Page 45 of How I Met Your Murderer

He hadn’t looked at me properly since we started walking. Since last night, really.

We left the foyer (swept clean of all shattered glass) and rounded a corner toward the kitchen, nearly colliding with Jordy—to my relief, without the demon dog at his heels for once. He leaned against the wall, his short blond hair sticking up at odd angles and his blue eyes bleary like he’d hardly slept, but he was looking at his phone with the smug grin of someone who’d just found something fascinating.

“Raff!” he said, bright as the church bell that rang up from the village every morning. His sweater had a black cat on it that waved as it burst out of a pumpkin, and I had to imagine Caoimhe hadn’t seen it yet or she would have made him change. “Just the guy I was looking at. You’ve got to see this. You’re going viral.”

“Like an illness?” Raff asked hopefully, though the way he scrubbed a hand over his face in mortification meant he already knew the answer.

He leaned against the wall beside Jordy and frowned at something on the man’s phone.

I drifted around to see, invisible and unnoticed by both of them, in time to feel Raff’s breathing hitch—just barely.

The photo was posted to an app I didn’t recognize—which was, admittedly, most of them. But I understood by the hearts in the corner and the number beside them that it had over fifty-thousand “likes” since being posted an hour ago.

It showed the kitchen in full trial-banquet chaos. Steam rising, an assistant cook mid-shout, someone dashing past in a blur with a tilting stack of plates clutched to their chest. Floral cocktails glistening with edible glitter, elegant wheel-thrown mugs of cider garnished with cinnamon stick stirrers, and a familiar dragon-shaped charcuterie board. But right in the center, the focus of it all was Raff, gazing up at absolutely nothing with a soft, bright smile.

The one I’d only ever seen him give to me.

POV: You’re the ghost he’s smiling at, the caption read, and my chest tightened.

The top comment read: Find someone who looks at you the way this gorgeous man looks at . . . whatever’s on the ceiling.

And beneath it: When your crush is invisible, but your joy is not.

Smokeshow.exe has stopped working.

On it went, but that’s all I could read as Jordy closed his phone and snorted. “You looked fecking smitten, man. Caoimhe told me you were with some guy . . .”

Raff didn’t take the opening. Didn’t blush, or joke, or mention me at all. He just stared at the screen where the photo had been, something sad flickering across his face—like he had just seen a version of himself that he wasn’t sure he was allowed to be anymore.

“It was a good night,” he said softly. But the words sounded like they scraped something raw inside him.

“Yeah, and you saved it—twice. From the dead, and the living,” Jordy said, clapping a bracing hand on Raff’s leather-clad shoulder. It was like he could sense that something was wrong, but not in the same way I could. “Go on, cheer up a bit. I don’t think anyone expects you to help with the cleanup today, if you’re after a nap or a trip into town. Anyway—I’d better go find Pepper before Caoimhe has him shopping Armani for mutts or something.”

When he was several yards down the hall, I manifested to a little shiver from Raff.

But once again, he hardly looked at me. “I guess . . . I should take the day, then,” he said, sounding very much like a man who didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts. It had never been this hard to reach him, and I didn’t know how. Didn’t know what was going through his head and building such a wall between us.

“Do you want company?” I asked.

What I meant was, please don’t leave me. I want you.

But Raff was quiet, gazing at something down the hall in the direction Jordy had gone. A blushing Basil had joined the young castle owner, clutching a clipboard like it was a shield. Jordy said something and gave him a grin that made Basil’s blush deepen.

“Those two are really dancing around it still,” Raff said after a bit of thought, not meeting my eyes. “Feels like they could use a dancing lesson. Or at least a little encouragement.”

“. . . You mean from two people who are incredibly emotionally well-adjusted experts in the art of romance?”

That earned me the look I wanted. A dazzling Raff smile, his eyes locked on mine as he laughed loud enough to fill the hall and draw both Basil and Jordy’s gazes from a distance. “Aye. Or just a friendly nudge from the best team I know.”

He gently elbowed me in the side, and of course, it went right through me.

But I felt it all the same.

Maybe a brief distraction would help him find his way back to me, or at least give him some time to work up to telling me what was on his mind.

“Step one,” Raff whispered conspiratorially, his energy crackling against mine and making me feel alive again. “Just like on any good ghost hunt: observation.”

We trailed Basil and Jordy to the kitchen, me unseen and Raff keeping a careful distance as we watched the pair argue about the best way to stack wine crates. The castle kept on buzzing around them—clattering pans, laughter, the scratch of a broom, the lingering scent of roasted herbs from last night—but they were locked in their own little world.