Page 5 of Avelina

Drew still had my hand and pulled me gently in the right direction. I followed, but I glanced back down at the unfortunate fawn one more time, shivering. The fog actively rolled in around us. It would soon be too thick to see beyond the trail.

I turned to follow my friends back toward home but jumped when something behind me cracked loudly. I spun, eyes searching left and right. My chest ached again from my pounding heart. I just knew that the big bad wolf was about to leap out of the fog and get me. I backed away from where the sound had emanated and almost ran over Drew.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I . . . nothing.” I gave a nervous little laugh. “I’m just paranoid. I thought I heard something. Let’s catch up to the others.”

We’d only taken one step down the trail when I heard a woman’s laugh, soft and incorporeal. I spun back around, my heart racing.

I’ve never really believed in ghosts or the afterlife. Technically, I’m agnostic, but the way I see it, if all those people who believed in the gods of Olympus were wrong, then why are we so sure that all other religions aren’t just as wrong? It’s all just mythology to me, but when I heard that woman’s laughter, I thought for sure that I had made a grave error in judgment.

I backed away again, my adrenaline surging. It could have been an echo from one of my friends, but I didn’t think so.

“Drew, do you hear that?” I whispered.

“Yeah, it sounds like a ghost laughing,” she replied, her mouth hanging open in disbelief. Drew was even more of a skeptic than I was, but this was undeniable. The laughing got louder. We looked at each other, eyes wide, then turned and ran.

Sticks and leaves crunched under our feet as we ran down the narrow trail. Small animals skittered out from under bushes and bolted up trees.

We caught up with Milo, then snaked around him and kept on running. I turned back every few minutes to glance behind me, but there was nothing there except my friends, for whom, I’m embarrassed to say, I had no intention of waiting.

When the rest of the group saw us running, they turned back to see what we ran from, but I knew there was nothing visible from the trail. They yelled questions after us that I couldn’t make out. I just screamed over my shoulder, “Ghost!”

Chapter Three

The old woman had long silver-streaked black hair that reached down to her knees and was braided into a splendid plait. Her very presence vibrated with magic such that Linorra could feel it from across the musty room.

“Are you a witch?” Linorra asked.

“I am,” the witch said. “What are you?”

“Nothing,” Linorra said. “I’m just a girl.”

“Just a girl?” the witch asked. “That’s a funny thing to say, but I suppose I know why you said it. I’ve thought that myself once or twice.”

“You?” Linorra asked, astonished. “Haven’t you always had your magic?”

“Yes,” the witch said. “I have.”

It was downhill most of the way back to the stables, and we made it in less than half the time it had taken to walk out. We didn’t run all the way back. I was in good shape, but I had just gotten out of the hospital, and I was still broken in two places.

We ran until we couldn’t run anymore, then we walked, discussing what Drew and I heard. Then someone would hear a sound behind us, and we would run again. By the time we made it back, we were all exhausted and sweaty. The creepy weirdness in the woods was smothered by intense physical exertion, and our ghost discussion had turned into half the group believing and the other half laughing hysterically. Nobody had seen any sign of Rogue.

As the sun set, we all shuffled into the screened-in porch at my parents’ house and collapsed onto the couches. The porch had an oversized stone fireplace and seating for bed and breakfast guests.

Four guest rooms were accessible from the porch, none of which were fancy, but they were clean and had comfortable beds. Only the room at the farthest end of the porch was occupied. A twentysomething girl traveling alone, the guest in that room was pretty in a Snow White kind of way and could have lured away one of the Jermez twins, but she had yet to emerge since checking in.

We had the porch all to ourselves, so we tucked in for a night of merriment that would inevitably end with my friends crashing in the guest rooms.

My mom had, indeed, made her spicy chuck burgers and paired them with scalloped potatoes, corn on the cob, and a keg. Yes, a keg. My parents were thrifty, and a keg was cheaper than individual bottles of beer—not to mention better for the environment, as Spirit enthusiastically noted. Plus, it’s just fun to drink out of a red Solo cup. I mean, come on. What’s better than a keg party with friends? Nothing, that’s who.

My parents left us to it, retreating into the house once their friends left. We all sat together on the outdoor couches, which were arranged around a large wicker coffee table with a glass top. We had our red cups, which had been drained and refilled multiple times. Our paper plates—which had been piled with food beyond the confines of societal norms—lay empty in front of each one of us, except Spirit, who was vegan and hadn’t needed a plate for her one piece of watermelon.

Milo had eaten two giant burgers to make up for what he called her obvious error, and he was on his eighth beer at least. He’d been laughing loudly at us for the past five hours and showed no signs of stopping anytime soon. I was sure he was trying to memorize every detail of the night so he could tell the story for years to come. I doubted he would remember any of it.

“You didn’t see a ghost,” Marti said.

“I didn’t say I saw a ghost,” I corrected. “I heard laughing that wasn’t attached to a person. You guys had all walked away already, and Drew heard it, too, dammit!”

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