild and curling hair and dark, angry eyes, “Oh, fanfuckingtastic. Now I get reception,” I muttered, feeling at once frustrated and guilty. “I don’t suppose I can convince you all to form an orderly queue and take a number? I’m a bit in the middle of something right now.” One of the pale spirits, barely visible, moved forward. “Mason Albright.” “Ah, no, I’m Oscar Fellowes.” The second pale one, even harder to see than the first, ed her in staring at me from close range. “He’s not going to stop. He’s taken so many of us.” The young man’s ghost, a slight foxing around the edges the only sign he wasn’t corporeal, bared his teeth in a grimace. “He’s not like us. He’s… he’s fucked up, man. Just absolutely fucked up.” Mr. Fellowes! He’s coming! “Bollocking bollocks,” I groaned. “Mason Albright seems to be a busy bastard. Ah, pardon me, ladies.”

One of the women, the one who seemed so ephemeral that a blink might wash her out of sight entirely, snorted. “I lived with ranch hands and hard men for my entire life. You think I ain’t heard worse?” “Are you Carstairs’ ancestors?” The man rolled his eyes. “Denning Hudson. My people owned one ranch over, to the east. I was the last of ‘em, though. We clung hard to that tiny piece we were able to keep after Carstairs bought it out from my grandparents but when the war came…” He shrugged, bitter and cold. “Well, Albright’s shade took care of me before any enemy soldiers could. That’s Sarah Carstairs,” he pointed to the palest woman, “and Reba O’Halloran.” “We’re the only ones left,” Ms. O’Halloran said quietly, though I couldn’t tell if it was from sorrow or a sheer lack of energy that she was so soft-spoken. “He took the others.” Her eyes were barely there, slightly darker hollows in her bluewhite-translucent face, but I felt them boring into me. “He’s strong because he takes us, drains us down to nothin’.” For a moment, I thought maybe Texas was having an earthquake because the floor definitely seemed to shift beneath me, the entire bunkhouse tilting. I realized no; I was dizzy, off kilter at her implications even as I dug into my training, my knowledge (my apparently limited, maybe even very wrong, knowledge). “I don’t… That’s impossible,” I protested weakly. “Ghosts can’t do that.” Hudson was suddenly in my face, anger pulsing off him in heavy waves. “You don’t know jack about ghosts, Mister Fellowes,” he sneered. “I’ve seen you, seen you when I tried to get that boy to hear me. Him watching those… those videos you make. Talking to the dead like that with your little friend.” He spat, or he would have had he had saliva. He seemed momentarily startled that his gesture had no effect before looming over me once more. “You don’t know jack shit, Mister Fellowes. And we wish to God we didn’t.” Help! I jerked at the rasp-scream of my friend’s voice. “I need to go,” I breathed. “Someone…” The bunkhouse door swung open and, for one long moment, Grandmere stood

there, shadowed by the setting sun behind her. “You’ll learn the hard way, Oscar. Don’t beg for my help when this falls apart.” And she faded, leaving me alone with three ghosts who had gone quiet. “He’s here,” Ms. O’Halloran murmured. “He’s here…”

Chapter 13

Julian

Watching Enoch pace the dilapidated kitchen was dizzying. I could barely track him, my eyes wanting to roll and close rather than focus. Behind me, the woman was restless, weakly kicking her legs back and forth on the mildewed sleeping bag, clawing at the fabric with her fingers, and making tiny noises with a broken cadence. “Enoch, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” I tried again. I’d told him, maybe too bluntly, that his great-grandmother had taken a fall at the house. That I’d only been there for Deborah (he seemed so sure it was her) to find because I couldn’t go in the ambulance with Ezra, who’d been having some sort of seizure issues. Enoch had laughed darkly at that, told me that wasn’t what was wrong, but his grim mood had swung to panic when I mentioned his great-grandmother. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” His voice was shrill, and he was tugging at his hair in what was surely a painful way, fistfuls of it just yanked with each word. “He did it! He did it to her! Shit! I should’ve been there! But then he’d have come for Mom! Shit!” “Enoch, please,” I tried again. “Panicking isn’t going to help you, right? Let’s take a breath.” “Shut up,” he snapped. “Just shut up a minute!” He threw his head back and took several gulping breaths. “Shut up,” he repeated, but it seemed more to himself than to me or Deborah. “Help,” he whispered. “He’s coming…” He squeezed his eyes shut tight and rocked back onto his heels before coming down hard on the flat of his feet. He was chanting help and he’s coming and hurry over and over until the words blurred together and, finally, he stopped on a deep, sucking gasp. “He can’t hear me!” “Um, try someone else?” I got to my hands and knees and hung there a moment, my stomach heaving. Only thin bile came up, splattering on the dirty floor and leaving it none the worse for wear.

“Like it’s a freakin’ chat room,” he muttered. “You said your mom was strong in it, right? And you were too, before she, um, got hurt? So why don’t you try again? Reach down to whatever it is that makes you able to do it and grab on, give it a try.” A few months ago, I’d have told him to stop it, to get himself together but… Who was it hurting? It was even possibly helping because it distracted him from me, and I was able to push onto my knees then, letting dizziness wash over me for a minute as he tried to talk to Yancy, from the sound of things. “Like a brick wall,” he muttered. “Too much like Pops.” He shook his head and his tone changed to sweet and caring. “MeMaw, MeMaw, MeMaw,” he whispered over and over. “MeMaw, can you hear me? Hey, MeMaw!” Enoch froze, his eyes flying open and head snapping up. “She’s not there.” He jerked his head to face me. “She’s not there! It’s not even like Yancy is a brick wall! She’s a blank spot! Fuck!” He kicked at the wall, the boards splintered with rot and wet drywall mushing under his heel. “Hey, hey, hey!” I was terrible at soothing. CeCe would attest to that. When we were kids and one of us got hurt, I was the tough-love twin. You won’t bleed to death from a scraped knee. A plain bandage works just as good as a cute one. Stop getting snot on me, it’s just a splinter, geez… But now, I figured, was as good a time as any to dredge up my dormant empathy gene and turn it on for Enoch. “You’re pretty stressed out right now, Enoch. Studies have shown stress has a negative impact on ability.” I was generalizing like a champ, but he was paying attention. At least a little. “Oscar even has problems when he’s stressed, you know?” “He’s the best freaking medium ever,” Enoch protested, sounding scandalized. “How can he have problems from something stupid like being stressed out?” I struggled to my feet, clutching the pantry door frame for as I tried to stay upright. “I don’t know how y’all’s abilities are supposed to work, but if you’re feeling frantic and frustrated, I know that can definitely affect how things like thinking and even physical performance work. When Oscar isn’t able to focus, sometimes it’s hard for him to talk to ghosts. He has to take a minute and recenter himself.” That wasn’t a lie. I’d seen him do these resets after a particularly intense reading, before moving on to the next person. We’d had to do some promo for UnReality and Oscar filmed a few ‘casual’ séances with

carefully vetted-by-the-channel questioners. One or two had been unhappy with what Oscar said and he’d needed a few minutes of quiet to just center and, in his words, let himself feel okay with what he’d ed along. “If Oscar can be affected by stress, and he’s a full-grown man who’s been doing this for most of his life, wouldn’t you be impacted by it too?” “Because I’m a kid?” he sneered. “Because you’re tired. And yes, you’re a kid. And you shouldn’t be alone in this, Enoch. Let me help you. Let me help you find someone you can talk to about this.” He was quiet for a long moment, then, “Maybe Oscar?” “Maybe,” I allowed. At that point I’d have offered to resurrect Houdini himself if it meant Enoch would help me back to the Carstairs place and call for help. He was quiet again, then nodded. “Okay. Okay. But the problem is… he’s out there.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the dirty kitchen window. “He’s out there and he’s not gonna let us get far. And I can’t let him take her, Doctor Weems. I can’t let him take her from me. Not if there’s a chance I can get her okay again.” I looked at the woman behind me. I wasn’t a medical doctor, but I knew there’d be no helping her at this point. She was on borrowed time. Her breathing was shallow and very slow, her eyes unfocused… I nodded at him. “Okay. Can you carry her?” “Doctor Weems, he’s gonna try for you,” Enoch said urgently. “He’s angry, and he wants to do some really bad things. And if I’m fast enough, he’ll go for you first.” I wanted to ask what speed had to do with anything if we were talking about a ghost. From what little bit I’d gleaned from Oscar and just pop culture in general, I didn’t think ghosts were bound by something as mundane as how fast they could run. Instead of arguing, I just made a noise of agreement. “Well, better me than you, I suppose.” He choked wetly, turning his face away. “I’m real sorry, okay? And if he… if he uses you, he probably won’t use you up. He needs the energy too bad for him to

