Prologue
Felix
Moonlight shimmers across the untouched snow like diamonds. I can’t tell if it’s really late at night or really early in the morning, but since I’m dead, there isn’t much of a difference to me. Ghosts don’t sleep.
I walk easily through the balcony doors and into Callie’s room, but it has an odd, weighted feeling to it. It’s subtle, like the difference between passing through fog instead of clear air.
“A protection spell?” I ponder quietly—not that I have any idea if there’s such a thing.
Nope. I’m just a regular dude who has a bit of a living impediment. No biggie. A lot of people have it until they move on to the afterlife. I hear good things about it. Chill out in paradise and visit with fellow dead people until it’s time to be reincarnated and do it all over again. Circle of life and all that. Except when it was my turn, I kinda, sorta told my door, and consequently paradise, to fuck off. I had a very important girl to haunt… er, watch over... protect? Yeah, let’s go with protect, which is why I’m here now.
Callie—said important girl—sleeps soundly in her bed with her thick blue comforter pulled up to her chin. Lying beside her is an odd, open book with some type of diagram scrawled across the pages. There are tiny notes written wherever there’s free space in handwriting I don’t recognize as Callie’s. She must have passed out while reading.On the nightstand beside the bed is a stack of more uniquely bound books—generations of her family’s grimoires, some reaching back as far as the last original spirit witches. I chuckle when I see her cell phone on top of the stack, weirdly amused by the juxtaposition of twenty-first-century tech and books that are over two thousand years old. The scene before me is Callie’s life in a nutshell—one side learning ancient magics, and the other trying to survive high school. It would be a daunting task for anyone, yet Callie faces all of this while also being shackled to an abusive past that’s beyond words. A trauma that will forever torment her.
Every night, I guard her dreams against the horrors of her past that seep into her mind when she’s most vulnerable—in other words, I watch her sleep, but not in a creepy way.
It’s not creepy when you have permission, right?
Right.
It’s romantic.
Sure.
It is!I insist to myself.I’msoromantic that Callie will totally fall in love with me. A ghost who watches her sleep.
Sighing, I shuffle over to her desk that’s covered in all the stuff required to make jewelry to investigate the pictures pinned to the wall above it. There are various pictures of Callie and the guys printed on what looks like normal computer paper. There’s one of all of them squashed together on the couch on Yule. Another is of them gathered around Nolan and his giant birthday cake. A selfie of Callie and Nolan looking tired and sweaty after a workout hangs next to a framed charcoal drawing of Callie smiling while reaching back to clasp the hand of someone not in the picture. It must be one of Connor’s.I’m not in any of the pictures, because despite what TV shows would like us to believe, ghosts don’t actually show up on camera.
Burying that little taste of bitterness, I poke at one of the beads on Callie’s desk, and it rolls a couple of inches until it bumps into a pair of wire cutters.
“Holy shit, it moved,” I squawk before immediately covering my mouth.
I peer over at Callie, my shoulders drooping with relief when it appears she’s still fast asleep. Part of me wants to wake her up and show her what I did, but the other half wants to hold onto the surprise just to see her exasperated face when I casually mention that I was finally able to move something. The only other time was when I went all poltergeist on a lamp when Callie went catatonic after blowing up a backyard campfire. That’s a party no one will forget for a while.
Letting her sleep wins out, and I move to kneel beside her bed to start my watch. I rest my chin on the edge of the mattress and let my eyes drift across her features. She’s beautiful while she sleeps. Well, to anyone else she probably looks like a disaster, with her long, wavy blonde hair stuck to her face and her mouth hanging open, but to me she looks beautiful. Then again, I think she always looks amazing and everything she does is the coolest thing ever. It’s probably excessive how stupid in love with her I am, considering we’re only friends, but how could I not? On top of being gorgeous, smart, kind, andfunny, she’s into all the geeky things I like… and is, you know, an uber powerful witch who can make things magically happen just by thinking of them. It’s hard to feel indifferent to a girl like that.
I’m always happy just to be in her presence, but strangely, tonight, my chest aches as I look at her. It’s as if it’s been forever since I’ve seen her face, and I can’t quite believe I’m finally alone with her, which makes no sense since I’m with her all the time—part of the whole haunting gig—and I’m a ghost which means I don’t physically feel anything. Wow. Maybe I’ve gone so crazy with longing that I’ve managed to think my emotional pain into something that resembles tangible feelings. I press a hand to my chest like that will somehow fix the problem.
Focus, Felix. You literally have one job to do here. Don’t screw it up.After shaking my head, I sit up straight and turn my full attention back to Callie’s sleeping face.
There’s a chill in the air, and she frowns, pulling the comforter over half her face, burrowing deeper into the trapped warmth. Grinning over how she now resembles a human burrito, I unconsciously rub my own arms to try and thaw my freezing skin, but it doesn’t seem to help... except I’m not supposed to feel any cold or heat, for that matter.These whole psychosomatic sensations are getting a little ridiculous. I hold up my hands, and they are just as I remember them, pasty with a splash of golden sheen. What the hell is going on?
My attention is quickly diverted when Callie makes a soft whimper of distress, her frown growing deeper, and she begins to fidget restlessly. I reach out to soothe her furrowed brow but stop right before my fingers can brush her skin.
“Shhh,” I murmur gently, my hand dropping to the pillow to trace the wild strands of her hair. “It’s okay, pretty girl. I’m here. You’re safe.”
My words must reach her slumbering mind, because her body relaxes, the harsh lines between her brows ease, and she mumbles, “Welcome home, Felix.”
I smile, happy to hear my name on her lips, but a sudden, confusing sadness fills me and the pain in my chest grows, making it difficult to breathe—a call of something distant begging to be made whole. Looking down, I notice a thin cord wrapped around my waist made of light. When I touch it, it’s warm and pulses. At first, the beat is weak, but the longer I hold it, the stronger it becomes.
It’s a heartbeat.Myheartbeat!
Panic consumes me, the sensation answered by the frenzied thumps of my distant heart.
This is wrong. I’m not supposed to be dead anymore. Callie saved me. I’m alive! I need to be alive,my mind screams.
Tugging harshly on the cord, I’m jolted off my feet and dragged into the slumbering night.
∞∞∞
