Page 87 of How I Met Your Murderer

At 9:50am, Caoimhe joined us at our table with a mug in hand, wearing a soft heather gray tracksuit that somehow gave off an air of understated luxury.

“Hi, Raff’s cute friend,” she said to me with a genuine smile. “What are you two planning to wear tomorrow night?”

She meant our costumes. I’d forgotten, despite helping Raff plan what to pick up for us in the village, because I didn’t think I’d be here. When the clock struck midnight tonight, it would be Halloween. I would have one last chance to be with Raff, and then it would be time to go, even though I hadn’t felt this present in the world since I died.

Since before I died, honestly.

“. . . Larkensong, his bard, and I’m going to be my half-elf ranger, Thorne Greenbriar. I even got some elf ears to put on,” Raff was eagerly explaining to Caoimhe, as if our plans might still happen and I might not disappear until Halloween came to an end.

I suspected that was wishful thinking, but I remembered what he had said in the foyer about my smile and put one on. And when that was hard, I stole his mug and sipped his tea.

“You’ll be in room 2B tomorrow night. All the arrangements are made, and clean linens are on the new bed,” Caoimhe told Raff, though her eyes darted briefly to me. “You’re welcome to use it tonight as well, of course, if sleeping in the van is wearing on you. Or, you know, if you just want to have a quiet date before all the fun.”

At 9:56am, I stared at Caoimhe’s retreating back and asked Raff, “Did you . . . rent us a hookup room? Or did she just give us one?”

The plastic witch hanging in the kitchen window, twin to the one in the hall, randomly waved a greenish, clawed hand.

“Both,” Raff said, red creeping into his face.

I kissed his freckles.

At 10:34am, a package arrived at the castle addressed to Rafferty O’Meara. The mailman struggled with the large, seemingly heavy box, and Raff took pity on him the second he saw what was going on, rushing out to meet him.

We unpacked it in the foyer. Jordy had a pocket knife and cut through the many layers of tape for us while I studied the exterior of the box. It was covered in an aggressive number of FRAGILE stickers, and had come from the offices of ExorSquad in London.

Inside was a heavy metal box, its control panel covered in colorful little knobs and levers like something out of a kids’ arcade. I really wanted to poke the big yellow button. There were even a bunch of loose wires that didn’t seem to connect to anything, so I started wrapping myself in them like a bored cat while Raff read the massive instruction booklet it had come with, solemnly taking it in like it might save us.

A weapon that could actually fight the elemental would have been worth the effort, but I was already sure this wasn’t it. I was still just as worried for the living and the dead—and for Raff, most of all.

The “Apparition Displacement Apparatus, version 4.04” or the “ADA-404: your ultimate spirit-away solution,” as the manual proclaimed it, was very obviously a piece of junk only fit for the scrapyard or the dark backroom of a defunct Circuit City store.

And okay, maybe useful for entertaining spirits, if not getting rid of them.

By 11:38am, I’d tangled us both in the colorful wires while Raff cursed at the manual, and I convinced him to take a break to kiss me. We were conveniently close, after all.

By 12:48pm, Raff still hadn’t gotten the thing to light up, beep, or otherwise recognize that he was interacting with it, even after he figured out how to charge it.

Jordy and Basil came to watch the show—man vs. machine—while they ate lunch. They had brought four chicken rolls—one for me, too. I nibbled at it, appreciating every bite.

At 12:50pm, I punched the big yellow button, Raff dove to cover me with his bigger form like a bomb was about to go off, and nothing happened.

By 2:03pm, Raff had put the “right load of rubbish and feckin’ disgrace” in a corner like it was a toddler taking a time out. “Maybe it just needs to charge overnight, even though that’s not in the manual,” he sighed, already sounding doubtful.

He put a jack-o’-lantern with a feral grin in front of the device, hiding where it was plugged in and charging rather than moving the unsightly and awkward hunk of scrap metal and wires to the van where he had a portable outlet.

“What’s that look for?” he muttered sheepishly as he covered it with a few paper bats for good measure. “I’m not sharin’ the back of the van with you and that thing. It’s crowded enough as is with all the other pointless shite the company’s sent me.”

I grabbed a few black balloons off a banister—the surviving ones Gráinne hadn’t popped with her teeth yet—and used them to help cover up the ADA-404 (or, as I had decided to call it over the past few hours, the Error Code 404).

Then I put a hand on Raff’s arm and gently said, “You won’t have to. Tonight at midnight, it’s October 31st. This is probably going to be our last night together, so I assume you’ll want to take Caoimhe up on her offer and share that guest room . . .?”

2B. The brass numbering system on the door was new, but I knew the room as the one next to Síofra’s. The one Brigid used to haunt before the elemental got her, too.

“What makes you so sure you won’t be here through the party?” Raff asked, unable to hide how stricken he looked. “Thought our costumes would be quite a sight . . .”

“They would’ve been.” I tried to smile, to soften the words, but couldn’t quite get there. “Put it this way: I’m not entirely sure when I’ll go, but I’ve read enough about magic in all sorts of forms to know you should never take any kind of spell at face value.” I reached for his hand. “Come on. We can pretend we’re at a really fancy hotel, yeah?”

And with the black salt protecting the doors and windows, we would be safe enough. We could focus on enjoying Caoimhe’s taste in spa-like bedding, luxury bath products, and stuffy decorations.