just like blow the wad, you know?” “Er, charming phrase, and okay. Let’s just go, Enoch.” At that point I’d have agreed to crawl naked through broken glass if it meant we got out of there and got to the Carstairs place. Enoch helped me into the kitchen proper and went to pick up Deborah. She moaned and tried to fight him, but he lifted her with little effort. She was literally skin and bones, from the looks of things, and couldn’t weigh over sixty or seventy pounds. Her head lolled towards me and her bloodless, cracked lips parted in a grimace that might have been an attempt at a smile. “Follow me carefully,” Enoch said. “The place is shot to hell, but it’s safer than leaving her outside.” He led us out of the kitchen and into a narrow, short corridor that smelled so strongly of mildew, I gagged. It burned my nose as we made our way down the wet, spongy carpet and into a large foyer. Deborah rattled out a moan and started to fight weakly in Enoch’s arms, turning her face against his chest and making wet, hacking, broken sounds in her throat. “Sorry, Mom,” he murmured, jostling her like a fussy baby. “We’re gonna go fast, okay? Don’t look up.” He glanced back at me, nodding at the remains of a wooden chandelier hanging overhead, one of those that looked like a wagon wheel and was stereotypical ‘western ranch’ style. “Dewayne Hicks topped himself there,” he murmured. “Mom found him and…” he closed his eyes. “I was following her, you know, like a ghost? With that projection? She’d been upset all day and I wanted to help her and she found him and…” He hiccoughed on a sob. “And when I came runnin’ after I saw what she did, she was gone. And Dewayne Hicks was on the ground. Rope broke,” he added, sniffing in an affectation of a tough guy ‘eh, who cares?’ attitude. “I think she really liked him special,” he added. “She was real upset when Pops didn’t let her see him again.” Deborah’s moans were frantic, her fingers plucking at Enoch’s shirt fruitlessly. “Okay, okay,” he soothed. “Sorry, Mom. Doctor Weems didn’t know. And he needs to know why… why this is going on, okay?” “Enoch,” I began, but the house groaned around us. Not settled, not ‘made a weird noise like an old house,’ not wind ing through holes in the roof. Groaned. A heavy, tired, sad, but angry noise like the house itself was tired of our shit and ready for us to go. The front door, hanging by a single hinge, swung

inwards and dropped off, crashing to the floor and making us jump. “Shit,” I gasped. Enoch nodded. “Uh huh. He doesn’t want us going. He wants us scared.” “Why do you think that?” “He’s done this before. When I brought Mom here to hide her, when she refused to get near home, he tried to drive us out. But if I kept Mom back in the kitchen, he didn’t get so het up. I think…” he trailed off, looking a little embarrassed at his own theorizing, “I think it’s because this part of the house was his one time, you know? But the Hicks family added the kitchen in like the fifties. That was never part of the original house.” As if on cue, the house rattled out another groan. “Let’s move,” I said. “Today’s been shitty enough without dying under a pile of rubble.” Enoch adjusted his hold on Deborah and, after taking a deep breath, marched towards the open door. “When we get separated—and we will—keep runnin’ across the old cow field, okay? There are two fences. One of ‘em is gonna be hard to see because it’s half-fallen down. It’ll hit about knee high on you and it’s barbed wire so keep an eye out. The other is split-rail and when you hit that one, you’re at the property line. Get over it and you’ll be back on Pops’ land.” I nodded. “Lead the way.” Enoch stepped onto the sagging porch, looking fearfully towards the tree line past the house, and sucked in a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said again, and took off at a loping run with far more ease than anyone carrying deadweight should be able to do. I lurched after, leg and head screaming for me to stop, threatening to take me down with every step. I glanced down the old drive leading to the road where we’d broken down not so long ago but what felt like a different lifetime. For a moment, I considered heading for the road, flagging down help, but the drive was long and overgrown. If I stayed behind Enoch, there was a better chance of reaching help instead of waiting for a car to and hoping they stopped for a beaten, bloody man waving at them like a mad thing. Enoch was already in the cow pasture by the time I made it to the edge of the front yard. And something was moving in the pecan grove between the house and the road, the one I’d seen

someone moving in the other day while trying to get a signal on my phone. Pushing myself faster, I made it to the edge of the high grass before the dark shape broke free from the trees and headed for me. Enoch’s wordless shout told me he saw it, too, and gave me a burst of speed I knew I’d pay for soon. Enoch disappeared from sight, dipping down with the slope of the land, and I found the first fence. It hit me across the legs, just above the knees as Enoch had guessed it would, and I tumbled face-first, the sharp thorns of metal tearing through my jeans and into my skin with a hot-sicking tug. My scream was raw and loud. I was unable to stop it as I rolled onto my back, the feeling of warm blood spilling down my legs as the shape loomed over me and resolved into a man with a grim, unpleasant smile and dark, narrowed eyes taking me in thoughtfully. “Not my first choice,” he muttered. “But you’ll do.” Everything hurt and felt wrong. My already mushy head was suddenly too full, too frantic, then it all snapped quiet, and I was left feeling like I’d been shoved into a bag and tucked away in a corner. I could hear the world around me, but I couldn’t speak. I could see, but it wasn’t the way I usually did. Everything was a blur, like I was using someone else’s eyes. I’m going to miss Oscar, I thought as everything seemed to close in around me and the smothered-trapped feeling melted into a haze where I hung like a bug in a web. I think I might love you, Oscar, I thought as I finally sank down into whatever was happening.

Chapter 14

Oscar

Iwalked out of the bunkhouse, following the wisps of the two ladies and Hudson’s stalking gait. Everything was normal out there—birds being loud, the rattle-hum of insects in the dry grass, and very distantly the rumble of trucks on the highway, miles away. It felt wrong, like there should be some ominous clouds overhead, or silence pressing in. “You’ve always been dramatic,” Grandmeresniffed, coming into view beside me. “I only tried to save you from yourself.” “We’re doing this now?” “Well, you’re the one insisting upon making a scene. Really, Oscar. I shouldn’t still be having to guide you at this stage. If you’d stayed to what you’d been taught—” “Then I’d be living a lie. Like you were.” Grandmere, wearing her favorite pantsuit and glittering with her favorite jewelry, glared at me imperiously from the bunkhouse porch. “Impudent brat,” she muttered. “Your mother’s influence. She was too soft when it came to your abilities. To our abilities.” I refused to rise to the bait. It was tempting, though. Mother had been kind, if a bit distant, and loved me in her way, but when it came to my mediumship, she’d treated it as a sweet party trick and said it made her nervous if I did it too often around her. When she ed, I didn’t try to her because I didn’t want to scare her. “Why are you doing this to me,” I asked. “You’ve been the one blocking me.” It wasn’t a question—I already knew the answer. “That spectacle in New York was gauche, Oscar! It was beyond gauche, if such a

thing is even possible!” She stepped off the porch as if she were still alive, moving fluidly and keeping every shred of grace and to the manor born snobbery she’d had in life. “It was shameful, whoring yourself out like that. And if I’ve taught you nothing else, it’s respect for what we do!” “Whoring?” Hudson muttered. “Sounds like you had a lot more goin’ on than chatting with us poor spooks, huh?” “Hush,” I hissed at him. Grandmere arched her dark brows at me. “Can you see them?” I asked. She inclined her chin, her nose wrinkling in distaste. “First lesson, Oscar: Don’t speak to that which is not summoned.” “You taught me to close down parts of my ability for your comfort. Because of your fears,” I cried. “And now people are suffering because I don’t know what to do!” “Really,” she sniffed. “What you need to do is keep out of it. You were not asked to handle anything. These ghosts are not under your hand—” “I don’t understand,” I said, my tone more frantic than not. “Grandmere, what do you mean, under my hand?” My stomach lurched and I wanted to just curl around it, reset my entire day, Hell, my entire month. Maybe the year. “You didn’t teach me everything,” I challenged. “You kept so much from me. I know it. You were afraid, though, and I’m not mad at you for being afraid.” “I taught you what was necessary,” Grandmere said with more than a hint of frost in her tone. “I taught you what was safe. I love you, Oscar, even if you don’t believe that. And I protected you. You’re spitting in my face, trying to step away from those teachings!” “Please,” the spectral Ms. Carstairs murmured. “Please stop!” She shimmered, going nearly see-through before snapping back into focus. She looked like she felt ill, her features drawn and pinched as her spectral jaw worked. “He’s going to take us,” she gritted out. I’d never known a ghost to experience pain, but she seemed to be in the throes of something bad, something that was hurting her. “You’re fighting with that old biddy and—” she broke off on a ragged cry. “Oh!” “Old biddy!” Grandmere shrieked, losing her cool exterior. “How dare—”

