“Yeah. I mean, I live here, but I don’t spend a lot of time roaming.”
“Just to the gay bar downtown? The one with the nice forest in the back.” He blushes and tries to pull away, but I keep him against me. “I’m kidding. That was honestly the most exciting and romantic thing to have ever happened to me.”
He sighs, and I kiss him softly. “And yes, we can go out. I know this town like the back of my hand.”
“Yeah?”
“I can show you some secret places, tell you a little about the history of St. Dismas that not many people know, and maybe we can finish it off with a tour of my house.”
Ansel nods, his eyes alight with excitement. “That sounds amazing. Let’s go.”
“Hold on, little butterfly. We need to prepare. I want to make sure you’re safe while we’re out, so we’re bringing guards.”
“Oh.” He looks so disappointed that my chest constricts.
“You know that it’s only to keep you safe?”
“Yeah, but it still…it feels invasive.”
“I just want us to return home. Can you allow me that?”
He thinks about it and then presses his face to my chest. “Yeah, I’ll allow it.”
“Are you telling me this library is haunted?”
“Mhm,” I say as I take him through the stacks of books. It smells like paper and binding. I used to hide out here when I was little, when my dad was unusually cruel. It was a little bit of safety from a bad world.
“What’s it haunted by? A ghost?”
“Sure is. I saw it once when I was little.”
He blinks at me, his fingers running along the spines of all the books situated neatly on the shelves. We’re in the back of the library near the autobiographies—my favorite place when I was younger. All those lives lived, good and bad. I used to wonder if my dad would end up here.
Thankfully, he died before his story could be written. And if I can help it, it never will be. “I saw her here, actually.”
“When was this?” He seems skeptical, but my butterfly always has been.
“I was about eight. Was sitting right there, against that wall, reading a book about an astronaut. And she just appeared.” I swallow as I remember her bright eyes, the pained look on her face, her hair on fire. “She looked at me long and hard, and then she rushed at me.”
I remember it so vividly. The way I stood up and my pants were wet. My dad beat me for it when I got home.
“Never let anyone see a Buckingham weak.”
I spent three days in the bottom of a hole after that, forced to come to terms that there weren’t any ghosts in this world, and if there were, none were around to rescue me.
“Jesus, that’s scary,” Ansel says, shivering. “Do you know who she was?”
“A woman who died here. There was a fire in 1875. Burned the place down. The librarian couldn’t escape.”
“Shit,” he murmurs, and then pushes his way into me. The feel of him against me, his body seeking protection from me, warms my heart, and the bad feelings, the memories that haunt me, flit away into the abyss.
“Maybe we can go to a different place, one with fewer ghosts.”
“I think that’s a good idea. Have you ever been to the old clock tower? The one near the church ruins?”
Ansel perks up. “No. I want to though.”
His fingers link through mine, and he practically pulls me from the library. The sun is setting in the distance, and I know it will soon be dark, but I still walk him across town, the guards following us, keeping an eye out.
