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Yes.

“We can talk again?”

He shrugged, the picture of lazy elegance. Maybe.

I laughed, the sound scraped up from the dredges of my chest. “Ass.”

He smiled at me this time, crescent moon dimples winking in the fire light.

Go, he mouthed. Not safe.

Shadows closed in on the outskirts of the room and the flames began to bank, air turning cold around me.

“See you,” I murmured, hand held up limply in a wave.

He winked, disappearing like smoke in the wind.

I blew out the candles quickly, breaking the circle I’d created around myself. As soon as the link was broken, warmth flooded back into the room. I grabbed the sage Isadora gave me and lit it, walking the perimeter of the room.

“Not him,” I whispered while I did it. “Anything other than him, please.”

I still felt him around me, his footsteps pacing behind mine. When the air in the room lightened, I blew out the sage and rested it on the mantle.

I eyed my scraps of paper, his pictures, and settled in for a long night.

I fell asleep on the floor of the sitting room sometime around two a.m.

I woke with the sunrise, blinking blearily against the pink light sliding across my skin. I shifted, something soft brushing against my arm.

A blanket.

I dug my fingers into my eyes and yawned loud enough to crack my jaw. I definitely hadn’t grabbed a blanket last night. I didn’t even remember falling asleep. One moment I was charting the next thunderstorm set to arrive on Friday and the next my head was on the floor, neck bent at an uncomfortable angle.

Which meant Wolfe had given me the blanket.

Had tucked me in when he very well could have left me shivering.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Silence greeted me, but that pulse of energy was back. This time it was right next to me. After Wolfe had slipped back into the shadows, I set to work. I spent hours researching online the best ways to bridge the other side, to touch the veil, to strengthen a ghost’s presence until they could speak.

The electrical particles in the air last night certainly worked in my favor, as did the unity of the candles. There was plenty of research about ley lines and channeling the earth. Standing stones. Rushing water. ‘Thin places’, as the internet called them. A place where the world bent and swayed, where the other side was only a fingertip away.

I could go back and ask Isadora, but I didn’t want to tell anyone that Wolfe decided to come through and speak to me.

That he’d shown himself through the flames.

Instead, I let the rabbit hole swallow me completely.

In Bracken Bay there were two thin places. One was about thirty minutes from here amidst the ruins of an old church. There were dozens of threads and articles written about paranormal experiences under the old crumbling archways, and I saved the location for later.

The second was a small faerie circle hidden along the coast. With the cliffs, the sea, the fossils in the stone, there were rumors that if you yelled a name into the sea, it would yell it right back at you.

I had enough of his belongings that I could set them out, call to him, demand he bring himself through, but something told me that wouldn’t work. I could get more candles, more herbs, set out more of his things and hope the connection would become strong enough that he could speak.

If Wolfe had opinions, he didn’t let them show.

The study door was still closed, but he wasn’t bumping into things. Wasn’t knocking books from the shelf.