Ms. O’Halloran and Hudson crowded me as Ms. Carstairs swooped and Grandmere drew herself up imperiously. “Listen to me,” Ms. O’Halloran insisted in her reedy voice, “Albright is going to kill us. I mean, again!” Hudson nodded. “He’s been taking us out since his own death. He’s… he’s not like us. He pulls on us, on our, what’s it, on our energy, you know? Like draining a battery dry.” He glanced at Ms. O’Halloran. “You know what a battery is, right?” “I’m dead, not stupid. I see things. Or I did.” She turned her translucent face to me, and I realized she looked like she was crying. “The only ones left from the founding families, the ones who… who did Albright wrong, are the Carstairs. Once he’s done with them, he… Well, I doubt he’ll move on like he says he will.” “How is he drawing on you? I don’t understand,” I protested. “How is that even possible?” Grandmere broke away from her fight with Mrs. Carstairs. “It’s nothing you should concern yourself with,” she snapped at me. “It’s not what we do, Oscar. This projecting, this draining is vulgar and beneath us.” “For the love of god,” I groaned. “Grandmere! This isn’t some goddamn dame and poodle party! People are literally dying! I know you were—you are—afraid but… but I need help. Please. Please, Grandmere. Help me.” She stared at me for a very long moment. I could almost pretend she was alive again, so vibrant and real she seemed. But then she shimmered and frowned. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t think I should encourage this. You’re refusing to follow the path I laid for you. The safe path. The right one. I will not be party to your self-destructive tendencies.” She was gone. I felt her leave in a huff and snap. I wanted to cry like a child and demand she come back, demand she help me. Instead, I pulled myself up and turned to the remaining three ghosts. “I don’t know how to help you. I’ve never faced someone like Albright. Hell, all I’ve done is be the middle man for communication. I don’t know what Albright is, what he’s doing to you.” “Stop him,” Hudson said quietly. “Enoch, bless his heart, he’s been trying but he doesn’t know the first thing about what to do. Less than you, even. But he’s been

trying. We don’t want to disappear like the others. We want to go to whatever’s next. We deserve that. We didn’t kill Albright—that was our ancestors. But we’re paying for what they did in ways you cannot imagine. This,” he waved a hand at himself, at the ladies, at the ranch, “this is our Hell, slowly diminishing until he’s done using us up, then…” He shook his head. “Then we’re just gone. There’s no crossing over, there’s no haunted houses. Gone.” A low, keening sob—very alive, very human—broke over us and the ghosts vanished from sight, though they lingered still. Out of the cow pasture lumbered Enoch, sweaty and dirty and carrying a bundle of—no, not a bundle! A person! “Enoch!” I broke into a run towards the split-rail fence as he heaved himself against it. He shoved his burden at me and sank to his knees. I grabbed for them automatically, nearly recoiling in horror when I saw who—what—I was holding. A dead woman. A dead woman who rattled out a coughing moan and tried to reach her hand for my face. My shriek was loud and tore at my throat as I staggered back. “Don’t drop her!” Enoch cried. “It’s my mom! Don’t hurt her!” I fell back into the dust, clutching the woman to me as if my arms had locked at his words. She smelled, God how she smelled! And she looked weeks dead, but she was moving, making sounds. Reaching for Enoch. “Shit, son.” I looked up, fully expecting David Carstairs but realizing, belatedly, it was a different man entirely. It was the man I’d seen in the photo at the diner. The man I’d caught a glimpse of before. Mason Albright. “I wish you’d gone already. I don’t like collateral damage, as they call it. I wanted to be nice and clean, get this over with.” He sucked his teeth, dropping down into a crouch to touch Deborah’s face. She moaned and writhed, surprisingly strong for someone in her condition. “Aw, girlie, you’ve been real helpful. More than I’d expect from a Carstairs,” he chuckled. The sound was grating and perverse, gallows humor out of place.

“I’m sorry,” Enoch sobbed, but I didn’t know if he meant me or Deborah. He crawled frantically between the slats of the fence, reaching for her even as Albright stroked her face. Enoch could see him—I knew he could, by the way he flailed at the spectral fingers, trying to brush them away from his mother. “I can’t make him leave her alone. He’s… he’s…” I nodded. “Enoch, take her. Move her away, okay?” I didn’t know if it would help but it would get him away from us, from Albright and whatever he was trying to do. Albright smirked. “You’re a funny one, little man.” The crunch of tires on gravel and the sound of David Carstairs shouting erupted in front of the main house. He had pulled up in his truck and was thundering across the yard towards us, Yancy sprinting from the house at the commotion. “Get off my property,” Carstairs shouted. “Get away from my grandson or I swear to God, I’ll have you arrested. I’ll—” His sudden stop would’ve been comical in almost any other circumstance. He and Yancy saw Enoch at the same time, his tear-streaked and snotty face twisted in pain, mouth open on a sobbing scream as his mother thrashed and heaved between us. “She,” David gasped, going a shade of gray that spoke only of bad things. “She…” He pitched onto his knees. “Oh my god… Oh my god, no!” “Mom,” Yancy’s voice was strangled, a bare whisper. “Oh no… No, Enoch, no! Where did you… Where was she?” he asked, voice ragged. He couldn’t take his eyes off his mother, but he went to Enoch’s side and pulled him into a rough embrace, pressing Enoch’s face against his chest as if, by hiding his eyes, he could keep him from the horror of what was happening, what had happened. Albright smiled up at me. His energy pulled at me, like he was sinking fingers inside my chest and rummaging around. Never in my life had I felt something like this, even in my most intense encounters with spirits. He could touch me, I realized. Touch whatever made up my soul, my spirit, my energy. He was trying to… to what? His touch squeezed and I gasped. “No,” I shouted, pushing back against him. There was that glow again, quick and hot, and he was gone. Deborah was shaking as David screamed into a phone for help, Yancy was rocking back and forth with Enoch clutched to his chest. I scooted back, my stomach cramping and hands shaking.

“Your friend,” Enoch said, muffled. “He’s… he’s gonna come. And I tried but I don’t know what to do!” He shoved himself away from Yancy and found me, his eyes wild and panicked. “I tried to talk to you, but you couldn’t hear me,” he said, voice catching. “How,” I asked. “I suspected but… how?” He shook his head. “What was keeping me out? How can you let ghosts in but not me?” He dashed at his face again and Yancy pulled him back, turning hard eyes on me. I shook my head—I don’t know what he means. I was suspecting maybe I did, though. Maybe I did know more than I thought. “Enoch, are you… were you able to reach out to me?” “That’s what I said!” He growled in frustration, the sound twisting into a ragefilled scream. “Fuck!” “Oscar.” “Oh, thank god,” I gasped. Julian was hurrying across the field towards us. “Where have you been? The gh—Enoch,” I corrected, now that I knew, “said you were in trouble and—” And he was. He still was. He was moving wrong. Not like an injured man, not entirely. That I’d expected. He was limping on the injured leg, favoring that side as he reached the fence, but it was only as he got closer that I realized he was holding himself stiffly, arms twitching at his sides. His face was contorted into a mockery of his usual expression. “Oscar, you should’ve just gone. But I guess I can thank you and your friends,” Julian said. No, Mason, it was Mason, using Julian’s body like he’d tried to use Ezra. “All I need is here now. And I can finally, finally rest.” He started to climb over the fence, but Julian must have fought him, pushed back against him, because his body jerked back and he flailed, scratching at his arms, his face, like he was trying to rid himself of bugs on his skin. With a yowl, Mason surged forward, overpowering any fight Julian tried to put up and climbing sloppily over the fence. Julian was covered with gashes and blood coated his legs, an angry, seeping wound on his leg that looked suspiciously like a bite mark, ed by deep gashes and furrows on his thighs. The angry goose-egg on his forehead was purple and black and worryingly close to his eye. “Julian,” I whispered. “No, no, no, no, no…” He couldn’t handle this! How the Hell could he be okay after this? I made a movement towards him, but

