Page 5 of Ghost With the Most
“Hi,” I said quietly, voice steady.
He inclined his head, as if the circle had earned me a different kind of acknowledgment. Not just as a woman meddling in his afterlife, but as something older, beneath my human form. Something he recognized, even if I didn’t.
I sat up straighter, meeting his gaze. “Let’s try again.”
He didn’t speak right away. Just stood there, hands in the pockets of that devastating black suit, watching me with the kind of expression that told me knew much more than he was letting on. His presence was magnetic. The way he tilted his head, the sharp line of his jaw, the casual ease with which he occupied the space. It all felt practiced, like death hadn’t dulled his charm, just distilled it. Everything about him said ‘Southern gentleman with a wicked streak’, and I hated how easily he wore it.
“Welcome back,” he drawled finally, voice low and warm.
I raised an eyebrow. “You thought I’d give up, huh?”
The truth was, I had thought about giving up. More than once. Not just on him, but on all of it. The rituals, the circles, the endless push-pull between the living and the dead. There were nights I’d laid awake wondering if I was actually helping anyone or just prolonging the agony. Ghosts didn’t always want to move on, and I didn’t always want to be the one to make them. But something deeper, something stitched into my marrow, wouldn’t let me walk away. I didn’t ask for this gift, and I sure as hell didn’t want the darkness that sometimes came with it. But when a spirit looked at me with recognition and reverence, it made the weight feel a little more like a purpose, and a little less like a curse.
Still, there was always a cost. Letting him in like this meant letting myself be seen. Not just as the woman with the tools and the sarcasm and the salt lines, but as the version of me I rarely acknowledged. The one who wasn’t afraid of death because a part of her might already belong to it. I hated that part. Feared it, even. Because if I ever stopped doing this work, if I ever let myself believe I could be normal, what would be left? The girl who saw ghosts because she was broken? Or the woman who kept them close because it was the only time she ever felt truly seen?
“I thought you’d be smart enough to run the other way,” he clarified, bringing me out of my own closet and away from the rattling skeletons in it.
I didn’t dignify his comment with a response. Instead, I motioned to the salt circle and the flickering candles. “You know how this goes. You talk, I listen. We try to figure out what’s keeping you here.”
He stepped closer, the air growing colder with each inch he closed between us. He looked around thirty-five, maybe forty if you accounted for the timelessness that death sometimes gave. And he was smirking, like he knew every secret I hadn’t said aloud. That smirk had probably gotten him into trouble. It still might.
“You look like someone who’d call women ‘darlin’’ and mean it,” I said, not unkindly.
He gave a mock bow. “Beauregard Moran. But folks called me Beau. Still do, I suppose.”
“Of course they do,” I muttered. “Let me guess. Born with a silver spoon and a crooked halo?”
“I prefer to think of it as inherited charm and flexible ethics,” he said, smile widening.
I almost laughed. Almost. I had to give it to him. He had charisma that stuck to your ribs.
“Alright, Beau,” I said, adjusting the pendant again, letting its weight settle against my sternum like a tether to reality. “Let’s start with the basics. Do you know you’re dead?”
“That would explain the draft,” he said, glancing down at his body with feigned surprise. “Also the sudden lack of liquor. And the general lack of warmth in... everything.”
His tone was playful, but there was something underneath it that was colder than death and sharper than grief. I clocked it immediately. It hummed beneath his words, an undercurrent of something jagged. Regret, maybe. Or fear. Or fury that hadn’t quite found its name.
“You don’t remember how it happened,” I said.
He didn’t respond. Not at first.
A flicker passed over his face. A momentary break in that carefully curated charm. The smirk faded just a hair, and his jaw worked like he was chewing on words he wasn’t sure he wanted to taste. The flickering candlelight caught the edge of his cheekbone, turning it into a shadowed slash against his pale skin.
“I remember… some things,” he said finally, his voice quieter now. “I remember the feeling. That drop in your stomach when you know something’s wrong, but it’s already too late to fix it.”
I stayed still, letting the moment stretch.
“Pain?” I asked.
He gave a tight nod. “Like being snapped in half from the inside. Then cold. Then... nothing.”
“Someone did this to you, and you think I can find out who.”
Beau’s gaze met mine. His eyes, dark and piercing, held something other than sorrow. Betrayal, maybe. A wound that cut too deep to bleed. “I think you’re the only one who’s bothered to ask the right questions. The only one who’s ever paid attention.”
The air between us pulsed with something unsaid. I wasn’t just here to tidy up his haunting. I was here to pull the thread. To unravel something that maybe didn’t want to be unraveled. I exhaled slowly, letting the weight of his unspoken truths settle into my bones.
“Well,” I said, the corner of my mouth curling into the semblance of a smile. “You’ve got my undivided attention now, Beau.”
