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“No.” His smile flattened, but the deadly charm still danced in his eyes. “That was an apology, not the magic words to undo your careless erasure of my life.”

“Okay.” I blinked up at him, lost for words. If he wasn’t alive, but he was standing in front of me, and he’d spoken into my mind after his death on not one but two separate occasions, that meant he was a—

“Spectre,” he finished for me. “Oh, come now. Don’t look so surprised, Auralie. I told you that I’m in your head—which, by the way, is at capacity and should really have had the vacancy sign turned over long before now.”

Considering he’d died at my hands, I was willing to overlook his commentary on the state of affairs inside my head. Lucais had mentioned Spectres, but in my horror at what had transpired, I hadn’t even thought to ask him what he meant by it.

“I’ve been…Marked?” I asked softly. “Are you—”

“Haunting you?” he interjected, slipping his hands into the pockets of his black trousers.

I studied them, trying to remember if he’d been wearing the same black velvet waistcoat and crisp white shirt when he died—and, hearing me, the Spectre made a disgruntled sound in his throat and removed his hands from his pockets.

Rolling his eyes, he unbuttoned his waistcoat to reveal a bloodstain on the shirt beneath it in approximately the same spot that the sword would have entered his body.

“Ah.” I cleared my throat. “I am sorry about that, too. That’s a…nice shirt.”

He gave me an incredulous look while he buttoned himself up again. “As I was saying,” he continued, smoothing down the fabric at his front before replacing his hands in his pockets. “Iwouldbe haunting you if you were anyone else. You took my life, so the usual recourse is for me to stalk you through the rest of your life in the name of revenge. And don’t get me wrong, Auralie, I’d love to drive you mad, but unfortunately, it seems like someone beat me to it a long time ago.” His brow creased as he stared down at me with an intensity to make me cringe, and I thought I detected a flicker of genuine concern cross his eyes, but he blinked it away.

I straightened my spine and said, “So you’ve come back to insult me to death instead?”

“That wasn’t an insult, sweetheart.”

“I’d hate to be on the receiving end of a compliment, then.”

“Better than the receiving end of one of your swords.”

My face flushed bright red, and the heat spread all the way down my throat, reminding me that I was dressed in nothing but a grey shirt with two buttons undone. I balled both hands into fists and used them to shove the excess fabric of the shirt all the way down the gap between my crossed legs. “Sorry.”

He sighed. “Look, my name is Tommy. We’re stuck together until I can figure out a way to claim the repentance I need from you to move on in my afterlife, and I only showed myself to you today because I can’t get what I need from you if you die.” Tommy pinned me to the spot with a stern look. “You’ve been through some shit, Auralie, and from the looks of things upstairs, it’s only going to get worse.”

The corners of my eyes crinkled. “What does that mean?”

Tommy’s shoulders slumped, and he lifted his chin, shaking his head at me. “You know I can’t say.”

I lifted one hand and pinched the bridge of my nose, squeezing my eyes shut. “Right. I didn’t know that, but sure.”

“I’ve come to ask you not to do things like run through fields of locusts or sit at the bottom of the shower until the water gets so cold it could give you hypothermia. If your death isn’t caused by my haunting, I’ll be trapped here forever, Auralie. You killed me. You took my life, and I know you didn’t mean to, but that doesn’t matter. So, I’ve come here to beg you to remember that. If you don’t want to damn me eternally, you cannot die at anyone’s hands other than mine before I’ve found what I need to move on. Then, when I have discovered what I need, you’ll help me get it sonobodyhas to die or be damned.”

“I…” I shook my head, my mouth hanging open, no words able to come out. I stared at the wall beyond his shoulder, at the shadows lingering in the tiny gap between the bookcase and the stonework. I could have sworn I felt them staring back. “I’m not…suicidal.”

Tommy’s head bobbed dubiously. “So we’re in agreement? Because if we aren’t, I’ll have to reevaluate my options, and those include the people close to you.”

Blinking furiously at the wall and feeling very much like I was being interrogated by my therapist in the human world again, I made a small, uncertain noise on an exhale of breath, and eventually nodded to signal agreement.

“Yeah, we’re…” I peered up at him quizzically. “We’re in agreement.”

“Good.” Tommy stepped up to me, bending down until his face was within two inches of my own.

I could see the flaws in his presentation up so close—the slight wavering of his features as though he wasn’t really there, the way his proximity lacked any warmth or scent, and the way that no breath entered or escaped his lungs when he spoke.

“I’ll hold you to this, sweetheart. I’ll be back when I’ve found what I need. Until then, stay the fuck alive for me please, and say my name three times if you think you’re going to die.”

A thick, painful throb hit my chest. “Why three times?” I asked breathlessly.

“It invokes the power of the bargain between us.”

“What bargain?” I exclaimed. My head reared back so fast that my whole body tilted, and I had to fling a hand out behind me to catch myself before I fell backwards onto the bed.