Page 12 of SIN Bone Deep

“We just need to know more,” Fennel added soothingly. “What happened precisely?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “We talked and…”

“Ghosts don’t generally interact with the living,” Callista pointed out. “Unless they are delivering the message that has been holding them to this world, or it is the very point of their death.”

I remembered the little girl talking as her spirit rose from her body. “I’ve spoken to him twice now.”

“Well, in that case…” She tapped her finger against her lips as she thought it through. “If you held multiple discussions with this man, it seems unlikely that he is a ghost. What makes you think that he isn’t a human?”

“Just… I don’t know. My intuition, I guess.” I confessed.

“A witch should always trust her intuition. Well… If he isn’t human, then perhaps he is of demon-kind?” Callista decided. “It is unusual for demon-kind to visit a witch, unless… You have not cast any invocations, Nyx?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “I have been reading on them… But, no, I haven’t cast one.”

“It doesn’t take much,” she told me. “Just a few words spoken aloud with intention. And if you invoke a demon familiar, that one is with you for your life, or theirs. There is no ending that contract. So be wary and don’t invoke anything carelessly…”

“I know,” I assured her. “I have been reading up on it.”

“As for this… man,” Fennel continued. “If your intuition is warning you - ”

“He isn’t dangerous to me,” I said hastily. “It’s not that sort of intuition.”

“What sort is it dear?” Callista lifted an eyebrow.

“Nothing,” I was blushing and knew it, feeling the heat burning on my cheeks. “Good night.” I made for the door.

“You will have to work out whether he’s human or not dear,” Callista called out after me.

“And let us know,” Fennel added sweetly.

“Not that any man is ever totally human,” Callista commented under her breath.

Their giggles pursued me out into the hallway. For a moment I hesitated between the old grandfather clock that insisted on striking the hour fifteen minutes late and a collection of gilt-framed miniatures of disapproving-looking children. I should go upstairs and prepare for bed, maybe spend an hour reading about invocations and demons, just in case… But I was too restless to study.

On impulse, I turned and went instead through Callista’s office, the dark-wood shelves containing relics of generations of witches, from crystal balls and tarot cards to wax-sealed spell jars whose labels had long peeled off leaving their contents unknown. Behind her desk with its neatly stacked paperwork and ledger, the French doors opened onto the veranda.

The night air was warm and heavy with the night-blooming jasmine that grew along the garden beds at the edge of the veranda. I followed the footpath until I could look out over the ocean below, with the salty wind tossing back my hair and pulling at my clothing.

Perhaps Ender was just a man, I argued with myself. Just a man who liked to lurk in the shadows. The first night, meeting him between the bonfire and the ruins might have been coincidental. But his appearance at the post office…

I was almost certain that Ender was a ghost.

But then, he had untangled my dress from the spiny saltbush, held the envelope, and his shoulder had rested against my own… Ghosts did not possess a body for such things. A poltergeist could manifest enough energy to throw things about, but not with the level of control that Ender had demonstrated.

I had been reading invocations recently, trying to decide if I wished to summon a demon. Summoning a demon was a tricky thing – not in the action itself, oh no, as Aunt Callista had said, that was very easy, even too easy. But once the demon answered...

I was certain that I hadn’t invoked a demon. Sometimes, however, it was possible to accidentally attract the attention of one. Perhaps that was what I had done that first night when my dress had become caught onto the saltbush.

“It is a beautiful view,” Ender said softly as he stepped out of the shadows to stand at my side.

“It is,” I agreed turning to find him looking down at me.

I reached up and stroked back the fall of his hair, both proving to myself that he was solid and real and revealing his face under the moonlight. He turned his head, and his lips brushed the heel of my palm, sending an icy frisson of sensation that seemed to rush from my wrist to my breasts, tightening my nipples against the fabric of my dress.

My inhalation was ragged.

His hand closed on my hip. The fabric of my dress suddenly seeming as fine as a spiderweb as if there were nothing parting my skin from his at all. I stepped into him as his grip tightened so that as he drew me towards him, I went willingly into his arms. His chest beneath my palms was solid and strong, rising and falling with each breath, but he was cold. No heat warmed the fabric of his top, no heat rose to meet that of my palms against him.

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