Page 24 of Ghost With the Most
I held it up to the light, let the sun catch the raised lettering. It was so Zelda it hurt. Extravagant, presumptuous, inconvenient. Tempting. First-class. She really didn’t hold back. I leaned back in my seat and dangled the ticket between two fingers like it might start levitating. The wind through the cracked window caught it, fluttering the edges like the impatient wings of destiny.
I tucked the voucher back into the pouch and tossed the ticket on the passenger seat, let it ride shotgun. Let it exist beside me for a while. Let it whisper possibilities I wasn’t ready to name.
Maybe I wouldn’t use it. Probably wouldn’t.
Almost definitely wouldn’t.
But the thought clung to me like perfume on old velvet. The kind that gets stronger the longer you try to ignore it. I started humming. Not Whitesnake, thank God, but something softer. Something that had no name but felt like forward motion. My hands on the wheel. The road ahead unraveled like ribbon. And a sky that didn’t feel quite so heavy. I wasn’t running anymore. Wherever I ended up next, be it a haunted castle or cursed café, I’d face it on my terms.
But not today. Today, I was just driving.
And that was enough.
EPILOGUE
The air in Savannah always smelled like old secrets before 7am. Salt, moss, and the heavy breath of ghosts still clinging to everything like a designer perfume. It was the kind of morning scent that curled into your clothes and made you feel like you’d stepped into someone else’s memory. Not hostile. Wanting to see what kind of day you’d decide to make it.
I pulled my key from the lock and stepped into my flat, shoes damp from my usual morning run and hair sticking to the back of my neck in protest. The humidity had teeth this time of year… soft, southern ones that didn’t bite so much as sink in.
The place was quiet, save for the low purr of the ceiling fan and the click of my cat-shaped clock keeping time like it had something to prove. The tail swished in practiced rhythm, and its googly eyes tracking me across the room like a judgmental ancestor. My wards pulsed softly against the windowsills, laced into the floorboards. Faintly agitated but holding. A kind of magical tinnitus… always there if you knew how to listen.
Still home. Still safe. Mostly.
I dropped my keys into the chipped ceramic dish by the door, hand-painted with the words don’t hex where you eat. I kicked off my trainers, and reached for a clean towel. The ache in my calves said I’d gone farther than usual. The tension in my shoulders said I hadn’t gone far enough. My muscles were still coiled, like I hadn’t quite outrun whatever was pacing behind me.
The phone rang again, sharp and insistent, slicing through the apartment’s soft hum like a blade. I blinked at it, willing it to stop, my damp towel slipping against the back of my neck as sweat cooled in prickles down my spine. It didn’t stop. Persistent. Nervy. Not the lazy chirp of a telemarketer or some random spam bot… this was the kind of ring that already knew it had your attention. When the screen lit up and showed a name I hadn’t seen in months, my stomach dropped.
Poppy Mettam. Of course.
I thumbed the answer button before I could talk myself out of it, the towel still clinging to my shoulders like a damp reminder of the workout I’d been trying to sweat my ghosts out of. “Poppy?”
“Oh, thank the Goddess,” she breathed, her voice slightly too shrill for this hour. A teakettle about to blow, all steam and no release. “I didn’t think you’d pick up. Ivy, we need you.”
That phrase snapped me upright. Not a polite we. Not brunch we. Coven we. The kind of we that meant candles burning too low and magic turning sour. Not that Poppy ever did brunch unless there was a plan involved. Hell, we’d never even met in person. Our whole relationship had been built on frantic phone calls and long, coded texts, her signature at the end always a little jagged. But that didn’t change who she was. Leader of the Affinity Coven, a Savannah powerhouse with a reputation for results. And if she was calling me at dawn? Something had gone very, very wrong.
I pressed the phone between my shoulder and ear as I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, fingers slick against the plastic. “What happened?”
“It’s in my apartment now,” she hissed, the sound thin and breathless, like she was holding the phone in one hand and a warding sigil in the other. “We’ve tried everything. Banishing, wards, even that idiotic pumpkin ritual Ursula swears works on ‘residual demonic vibes’. Nothing. It just keeps getting worse.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and for a moment all I could hear behind her was a low, rhythmic thump. Not footsteps, not wind. Something heavier. Something breathing. The kind of sound that meant my quiet was over, and the dark had come calling again.
I closed my eyes, just for a second, and let the weight of it settle. The quiet was over. Again. And no matter how fast I moved, no matter how many ghosts I laid to rest or demons I sent packing, the dark always seemed to know where to find me. Savannah had been a gamble. A maybe-home, a maybe-fresh start. But now the shadows were crawling up the walls of coven apartments, whispering in circles I hadn’t even stepped into yet. It wasn’t just haunting the place. It was hunting me. And I was so damn tired of it.
I didn’t want to run. I was done running. Every time I unpacked a bag, I barely had time to hang a charm over the door before something came clawing through it. And maybe this time, I wouldn’t have the strength to claw back. I could feel it in my bones, in the pulse beneath my skin… that I was nearing the edge of something. Of myself. The next place I landed? It had to be more than just another stopgap. It had to hold. Because I wasn’t sure I could pick up the pieces again if it didn’t.
I leaned against my kitchen counter with a sigh, the laminate cool beneath my fingertips. My heartbeat was slowing from the run, but something colder slipped into my bloodstream. Not fear, exactly. Recognition. Like hearing a song you didn’t remember learning the words to.
“You think it’s a haunting?”
“No. Maybe? Dunno. It’s not acting like anything we’ve seen before. It’s… smarter. And every time we push, it just digs in deeper. We’re out of our depth. I thought of you.”
Of course she had.
Because when there was somethin’ strange in your neighbourhood… I was the one you called. When the shadows didn’t behave, and your magic started biting back.
I glanced toward the east-facing window, where the sun had just begun to spill through the blinds in slanted gold, painting long stripes across the scuffed floorboards. Dust motes danced in the light like sparks suspended in syrup, their slow, lazy spin at odds with the growing tension crawling beneath my skin. The world outside looked deceptively calm. Soft. Like maybe nothing monstrous had ever stepped foot in Savannah. But I knew better. This was the kind of morning that held its breath before the scream. The kind that dressed itself in beauty just before everything fell apart.
Zelda’s voice came back to me unbidden, filtering through my thoughts and echoing back the words she’d said just before I’d left her kitchen.
You’ll be chased out of Savannah. By something old. Something angry. But then you’ll find love. And loss. And a familiar with better eyeliner than you.
