There’s a laundry list of reasons why I shouldn’t call this man.He’s dangerous.I could be getting mixed up in God-knows-what.Illegal things, probably, if he’s threatening to chop men up.He’s obsessive.He’s intrusive.He makes me question everything I thought I knew about who I am.I smooth the throw blanket, fold, fold, edge to edge, line the remote with the table’s grout line, and count a slow seven in, seven out so my heart doesn’t sprint out of my chest.I’m the girl who triple-checks locks and tucks her hair behind her ear three times before walking through a door.I survived working in London by making myself smaller.I make rules and they keep me safe.
Except with him, the rules blur.With him, I don’t feel small.I feel…bright.I feel brave, braver than the version of me I’ve trained myself to be.That’s the worst part, the most damning item on the list.He doesn’t just scare me.He tempts me into wanting the girl I am with him, more than the girl I’ve always been without him.
Most of the ghosts hate that.They crowd the edges of my living room like rain clouds.The man in the Bolo-Hat from my kitchen lingers in the doorway like always, polite and watchful.He doesn’t hate it at all.He tips his hat toward the window.He wants us together—I can feel it.He flickers sharper when Cassius is close, but it isn’t the same as the warning flickers; this one coats me in familiarity, in recognition.Cassius didn’t kill him, but there’s no doubt he’s tied to him.The familiarity should soothe me.Instead, it makes my skin prickle because I’m standing in someone else’s memory.
The new ones shoulder past him, pressing closer, hungrier.One stands out.He’s taller, heavier, eerier than the rest, and his outline is already sharpening at the edges.I’ve never been afraid of the spirits before, but when he clacks his phantom tongue and tips his head back to show me the red smile across his throat, my lungs seize; pressure sits on my sternum like a palm, forcing me to feel the knife, to feel liquid running warm down a throat that isn’t mine.
Oleg Vetrovski.The name lands in my head like a dropped coin.Cassius killed him in a hotel room.I don’t know how I know that, only that it’s true.He shouldn’t be here, but he is, and he isn’t like the others.He leans close without moving, a scent of stale smoke and expensive cologne bleeding into my skin.
“Turn him in,” the voice hisses, too clear to be only in my head.“You’re next.You think you’re different, but he’s not capable of different.You’ll choke on blood too.”
He clacks his tongue again, and somewhere behind him another ghost flickers, echoing his words like a second, crueler chorus.The two of them bracket me, urging, whispering, pressing at the thin places in my morals.
Betray him.
Call the cops.
Stop pretending you don’t know who he is.
What he’s done.
“We’re building a web,” the one I’ve come to think of as the pizza-tongue ghost, says.“You’re the fly.”He flickers behind Oleg in and out like a broken reel of film.His mouth hangs wide, jaw distended, the shredded tongue lolling like a strip of raw meat from a slice of bad pizza.Every time he flickers, it stretches farther, swaying like a pendulum.
He doesn’t hiss like Oleg.He croons.Low, sticky syllables that drag across my skin like oil.
He’s a monster.
Turn him in.
Save yourself before he makes you one of us.
Each line slides between Oleg’s sharper commands, a counterpoint that’s almost tender.It feels less like a threat and more like an invitation, like being coaxed toward the edge of something I don’t want to see.
The two of them work in tandem.Oleg with his bloody smile and clacking tongue and the pizza-tongue ghost with his sickly lullaby, boxing me in, making my stomach pitch.They’re pressing at the same fault line inside me, the one that thinks about right and wrong, the one that knows Cassius is dangerous but can’t stop reaching for him.
My palms go flat to my thighs, left-right-left, until the buzzing under my skin eases enough for me to breathe.
They want me afraid of him.But fear isn’t the only thing I feel.There was a moment in that bathroom when steel kissed my pulse and he waited for myyeswhen the floor of me steadied instead of cracking.
So I bargain with myself like I always do.If the time ends in eight, I won’t call.If it flips to nine, I will.I watch the numbers change, breath caught between who I’ve been and who I’m afraid I want to be.The digits click.Eight blooms.My finger hovers.I count to three.One for the rules, two for the ghosts, three for the girl who is tired of being small.
I’m not an impulsive person.I never have been.I’m a planner.An over-analyzer.I’m dialing Nathan’s number without thinking about what exactly I’ll say.Nathan’s not like me.He’s the opposite of reserved.But, his advice hasn’t ever steered me wrong.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my long-lost sister.”Nathan’s voice immediately puts me in a better mood.
“I’m not lost, Nathan, I moved,” I say, curling into the couch and tucking my feet under me so my heels and toes touch.
“You left us for London, which broke my heart a little bit, but I figured you’d come home.Instead you go to Vegas?”Nathan and I have always been close, even when we were kids.I guess that happens when you’re fourteen months apart.
“I have a great job here.I wanted to see what I was capable of without you and mom and dad.I know you get that,” I say.Nathan left home too, though he’s back in Boston now.Nathan went to culinary school after he graduated high school, much to our parent’s dismay.They sing his praises now though.He owns two high-end restaurants,Saffron & Sage, with its exquisite fusion of Mediterranean and Asian flavors, andThe Embered Hearth, where the ancient technique of wood-fired cooking is celebrated.Nathan has become something of a celebrity in the culinary world, his expertise sought after on television multiple times.He’s currently opening his third restaurant,Verdant, which promises a farm-to-table experience that elevates vegetarian cuisine to luxurious heights.He’s a powerhouse.
“I get it.I just miss you.”
“I miss you too.You should visit once your new place is up and running.I’d love to see you.”
“The opening is on Valentine’s Day.Why don’t you come?”
“I’d love to be there.”The thought hadn’t crossed my mind, with starting at a new publishing house, and everything with Cassius, but now that Nathan’s said it, I can’t imagine not going.“Are mom and dad going to be there?”