Enoch grabbed me before I could get to my feet. “Let me go!” “Enoch, let go,” Yancy barked. “No! He’ll take Mom! He’ll take her!” “Shut him up,” Carstairs shouted. “Shut him up!” Mason made it to our knot of people and swayed on Julian’s feet. Then, he just dropped. His entire body folded down, and he was a heap on the ground. I didn’t have time to consider what was coming because it was so fast. Julian went down, and Deborah surged up with a wet, horrible scream. She grabbed her father by the ears and dragged his face down in some parody of a horror movie, Carstairs thrashing away from her as Yancy shouted out in fear, pulling a screaming, crying Enoch back towards the bunkhouse. “No! Mom, stop! Stop!” Enoch broke free and ran hard at Deborah and his grandfather, tackling them both. He wrapped his arms around her and rolled back, trying to pull her away from Carstairs, who sat in stunned, bleeding shock at the sight of his dead daughter fighting her son. Julian groaned and it spurred me into motion. “Julian, move, move, move,” I begged. “Get out of the way!” “Help her,” Enoch shrieked. “Mr. Fellowes, please! He’s using her all up! Help!” Fuck. I waded into the fray, now with Yancy trying to pull Enoch away even as Enoch clung tight to his mother. “Mason Albright, you’ve caused enough harm,” I said, voice shaking slightly. I found Deborah in the tangle of limbs and grabbed onto the back of her neck and opened myself up, reaching for Mason Albright. He was twisted up inside whatever made Deborah, Deborah who was really more dead than not. She’d been slowly peeled away until all that was left was closer to dead than alive. I closed my eyes and shoved at my walls, pushing out the barriers I’d learned early on to keep in place, to filter out chatty dead. I could practically feel Grandmere’s irritation and disappointment as the last of those walls pulled down and I could fully grasp Mason Albright’s ghost, twisted and tangled in Deborah Carstairs’ energy. “There you are,” I panted, my headache reaching incredible proportions as his presence hit me—unfiltered and raw. “I thought maybe it’d be a bit poetic to use the last of her energy up, killin’ him.”

Mason slipped free of Deborah and moved up, floating just a bit above her as I pulled back. “Things get kinda dull, waiting for justice when you’re dead. Deborah’s not gonna have to wait long to find out, is she?” he laughed. “She ain’t got but a sip or two left. Folks like her, like you, like your friend Ezra, y’all are like bright fires in the dark. Folks like me…” He grinned. “I’d call myself a regular Prometheus, but I don’t like how his story ended.” He tapped his temple, giving me a wink. “That fella of yours, he’s got himself a trove of stories kickin’ around in his skull. Regular library in there.” “Punished by the gods for hubris sounds fairly accurate in this case,” I panted. Mason chuckled, then quick as a thought, was gone and Julian was moving again. “Shit!” I was on Julian before he could rise to his knees. “I’m sorry,” I breathed. “I don’t know if this hurts or not, but I’m so, so sorry!” Mason fought me hard, but Julian was stronger than I thought. Mason was struggling to hide but it wasn’t working. He pushed against me, trying to pull away from my reach as I let my ability stretch. I heard Julian gasp, and Mason Albright was in my face, snarling and shouting. “You will not stop me,” he screamed. “I’ve waited too long for this! Do you know what it’s like to have your life stolen from you, to have to suffer for decades and watch your killers piss away your legacy? I don’t want your blood on my hands, but I’ll take it!” “No!” Deborah’s ripping, wet cry brought silence across the yard. “No!” she rasped again, and she was struggling forward, cadaverous and horrifying but something alive in her eyes as she reached up and flung her arms wide. I don’t think anyone else could see what I saw, the bright flare of marigold-bright light that spread out from her as she grasped at Mason Albright, her body arching backwards as he disappeared into her. “Mom,” Enoch and Yancy both shouted, rushing forward. Deborah fell and rolled weakly onto her back. “Mom,” Yancy was crying, sobbing over her. “Mom, no, no, Mom,” he chanted, patting at her face, grabbing her hands, Enoch shook his head. “No, no! Help her! Help her!” he screamed, voice raw and nearly the rasp I’d heard in my head for the past few days. “Help me,” he whispered. “Oh god…” Deborah was shaking. She managed to focus on her boys and her lips twitched

into maybe a smile. “L… Lo…” Then she was quiet. Gone. I felt the shift in the energy, felt her leave, and Mason Albright was gone with her. Wherever she had gone, whatever she had done, she’d taken him too. “No,” Enoch moaned, rocking back and forth. “No, no, no…” “Deborah,” Carstairs whispered, finally speaking for the first time in several long minutes. “Deborah, I didn’t know, Deborah…” “Are you Oscar Fellowes?” “Fucking Hell, this place is undead grand central,” I groaned, canting my head up to see a middle-aged man, wearing fairly modern clothes and looking infuriated. “I am.” “Fucking finally. I’m Dewayne Hicks. This asshole,” he jabbed a finger at David Carstairs, “fucking hanged me in my own goddamn house!” I turned my head to look at Carstairs. “You’re the one who killed Hicks,” I said. “You?” Carstairs was too shocked, too shaken, to argue. “I had to. He was gonna ruin everything. He’d found evidence about what our families had done. Not just rumors, real honest to God proof. And he was gonna sell it to some macabre collector. He’d run his family farm into the ground and wanted the money. He… he taunted me about it. Seemed excited by the idea of a scandal.” Carstairs shook his head, staring at Deborah’s twisted, desiccated remains. “We’re barely hanging on to this place by the skin of our teeth. Rumors would’ve ruined us.” “Not old ones like that,” I whispered. “Mr. Carstairs…” “I couldn’t let him tell a soul. The… the letters… I destroyed them afterwards.” “Mom saw him,” Enoch growled. “She saw his body. And Mason Albright saw her. He wanted her light, her strength, and he took it!” Enoch flew at Carstairs,

beating him with his fists, kicking him and howling in rage. No one moved to stop him. I edged to Julian and felt his pulse. It was slow but strong, and he was breathing. Bloody, beaten, traumatized to Hell and back, but alive. The crunch of gravel again made me look up and it was a large silver SUV rolling up the drive slowly, like whoever was driving was uncertain if they were at the right place. I knew when we’d been spotted, though, because the enger door flew open and CeCe shot out, not caring about her red bottomed shoes and her designer outfit as she flew across the grass and dirt, shouting her brother’s name. I sobbed once, quietly, and laid my head on his chest. Finally. Finally.

Chapter 15

Julian

Ididn’t much of the ranch. Or much of anything else until we were on the road. It was like coming out of deep water. First, I could parse a change in light, then sounds went from dull whispers to muffled speech to louder than I thought necessary. By the time Harrison did a pretty nifty slide-turn into the hospital parking lot, I was conscious and considering how mad CeCe would be if I ruined the nice Christian Siriano jacket she had on. I guess I’d find out because that handbrake turn did nothing good for my nausea. “Oh my god, Julian! Ew!” My sorry, Cec was lost in the upholstery as I pressed my face against the back of the seat, trying to stop everything from spinning around me. The police flew past us as we headed into town to the hospital. The desk nurse quirked her brow at us as Harrison, Oscar, and CeCe manhandled me into the lobby, where Ezra was jittering nervously. “Aren’t you supposed to be in room twenty?” the nurse asked Ezra. “Um. Yes? But I heard the chatter that ‘some English guy got himself beat up at the Carstairs place’ and I knew…” he looked at Oscar, then did a double take back to me. “Holy shit!” Cec snorted. “Get him back in there then.” “We’ll even get you an escort,” the nurse said. She hit a button by her computer to page orderlies to the lobby. Ezra was whisked away, Oscar in tow, to get more scans done. The official story seemed to be he had a seizure and hit his head. CeCe, Oscar, and I pretended not to notice when Harrison tried to follow before stopping himself and sitting down hard in one of the waiting room chairs.

I was taken back to an exam pod and then itted to a room for observation and a thorough cleaning of my leg wounds, then scans for my head injury which was declared a ‘nasty bump but looks like you’ll survive.’ Harrison reported back that Oscar was given a once-over and declared fine, not even a scrape on him despite the 911 call about ‘some English dude getting his ass beat.’ That must’ve been wistful thinking on Carstairs’ part, I thought, probably calling the cops as soon as he’d seen Oscar with Enoch and not knowing what was about to happen. When CeCe was finally allowed back to see me, she caught me up on everyone’s situation. “Ezra’s back in his room,” she said without preamble. “Harrison whipped out the legalese to smooth things over, but I’m pretty sure it only worked because everyone is too damn tired to give a shit right now. Oscar’s glued to his side. No signs of brain injury, but his electrolytes are off and he’s sleeping like the dead. No pun intended.” I nodded. “Occupational hazard, accidental puns about death.” “So.” She settled into the guest chair and offered me a sip of her iced coffee. “Where’d you get that in this town at this time of night?” “I know people. And Harrison offered to pop over to Reefter. They’ve got a Bucee’s so he picked me up a coffee and got some fresh clothes. Don’t you love my truck stop fashion?” she asked, holding out one arm. For the first time I realized she wasn’t in her dirty clothes but a pair of stiff, unflattering jeans and a red tshirt with the truck stop’s beaver logo on it. Fucking Buc-ees. It wouldn’t be rural Texas without one every hundred or so miles. “Tres chic, non?” “I must be tired not to have noticed that when you walked in.” “It’s the coffee,” she confided. “It mesmerized you.” She held out the massive cup and let me take a long sip, not even making a face about brother cooties when I hand it back, half-drunk. “So,” she began again, “what the fuck was all that?” For a long, quiet moment, answers tumbled around in my thoughts ranging from snarky to flat out maniacal laughter. Finally, I aimed for blunt honesty. “I’m still figuring it out,” I itted.

