Page 20 of Ghost With the Most
He didn’t answer at first. Instead, he stepped just close enough for the candlelight to kiss the edge of his form. His gaze met mine, steady and luminous, with a depth that took my breath away. Like staring into a painting you saw every day, only to still find something that surprised you.
“I should ask you that,” he said gently.
I blinked. “Me?”
He threw me a teasing look. “You’re the one who came here exhausted and skeptical. The one who stayed up all night whispering to ghosts. You solved a murder, banished a cursed lawyer, and looked good doing it.”
I snorted. “Flattery won’t distract me from the trauma, Beau.”
His smile widened. “Worth a shot.”
We stayed like that for a while, suspended in something fragile and strange. Not grief, not exactly. More like the echo after it. The part where the ache doesn’t leave, but it changes shape. Where you realize you survived something, and you’re still standing, and you don’t know what to do with your hands.
He glanced at the candles. “That scent,” he murmured. “Sandalwood and beeswax. Smells like my grandmother’s church. She used to sneak me sweets from her purse during mass. I’d never admit it, but I liked going. Felt like magic.”
“It is,” I said softly.
And for a moment, I let myself just sit there in the golden silence. With him. With everything. With the quiet.
My brow lifted. “You flirting with me on your way out?”
He grinned, slow and crooked, like he’d just remembered how. “Wouldn’t be me if I didn’t.”
“Careful,” I warned, my lips twitching despite the ache building behind my sternum. “I might start calling you the ghost with the most.”
That earned a bark of genuine laughter, rough around the edges, and so very him that the walls seemed to hum in response. The air shimmered faintly around his shoulders, like even the ether couldn’t hold still under the weight of his charm.
“Well now,” he drawled, voice warm enough to thaw a grave. “If that’s not on my tombstone, I’ll haunt someone until it is.”
I laughed. “No more haunting! Bad ghost!”
We stood in the golden hush of the viewing room, caught in a moment stretched taut between worlds. My pulse thrummed quietly, slower than usual but louder in my ears, as if my heart knew it had only so many beats left in this particular kind of liminal magic.
I found myself reaching out without quite meaning to, my fingers drifting toward the edge of the salt circle. He met me halfway. His ghostly hand hovered over mine, and though there was no true contact, no skin or heat or nerve endings, something brushed me anyway. A weightless pressure. A spark. The ghost of a ghost of a touch. A connection, stretched between worlds. It was enough to make my throat tighten.
“You’re a much better witch than you pretend to be,” he said softly, his gaze tracing my face with something like reverence.
I shook my head, blinking away whatever threatened to rise. “I’m not a witch.”
His smile curved, sly and secretive. “Not yet.”
Before I could roll my eyes or say something sufficiently sarcastic to cover the way my chest ached, a soft sound came from the doorway.
Zelda.
She leaned against the frame like she hadn’t been eavesdropping, even though we both knew she absolutely had. Her arms were folded, auburn hair a little wild from whatever spellwork she’d been wrangling upstairs. But her face was gentler than usual. Like even she knew not to interrupt something delicate.
“Not to rush you,” she said, her voice pitched lower than usual, her usual dramatics stripped back to something honest. “But… don’t take too long. Veil’s thinner tonight. He’s got a very defined window.”
Beau nodded at her, eyes warm. “Thanks for not hexing me on sight.”
Zelda shrugged, casual. “I liked you. You were dramatic. And you didn’t hit on me, which is rare.”
He chuckled and turned back to me. “Guess this is goodbye, then.”
“Guess so,” I said. It felt small. Stupid. Too tiny a thing to carry the weight in my chest… but it was all I had.
I swallowed hard. “If you ever get bored on the other side…”
