Hailey smacked her books together as she gathered them. “You going to breakfast today?”
“I like morning food,” Giselle said, slinging her bag over her shoulder.
“Good.” Hailey’s anger wanted company.
After breakfast Giselle joined Hailey at the library. While Hailey set to solving the feedback problem in her ghost trap, Giselle worked her way through a pile of beauty magazines, and a gigantic inchworm slithered slowly past, accidentally bumping Hailey’s table as he went.
“Matthew!” Hailey barked when he caused her pen to scribble. “I told you to stay out of the lounge. You have to stop drinking tea—just look at you.” Hailey threw her hand up. “If you get any bigger, you’re going to get stuck in the archway and end up in a dark tunnel. And don’t think I’ll come running underground to find you.”
He slid away, tea sloshing loudly in his stomach.
Hailey turned back to her lab notebook, and she must’ve just missed seeing Fin rush out of the stacks, because it seemed like he came out of thin air, when he appeared on his knees at her side, wearing a haunted expression.
“Ah!” she yelled, and her pen made another scribble.
“Hailey, I’m sorry—forgive me please,” he called out breathless.
“Fin—” Hailey huffed loudly and stared at her messy notebook. “Nothing says, ‘I’m sorry’ like leaving me the hell alone.”
Fin stood up, shoulders hunched. “I’ll leave you alone then,” he said in a strained voice, “but I will never leave you alone.” He placed a folded note on the desk next to her hand and slouched away.
“You were a little hard on him, don’t you think?” Giselle asked.
“I thought you hated him?” she whispered sharply.
“Ido,” she said in a loud voice that disturbed Mrs. Spitz.
“SHH!” she warned from the circulation desk.
“Butyoudon’t,” said Giselle in just as loud a voice.
“Trust me. I would rather spend an eternity buried in these library books than spend another second with Pádraig O’Shea.”
“Careful what you wish for.”
Hailey snapped her head around. “Why?”
“You just shouldn’t say things you don’t mean.”
“Thought you hated libraries,” she muttered, recalling the blissful first days of her semester, when her roommate was ignoring her.
“I do. They smell like dead trees. And by the way, I don’t understand you at all,” Giselle scolded. “Asher very nearly kills you—wantsto kill you, and you totally blow it off and gush about how—” Giselle put on her best little-girl-Hailey voice. “Oh, I wish he would kiss me again,” she mocked. “Pádraig tells one little lie, and you shun him completely.”
Before Hailey could close her wide-open mouth, Giselle slapped her magazine shut, got up, and glided out, leaving Hailey alone with her grudge, which quickly turned to guilt when she opened Fin’s note.
Inside, she found a magnificent pencil sketch of her praying at Holly’s grave with the words “Never Alone” scratched at the bottom.
Her hands numb, Hailey dropped her head to the desk as the squeaky outer door of the library opened.
Fin was waiting at the exit when Giselle walked out, He stopped her by stepping directly in front of her.
“What doyouwant?” she said like a snob.
“Demon,” he said, “I need you to tap into your para-empathic, emotion detector thing you do, and tell me if I love that woman or if this is just Cobon’s… curse.”
“All love’s a curse,” she said disgustedly, “and you really screwed up.”
“Giselle!”