“Better think fast because you’re gonna get questioned in a bit. Harrison tried to put them off, but the local authorities want to put out the fires before they get going. Carstairs apparently told the officers who showed up he’d killed Dewayne Hicks around the time Deborah ran off and now all hell’s broken loose. They had to call in the state troopers because Budding isn’t equipped to handle this. Apparently, they average one murder per year, usually after someone’s been drinking and feels hard done by.” She let out a low whistle before taking a sip of her iced coffee. “I wish y’all had filmed this,” she sighed. “This would’ve been a fucking epic episode.” “Cecily,” I said, horrified. “Seriously?” “Sorry. I know. Shitty thing to say. Let’s pretend I didn’t do that, and I’ll just have to live with the fact I turned into my ex-husband for a minute.” She worked the straw in her coffee and finally fixed me with a familiar, loving glare. “You scared me, asshole.” I nodded. “I’m sorry.” “When I saw you laying there… Julian, you looked dead,” she itted with a hitch in her voice. “I thought for sure…” The pause stretched into an uncomfortably long silence before CeCe sighed again. “You’re not allowed to die before me. FIFO. First in, first out, ? I’m the older twin so I get to die first and haunt you, then make your afterlife miserable because you ignored all the messages I left you in the intervening years during which the world mourned the loss of the good twin.” “Just FYI, if I wasn’t feeling like hammered dog shit right now, I’d noogie you.” “You haven’t noogied in me ten years,” she laughed wetly. “Don’t talk about dying first and I won’t have to start up again.” I laid my hand atop hers where it rest on my hospital bed and noticed, for the first time, her fingers were bare. “Your rings?” “Ah. Well. Jacob had given them to me, not just my wedding set. Couldn’t stand the idea of keeping them so I sold them and donated the money to the Annie Fund.” She fidgeted, not quite meeting my eyes. “Hey, look, a shiny subject change! What do you think happened to Deborah, to make her do this? Do you think maybe she could’ve been helped? Was she being held prisoner or

something?” I shook my head. “I know what Carstairs believed, but…” “Yeah, that’d be impossible,” CeCe murmured. “Ghosts, sure, but revenants?” She wrinkled her nose. “That’s ridiculous.”.” I snorted. “Well, there’s something called Cotard’s Delusion that could possibly explain some of it. People with it believe they’re actually dead even while they’re alive and can end up starving to death or dying by accident because they believe it’s already happened, and they can’t be harmed.” “Fucking hell!” “It’s not really common and there are therapists who can work with patients afflicted but…” I spread my hands. “It’s impossible to know now. Deborah Carstairs is dead, and it’s a sad thing. Whatever reason they decide is behind her disappearance and all of this, it won’t bring her back. It won’t make things easier for Enoch or Yancy.” We were both quiet for a long time then. I was feeling faintly buzzed from the pain killer they’d given me earlier, and a little woozy from the antibiotics, but I didn’t want to close my eyes just yet. “I hate hospitals,” I said to break the soporific quiet but mostly because it was just one of those things you’re supposed to say in a hospital. This coffee is awful. I hate hospitals. How’ve you been? “Well, if we’re lucky, we’re out of here day after tomorrow. You up for the drive to Denver still?” I knew she wasn’t offering to cancel the filming or let me out of it—the contracts wouldn’t allow for it. But I was glad she’d asked. And if I’d said no, she would have helped figure out something, some sort of buffer, to make it easier on me. At least, I think. I hope. “I’m up for it if Oscar is.” She sighed again. “Y’all need to get your heads out of your asses, by the bye. You’re both so gaga about one another but too proud to meet in the middle.” “It was his abominable pride and my abominable prejudice,” I misquoted. She

rolled her eyes and held out her coffee to me. This time, she didn’t ask for it back.

The painkillers were better than I thought, I decided as a sudden wave of intense sleepiness washed over me. CeCe had left me after about an hour, declaring she was too young to sleep in a plastic chair and ruin her back. When I pointed out we were the same age and it wasn’t as young as all that, she threatened to turn the television to infomercials and crank the volume to eleven before leaving with the remote. We very maturely flipped one another off (she started it!) and she kissed my forehead, made me promise not to die, and said she’d be back in the morning, dropping my phone on my chest as she left. I tried to text Oscar a few times, but he didn’t reply. It stung a bit, but I reminded myself he was literally just a few doors down with his best friend and quasi-brother, not ignoring me for funsies. Still clutching my phone, I drifted off into a hazy half-sleep where I could hear the soft beep of my monitors and even the murmur of voices outside my room, but it was all folded into the thick, flannel-warm sensation of a good doze. “Julian Fitzgibbon Weems,” a familiar, long-gone voice chided. “I can’t believe you.” “Grandma Dennings,” I said, opening my eyes to see her much-loved face at the end of my bed. Well, the rest of her too. It was just her face I noticed first. Hospital grade drugs are better than I give them credit for. “I told you, that Grandma Dennings crap is all your mother putting on airs. I like it better when you call me Nana.” I chuckled. It had appalled Mom that we called her mother nana and, in her words, clambered all over her like monkeys on ketamine and for God’s sake that’s cashmere, Julian! Stop chewing on her pashmina! “Hi, Nana,” I said dutifully. “Long time no see.” “For you, maybe. I’ve been keeping an eye on you and your sister. Julian, you need to let her know I was right about Jacob. Tell her I was right, and she should’ve listened when I gave the message to that nice British boy you’re seeing. By the bye, you should thank me for setting you up with him. If it weren’t for me, he’d never have been on your radar!” She hopped up on the foot

of the bed, her tiny legs kicking idly as she regarded me with a tiny smirk. “You don’t look like you believe me.” I rolled my eyes—or I dreamed I did, anyway. “I’ve missed you, Nana. No one is as snarky as you.” “Well, you do give it a good run,” she sniffed. “I noticed you’re ignoring what I said about being the one responsible for you finding a new man.” “I’m ignoring it because it’s not relevant.” “Take that back, Julian Xerxes Weems! That is the rudest thing you’ve ever said to me!” “Xerxes? I thought I was Fitzgibbon this time.” Nana loved giving us new and sometimes weird middle names. Another thing that had driven Mom nuts. “I haven’t had a dream about you in ages,” I said when she sniffed again, tipping her nose up haughtily and giving me what I knew from the collection of her romance novels I read one long summer laid up with a broken leg was the cutdirect, the Regency version of the cold shoulder where the young lady would turn her back on an offending fellow and make it clear he’d been a cad. Or, in my case, a bratty grandson. It was way more compelling in the Regency period, however. When Nana did it to me, in life or in dreams, it just made me want to snicker. Her plump little self looked exactly like a slightly miffed Hobbit, her bright, white hair twisted up into an old-fashioned droopy bun situation, her pince-nez glasses glittering on the bridge of her nose as she kicked her feet back and forth, drumming them so hard against the bedframe, the vibrations tickled my legs. “You wouldn’t have to miss me if you’d just return my calls, so to speak.” She slid from the bed to pad closer to me, her finger jabbing my chest and leaving shocks of cold in its wake. “Your young man has an entire stack of messages for you, if you’d just accept them.” “Nana,” I sighed. “I miss you, but you know I don’t believe any of this mess.” She scowled at me harder and I shook my head. “I’m arguing with myself in a dream. My brain manifested my dead grandma and now I’m arguing with my brain through the image of Nana.”

