Page 49 of How I Met Your Murderer

She seemed to feel the recent strangeness as much as I was, judging by her startling change in appearance. She had abandoned her centuries-old hairstyle for loose, unbound locks, and made herself so tall that her partial silhouette took up the full length of the mirror. Her chin was slick with blackish blood that ran in rivulets down her neck. The finishing touch: part of her cheek had rotted away, revealing a glimmer of bone beneath.

The sight made me want to shiver, if I still could. “I have no idea,” I lied, because none of the possibilities would soothe her dark and restless energy, and we didn’t have any kind of solution yet to reassure her.

Finally, after leaving her to brush her hair and sing something eerie, I found a few of the castle’s older ghosts lingering near the back stairs—quiet ones, the kind who rarely spoke: Sorcha, Eilis, and Donnacha. Their forms flickered like candlelight, and their expressions were tight with something I’d never seen in them before. Fear.

“Have any of you seen the chef?” I asked gently, not wanting to startle them with my newness or my accent or the stronger pulse of my energy.

They exchanged looks, a ripple of unease passing through them.

Finally, the oldest and most aware of the group—Sorcha, a woman in a faded apron with an outline as soft as smoke—shook her head.

“He’s gone,” she told me, her voice brushing past me like a gentle breeze. “He isn’t here anymore. Not anywhere.”

I felt the truth of it like a blow that struck me at my core. I felt it in the sterile peace of a kitchen that had always felt so crowded and full of motion even when the chef wasn’t making himself known. I might have felt it last night, I realized with a guilty pang, if I hadn’t been so caught up in the business of the living and Raff eating snacks for me.

“He’s gone. Really gone,” I told Raff as I reappeared in front of him at the little table in the kitchen, drawing just enough energy so that he could clearly see my face.

Raff ran a hand through his hair and muttered something in Irish. Then he held my gaze and said slowly, “But . . . I didn’t move him on. Or at least, I don’t think I did. A little kindness and respect and opening jars for him couldn’t have been all it took, surely?”

I pulled a chair around next to his and sank into it, offering him the comfort of a warm, living gesture. “I don’t think so, no. He’d been here for centuries. Wouldn’t he be long gone by now if that was all it took?”

Raff nodded, then frowned. “But then how . . .?”

I didn’t have an answer. But the wrongness I’d felt the night the skull-shaped candle flared to life on its own in the parlor—the faces in the candle’s flame, the whispered names of Raff’s family—dragged fingers of icy dread across every part of my being.

Raff leaned in, his fingers fiddling with his pendant. “You don’t think maybe the same spirit who threatened me had something to do with it?”

I didn’t want to say yes, but I couldn’t say no, either. I put a hand on Raff’s shoulder.

“Máirtín was strong,” he went on. “A level four, like you. I don’t even understand how another spirit could make one just disappear, either. Unless it . . . maybe took Máirtín’s energy, absorbed him somehow. Made itself stronger. Is that even possible?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, rubbing his shoulder and apologizing with a look for how cold the touch must be. “But we know there’s something in the castle that’s hiding. Something that doesn’t want you here.”

“Something that might have also preyed on one of Ardruin’s strongest ghosts,” Raff added—and just like when he heard his family’s names, real fear flashed across his face.

Not for himself, even now.

But for me.

Raff was quiet for a long moment, staring at the table like he was trying to solve a puzzle. Then something in him shifted, and he drew himself up the way a fighter squares their stance before charging into a battle they might not win.

“We need to talk to the other spirits more,” Raff said, voice low but steady. Something about his confidence kept me from spiraling toward the dungeon. Kept me fully present despite my own fears. “We’ll figure this out properly. There has to be some connection between Chef Máirtín’s disappearance and the thing that tried to scare me off. But whatever it is, we don’t have enough information yet. I want . . .” He rubbed at his temples, but pushed through his fatigue and continued: “I want to know more about every ghost. What they think of each other, what they’re capable of. What they’re most afraid of—the smallest detail could help.”

His green eyes, bright as polished malachite even in the dimness of the kitchen, flicked toward me and held mine. “If another spirit did something to Máirtín, it could try for you next. But I won’t let it, as long as I’m alive to fight.”

I tried to sound braver than I felt. “Maybe it’s not strong enough to hurt the living,” I said hopefully. “Maybe all that stuff with the candle and the whispers was just for show. Maybe it feels threatened by you stomping into its . . . its hunting grounds.”

I didn’t know where the words came from, only that they felt somehow right.

Raff shook his head, reddish curls brushing his cheekbones. “Even if it wants to hurt me, I’ve got the pendant. I’m grand. But the others don’t. The Dolans, and Basil. And you—” His voice cracked. “You’re not protected at all, as far as I can tell.”

I reached for him, brushing solid fingers over his wrist. His skin was warm, sun-touched even though we’d been inside all day, and I hated being the one to steal away that glow by the nature of my very being. “I’m not exactly easy to kill. Probably difficult to digest, too.”

“That’s not funny. I don’t think we’ve quite found the bright side here yet,” he muttered, but he didn’t pull away. He looked like he wanted to say more, but instead, he took a breath first. Then he said softly, “Come up to Síofra’s balcony with me tonight, after we make the usual rounds—and count the remaining ghosts. We can watch the stars and talk in our place. Somewhere quiet. Okay?”

The way he said our place warmed something in me that had been cold for years. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

The balcony was just as we’d left it a few nights ago: an empty mug of tea forgotten on the small table and two chairs pushed together by the stone rail that overlooked the partially rebuilt stables and the dark fringe of the woods full of ash and oak trees.