Nana was quiet for a long moment. I half expected that to be the point where the dream took a turn for the weird and Nana turned into Pac Man or something. Instead, she moved to the head of the bed and brushed my hair from my face with the tips of her fingers before leaning in close and kissing my cheek. “I see you all the time,” she whispered, “but I miss you terribly. It’s not the same. I don’t know why I keep staying. Your Pops is waiting for me, I’m sure of it.” I frowned. “Grandpa Steve? Did he even believe in the afterlife? I can’t .” “No, your biological Pops. My first husband, Timothy.” She sighed. “I wish he’d lived long enough for you to know him. He’d have loved you to bits, Julian. To bits. You’re just like him.” She patted my leg. “He was a stubborn asshole, too.” My loud burst of laughter shattered the sadness that had been bubbling up in the dream, and Nana smiled. “You have his laugh,” she sighed. “Did I ever tell you that?” “You must have. Otherwise, how would I know for you to tell me now?” She made a funny face at that, part scowl and part mocking. “He died so long before you were born. Your mother was about… Let’s see, eleven. She was eleven. And I wasn’t prepared at all to say goodbye. He’d been so sick, though. He put on a brave face for the kids, but…” She shook her head. “Well. I knew. And I think he was ready, in the end.” “Oscar says no one is ever really ready,” I murmured. “At the very end, people are never truly ready to go. He thinks that’s why there’re ghosts, even happy ones.” I chuckled. “I guess that’s as good a reason as any. If they were real, not wanting to let go of their lives makes as much sense as any other reason.” She hummed thoughtfully under her breath. “Timmy was skeptical, too. Not just of ghosts, but pretty much everything. Spirits, religion, those buy one get one half off sales…” “Those are a sham. They mark up the regular price to make it seem like a good deal when they put the sale on.”

She laughed again. “Yep, he’d have loved the stuffing out of you. Hell, he probably does, wherever he is now. When I married Steve…” she trailed off. “Well. I do love him, too. But not like I loved Timmy. Not like that at all.” “Grandpa Steve is a good man. I love him, too.” She nodded again. “Love isn’t pie. You can share it as many times as you want and still have some left over.” She took my hand, and I could feel it in mine, down to the cold metal of her rings. “Just because you gave Rey your love doesn’t mean you don’t have any left for Oscar, Julian.” “Wow. This dream took a turn.” “Stop being so defensive,” she chided. “If I can’t harangue my grandson while he’s laid up in backend of nowhere, Texas, after getting bitten by a zombie, when can I do it?” “Weird flex but okay.” “Seriously? A smart ass just like Timmy, goddamnit.” She smacked my arm lightly, and I laughed. “You gotta get your head out of your ass, baby boy. Sooner rather than later. I know it’s terrifying after you’ve been hurt, whether it’s by someone being a raging bag of dicks or because they… they left you before you were ready.” Her fingers squeezed mine hard enough to hurt a little. “Raging bag of dicks? Seriously, Nana?” She giggled. “I wasn’t always a sweet, old lady, you know.” “Why start now? Ow! That hurt!” I rubbed the spot where she smacked me, dimly ing it was near the IV port they’d put in earlier. There we go, my brain reasoned. Just a dream, interpreting painful sensations. She frowned at me as that thought crossed my mind. “Well. I can’t tell you what to do or think, obviously. But I can tell you this—I love you, baby, and I can’t stand by and watch you throw away something wonderful because you’re afraid of things you don’t understand.” “Nana, seriously? My dead grandmother is telling me I need to believe in ghosts now?” I laughed. “I hope they let me take the rest of this IV home in a doggy

bag.” She huffed, her grasp on my fingers fading even as she grew less distinct. “No, I’m telling you to stop roadblocking yourself. Stop letting fear of getting hurt, fear of the unknown, keep you from being happy.” She leaned in close, almost gone, and whispered, “In this case, Oscar is the unknown.” I opened my eyes to a nurse checking my vitals. “Oh…” “Must’ve been a nice dream,” she smiled. “You were laughing in your sleep.” I nodded. “Very nice. Dreamed of my grandmother.” She patted my hand. “Well. You know what they say. When we dream of a loved one who’s ed, that’s them visiting. Even if it’s bull, it’s a nice thought, isn’t it?” I nodded politely, closing my eyes as she bustled from the room to her next patient. I didn’t believe for a minute that’s what it meant, but I did have to commend my subconscious for picking a form I’d actually listen to a little.

When I woke up again, Oscar was beside the bed, dozing in the chair. “Hey,” I murmured. “Hey, you okay?” “Not really,” he itted. “You?” “Better than you are, I think.” “Let’s call it even,” he said, reaching out for my fingers. “Ezra’s awake. Feels like shit, says he doesn’t a thing, but he’s lying. He’s never been able to lie to me. They want to send him on to Austin for some tests, but CeCe had Harrison pull some strings, and they arranged for the tests to be done in Denver tomorrow.” “Tomorrow?” I sat up. “We can’t drive there by tomorrow!” “No, we’re not getting there till Thursday. Harrison and Ezra, however, will be there tomorrow courtesy of the miracle of air travel.” A tiny smirk curled his lips and I wanted to pull him down and kiss him. After a moment’s hesitation, I did. Carefully, because everything hurt, though it was more from exhaustion than any actual injury. Oscar smiled into the kiss and, after a long and breathless moment, he pulled back, though he kept his fingers tangled with mine. “Ezra’s going to have a panic attack over that. His crush on Harrison Temple isn’t as secret as he thinks it is.” “And you think that’s funny?” I teased, knowing full well he didn’t mean it literally. “Mmm. I think it might be nice to see him being the one head over heels for a change.” “Oh?” My stomach gave a funny flutter, and I squeezed his fingers a bit tighter. “Oh, did you think I meant me? That I’m the one head over heels? Oh, I meant —” I gave in and pulled him into another laughing kiss. It had a bite of anxiety to it, of desperation as we nipped and nibbled, tongues darting just right to tease lips before finally pulling apart. “We need to talk,” I breathed. “I mean, that sounded

wrong. But I want to talk . About how we’re going to go forward.” Oscar nibbled his lower lip for a moment, and I wanted to pull him down again, tug him into another kiss, but instead I just brushed my lips over his knuckles. “Okay,” he said finally. “We can definitely do that.” “Knock knock.” Yancy stuck his head in the door, looking like he’d been through hell and back. He probably had, all things considered, and was kind of a miracle for standing upright after the two days he’d just had. “I wanted to check in with y’all before we headed out.” He smiled tightly, slipping into the room as if expecting to get shooed out at any second. “Are you doing okay?” Oscar nodded. “We’re just waiting to get released. Ezra’s doing alright, this one’s healing up, I’m exhausted,” he said carefully. “Are you okay? I mean—” Yancy laughed mirthlessly. “I’m not even close to okay. Enoch’s pretty bad himself. We’re, um. We’re going back to the ranch for now, but we’re going to see about moving into town for a bit. We’re gonna lose the farm, I think, cause it’s gonna be expensive when they go to court. Turns out Gerald’s related to the guy who used to own it, Mason Albright. The guy we called the ghoul?” He nodded to himself. “He’s known for a long while but was gonna wait and make an offer to Pops to buy the place from us after he’d saved up some more. Well. And I don’t understand what happened to Mom, how…” “Yancy,” Oscar sighed. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how you must feel, having her back for just a moment only for her to be gone again.” Yancy shook his head. “I think… God, this sounds terrible. I think she wasn’t really here, anyway. It was her body, but she wasn’t there inside, you know? Her eyes…” He shook his head. “Enoch’s not doing well. I’m gonna be getting him some help. Maybe this place in Austin Doctor Durning mentioned. They help out kids who have, ah, emotional issues? Is that the word I want?” “Close enough,” I said kindly. “I truly am sorry,” I added. “I wish this hadn’t happened to your family.” “I’m not proud of what my ancestor did, but I could’ve gotten over that, you know? But my Pops… He. He… God, I can’t even say it! And Mom…” The tears started to fall then, his jaw tight as he fought them and lost. “I’ve mourned her for a long while now, and knowing she was just right there this whole time?

Maybe we could’ve helped her. The doc said you mentioned something she might’ve had? Something delusional?” “Er, Cotard’s Delusion. Did they diagnose her with that?” Yancy shook his head. “It went too fast. She… she was there and then was just gone. But I can’t help thinking maybe if we’d known she had that delusion thing, maybe…” He sniffed hard, turning his face away so we couldn’t see him cry. “Maybe we could’ve done something. Maybe if I’d listened to Enoch when he kept swearing she wasn’t dead. I just thought he was in denial, you know? No one wants to believe the person they love more than anything is gone.” He darted a glance between the two of us, then looked away again, studying the nurse call button intently. “No matter who it is.” “All you can do now is go forward,” Oscar murmured. “ her and love her, but go forward. Make sure Enoch gets the help he needs and knows he’s loved. And it might not be a bad idea for you to talk to someone too.” Yancy grimaced. “Yeah. Doctor Durning mentioned that, too.” He dusted his hands against his thighs and forced a tight smile. “I hear y’all are off to Denver then?” “Tomorrow, if all goes well.” I hesitated before adding in kind of a rush, “Feel free to drop us a line, let us know how y’all are doing.” He nodded once, curtly, and muttered something like goodbye, letting himself out of the room and leaving us in the quiet. Oscar, after a few minutes, scooted closer and laid his head on my shoulder. “Do you think she had that then?” he asked quietly. “It’s a possibility,” I murmured. “Not the only one. But it’s possible. There’s all sorts of weird wiring in the brain and that’s not my field of study so I can only guess, but it’s certainly an acceptable possibility.” He hummed. “And Ezra? What happened with him?” I shook my head. “A previously undiagnosed seizure disorder, maybe?” “And what he said to Carstairs? To us? What about that?” He hesitated, then added, “What about what happened to you? I—” Oscar shook his head. “Julian,

what I saw happen to you, what you went through…” His voice was soft, but there was challenge in the words. I pulled him as close as possible, not wanting to break this fragile shell around us, so I said, “I’m not ready to pull that apart yet.” “Julian,” he said softly, “you can’t ignore it. You can’t write it off as a weird headache or some sort of new, mild version of ergotism never before seen in Texas or—” I huffed something close to a laugh. “That doesn’t sound like something I’d say.” “It really does.” His fingers tangled in my hair just above my right ear and he worried a lock between his thumb and forefinger in a childlike gesture. “Julian, look, I know you’re afraid and that’s definitely to be expected, but you can’t tamp this down and pretend it didn’t happen.” He wasn’t wrong. I was afraid. And I could tell a half-truth and it my fear, tell him I was afraid it was something wrong in my brain, or maybe I’d been poisoned or… Okay, I had thought it could possibly be ergotism for like a second or two. But I couldn’t make myself say the whole truth: I was afraid of what happened because all of those reasons, all of the things I could excuse it as… Those reasons wouldn’t fit. There were too many loose threads, too many jagged edges. Too many gaps that let uncomfortable light in around my safe pieces. “I promise,” I said finally, “that when I’m ready, I’ll talk to you about what happened. Okay?” He was quiet for a long time, so long I thought he’d dozed off. Finally, he said, “Okay.”

Epilogue

Oscar

“T he vlogs are doing amazing numbers,” CeCe crowed, doing a little happy dance in the airport. “Sylvester—have y’all met him in person yet? He’s the one in charge of social media for the show—he says he’s never seen such a good response to something like this. And I’m giving you all the cookies for that minisode y’all filmed. I honestly didn’t think anything Ezra shot could be used but the editing team did their magic and so good!” She preened and did an exaggerated hair toss and self back-pat. “My plan was so awesome. See? I told you it’d be amazing. We have four major media outlets clamoring for interviews from all three of y’all, and two of the late-night talk shows want to set up appearances in the next few weeks. Ooooh, wait, one of them is Macy Parr. Ugh, hate her. She’s such a bitch.” CeCe scrolled through her phone, typing so fast her nails clacked against the screen, audible over the thrum of Bergstrom Airport’s departure zone. “Hey, want to come up for air so you can say bye?” Julian chided. “You know, show actual interest in the humans behind the numbers?” CeCe glared at him briefly, but tucked her phone away and offered first Ezra, then Harrison, quick hugs. “I wasn’t ignoring y’all. The emails are just flying right now, and I hate leaving them sit. I need to get better about compartmentalizing work to stay at work.” “Speaking as your twin, I will officially call bullshit on that. We shared the same uterus for almost eight whole months. We’re too much alike for me to believe for one second you won’t live and breathe these numbers and whatever the hell else is going on.” CeCe flashed him a grin and shouldered him gently. “It’s called taking care of what’s mine, brother dear. And that includes all three of y’all. Capiche?”

“Did you know we’re not Italian, Cec?” “Shut up. Let me be bad ass boss lady for two minutes, okay?” She nudged him again, hard enough to make him stumble, before turning to Ezra. “I checked your reservation at the clinic. They’re ready for you when you get there. No rush. The check in time is whenever, so long as you’re in before ten tonight.” She nodded at Harrison. “And your reservation at the Airbnb is set, too. I sent the gate code for the property to your private phone, not your work phone, and I’ve organized for the kitchen to be stocked before you get there. Even made sure they put in those gross organic gummy candies you like.” Harrison’s smile was tired but pleased. “You didn’t have to do that.” “I know,” CeCe itted. “But this when I steal you away from your firm and convince you to work for me only.” Harrison rolled his eyes but laughed. I don’t think he believed she was serious, but the gleam in CeCe’s eyes said differently. “I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” Ezra muttered. He looked like a shell of himself, dark circles so deep they were purple, his hair a wild mass of waves and spikes from constantly running his fingers through it. His clothes hanging wrinkled and limp. Next to Julian, who was wearing what I’d come to call Professor Casual—a light cardigan over an oxford button-down, loafers (I swear to God that man had more pairs of loafers than I’ve had hot dinners), and khaki slacks—Ezra looked like the poster boy for exhaustion. And possibly a laundry service’s ‘before’ picture. “I’m not making you do anything,” CeCe chided, reaching out to smooth Ezra’s wayward ‘do. “Except possibly use a bit of leave-in conditioner because this,” she waved one finger over his head, “is painful to look at. Just a little schmear, size of a dime, rub it in after you wash your hair.” Ezra rolled his eyes, darting a glance at Harrison to see if he was listening to CeCe criticize his wild hair. Harrison was politely pretending to check his phone but from my angle, I could see there was nothing on the screen. CeCe turned her attention to Julian, giving Ezra a break. “And you,” she said, jabbing at him with one well-manicured finger, “I can’t believe you’re okay with another long drive. You shouldn’t even be out of the hospital yet!” “I’m fine,” Julian sighed. “Seriously, Cec, we’ve been through this four times

since last night. My wounds are healing, I have an entire pharmacy in my bag, and I’m a big boy now and can sit all by myself in the car without a booster seat.” “Asshole. You know what I’m talking about though.” She took a step towards him and, for a moment, it was like the rest of us didn’t exist. They were in their twin-bubble, something I’d once teased Julian about after we’d returned from Bettina and I walked in on him and CeCe having some sort of silent, staring conversation. He’d gravely assured me it was a real thing, and it was one of the few woo-sounding things he did believe in since he’d lived it. I kept that tucked away to bring up next time the subject of my abilities and his dogged refusal to open his damn mind up came back around. “I’m fine,” he said quietly. “I promise.” She glanced at Ezra, then me, before focusing on Julian again. “I don’t understand how any of that happened but—” “Delusions are powerful things,” Julian said. “The brain is a weird, wild place,” “We’re going to be late if we don’t get a move on,” Harrison announced, tucking his phone back into his pocket and breaking the fragile weirdness. “Ezra, are you ready?” Julian gave the departing duo a wide, almost real smile. “Got your ticket? Your ID?” “Yes, Dad,” Ezra muttered, rolling his eyes. “Oz—” “Call me when you land,” I said. “And whenever else you want. You know I’ll answer no matter what.” His jaw worked, chewing on the words he was holding back, then he finally nodded. “I’ll let you know when we get to the clinic.” The doctor CeCe had ed to give Ezra an evaluation was at a chic, private facility in the mountains outside of Denver, some place known for its celebrity clientele and discretion. Harrison was booked into a nearby Airbnb and due to work on some of the contractual bits for some episodes and also help CeCe prepare for Jacob’s hearing, which was happening in a few months. “You going to be okay, Harrison?” I asked as the man himself strode over from

the ticket kiosk, his own freshly printed boarding in hand. “You sure you have enough paperwork to deal with?” His smile was thin and tired. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. The trial is not going to require much prep at this point as I’m merely advising my client and not part of the litigation team. And the contracts for the show are fairly standard. I just need to go over them to ensure the location liaisons are meeting the legal requirements and…” he trailed off, darting a glance at Ezra. “Well. It’ll keep me occupied, I’m sure.” They had just under an hour until their flight was departing, so we bade hasty goodbyes, staying until they disappeared through security, and we could no longer see them. Bergstrom Airport wasn’t a bustling hub like some others, but it was busy enough to feel overwhelming, so we didn’t linger over our own goodbyes with one another. CeCe insisted on taking her own car to Denver and, while we’d be caravanning, she wouldn’t be riding with us in the new rental we’d gotten to replace the one that broke down in Budding. “See you in Lubbock tonight?” “I still say we could power through to New Mexico,” Julian grumbled. “I’m not driving eleven hours straight, Jules, not even for the promise of excellent tamales.” She booped him on the nose, blew me a kiss, then climbed into Harrison’s SUV that he’d driven up from Houston and she promised to treat like it was her own baby. Given the way she screeched out of the parking garage, I worried for any potential offspring she might one day have. “I thought she was going to follow us,” I muttered, getting into the tidy sedan’s enger side as Julian got himself situated behind the wheel. “She’s always hated following me, ever since we were born.” I snorted. “Makes me glad I’m an only child.” “You’re not really, though, are you?” he asked, navigating us carefully down the aisle of the parking garage. “Ezra’s your brother, in a sense.” I nodded, suddenly too close to tears to talk. Instead, I turned on the stereo and

connected my phone’s Bluetooth. “Hope you don’t mind a bit of Kylie,” I announced. “And if I did?” “Too bad. Bags I control of the music.”

We made good enough time on the drive to Denver to stop in Albuquerque and see the museum and the Petroglyph Monument. CeCe met up with an artist friend and went to dinner that evening, leaving Julian and me to our own devices. Our devices turned out to be takeout pizza in the hotel room while we watched mindless sitcoms, slowly scooting closer and closer together like we were teenagers on our first actual date, anxious and eager at the same time. Finally, Julian tossed down his slice of pizza and wiped his hands on one of the cheap take away napkins before turning to me, getting up on one knee on the room’s sofa and staring at me in earnest. “We can’t fuck,” he said flatly. “Er.” “Wait, I’m doing this wrong.” He leaned over, pressing his forehead to mine. “Until I get a done, we can’t have unprotected sex. Human bites…” he trailed off, shuddering, I think without realizing it. “Well. I also started thinking… I want to try to, to…” “Meet in the middle?” I suggested with a soft smile. “I don’t want to change you, Julian. I—” I caught myself, course-corrected. “I care about you. I enjoy being with you. I don’t fantasize about some you that’s just like me.” “So, you never wonder what it would be like if I believed?” he asked quietly, nervously. “You don’t wonder what it’d be like if I wasn’t a… what was that phrase Ezra used? A pompous arse?” I snickered at the way he said the word. “Arse. Say it like that. Arse. Not aaarrrrrse.” “That’s how I said it!” He dipped his head and nipped at my neck, just below my ear. “Ass.” “Now you’re just saying it wrong on purpose,” I teased, breathless as he kissed the spot he’d just bitten. I tilted my chin up, giving him access to my throat, my collarbone. He hummed against me, and I melted—that’s the only word for it. Just melted into him as he pressed me back against the couch. “What about—”

“There’s other ways to cum,” he muttered, slipping his hands under my shirt. We hadn’t been together long enough to be seamless in our lovemaking—or to even call it lovemaking out loud because how awkward would that be at this point—but we’d learned a few tricks about one another. I knew Julian loved it when I paid a lot of attention to his balls with my tongue, and I loved it when he did that thing to my nipples, the one that made it feel like fire was in my veins and every nerve in my body sat up and begged for more. He flicked the edge of his thumbnails over the tight nubs and I groaned, wiggling to wrap my legs around his thighs. He shivered against me as our erections ground together, first by accident then more purposefully as we found our position and thrust to make a rhythm that worked. He had been about to say maybe we should hold off on the physical part of our relationship—I knew he was, sure as I knew my middle name. But right then, with his long, lean body atop mine, his half-words and murmurs of my name against my throat, the way his stubble abraded my skin and made me feel absolutely wanton as he thrust and rubbed against me, I couldn’t bring myself to stop us. Julian bit down on my shoulder, a spark of pain that made the pleasure so much sweeter when he flicked my nipples again. I gasped, arching my hips into his, my balls tightening and lifting sooner than I’d expected. “Oh, Julian,” I gasped. “It’s—I’m close!” “Do it,” he hissed. “I can’t wait. Do it.” He growled against me, going still as a warm wetness spread against my covered cock. It was enough to set me off, leaving me wet and sticky and tingling in my one clean pair of sleep pants. But neither of us moved. We laid on the shitty hotel sofa until our legs tingled with the need to move, then we headed for the shower in unspoken agreement. Hours later, we’d finally finished the cold pizza, turned off the television, and lay in the dark. Neither of us were asleep, but we were both pretending to be. Julian’s fingers were laced with mine and my head was on his chest, our breathing too fast and shallow to be anything but awake. “When we get to Denver,” he said after a long while, “I want to check on Enoch.” I nodded. “Okay.” “Gerald emailed CeCe apparently. Mrs. Carstairs invited him to stay with them. I

think she feels bad…” he trailed off. “Well. He emailed through the production company, so it took a bit to get to CeCe but I’m glad he did it. I was worried.” “About Gerald?” He made a noncommittal noiMse. He was worried—and I was, too—about what had happened. About what it meant. Though while he was wondering if Ezra had a neurological issue, if we had all been poisoned (if I had to hear him say ‘ergotism’ one more time, I swear to God), I was wondering about how Albright did it. How common it was for ghosts to do that. Or if they had to be special somehow—maybe angrier, or maybe… Maybe like me. Enoch had mentioned Albright had been rumored to have some sort of ability. Did people like me, like Enoch, did we become ghosts like Albright? About what it meant for Ezra. About Ezra. The sound of the door to the room next door opening and closing, the soft lilt of CeCe’s voice and the low rumble of someone else’s made Julian sigh. “I’m turning on the T.V.,” he said. “I don’t want to hear this.” The telly came on and Julian flipped through several channels before pausing. “Huh. They found a body in that fancy-ass golf course neighborhood near where Jacob grew up. That’s so weird. Saint Pierre’s such a small town, it’s never on the news and when it is, it’s for something awful like that.” I made a noncommittal noise and curled onto my side. Julian didn’t know about the murdered man Jacob had seen when he was a boy, and I doubted I’d ever tell him. That seemed like a lifetime ago now, even though it wasn’t even half a year. Julian had moved on to another show, something with a canned laugh track and very seventies background music, and drifted off after a few minutes of zany, Technicolor hijinks. I closed my eyes and shifted closer, willing sleep to come. I didn’t know what any of it meant, but I knew, knew in my bones, I was changing. My abilities were changing, just not in the way I’d feared. Even from beyond the grave, I thought, Grandmere was a controlling biddy. I felt a wash of shame—for years I thought I was at the top of my game. Hell, I’d been lauded for my abilities, and I’ll it that it did get to my head a bit (hello, I have my own telly show). But people like Enoch existed. People with abilities beyond what I imagined could

exist. Who else was there, who were the ‘others’ Enoch talked about? Were they hiding on purpose? Would they talk to me? And did anyone else even know about them? When we got to Denver, I had some calls to make back home.

Comin Soon

Medium at Large #3: Old Ghosts

Not all ghosts are dead. A Grey Lady on the stairs. A long-missing skier in the walls. A medium losing his cool. And an ex boyfriend in the bedroom. Things are going fine. Just...fine. It was supposed to be an easy investigation: a classic ghost story, an old house with lots of loose floorboards and hissing pipes, surrounded by dense forest... Every strange noise and weird shadow ed for and explainable. Except for the sound of Oscar being accused of misleading his audience, of being a con artist. And the Julian's ex showing up at the investigation as the new owner of the ski resort, haunted by the Gray Lady of the Rockies. Julian should have known better than to believe it was going to be an easy investigation. The scariest hauntings aren't the dead. They're the ghosts we keep inside. Oscar has it under control. Really. The Gray Lady of the Rockies is supposed to be a simple investigation, something they all need after the last few months, but when the first night in the Chateau de Neige turns up an extra dead body in the old family cemetery, and two extra live ones in the ski lodge's dining room, Oscar's grasp on the situation feels like it might be slipping. His abilities are still in a state of flux—one day they're just fine, the next the

volume is cranked to eleven with no warning and no in between. And really, Oscar was sure he could handle it so long as the ghosts would stop being so damn critical.

Also Available via Most Digital Retailers:

Bedeviled

The Devil May Care

The Devil You Know

The Devil in the Details

Science of Magic

Data Sets

Fuzzy Logic

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About the Author

Meredith (they/them/theirs) says they're a queer writing cryptid and writes queer-centered romances in various subgenres including paranormal, speculative fiction/alternate universe, contemporary, and historical.They firmly believe in happily ever afters and that there is no reason anyone should wear socks with open toe shoes.