Whatever lie I come up with, it’ll have to be simple and believable.
For better or worse, I have a ton of experience in the cover-up-your-witch-arse lies. From the first moment Mabel enrolled us in secondary school, Nick and I learned how to tell a convincing tale, but this is different. I’m trying to build something new, to be someone else. I don’t want to lie to Lachlan.
My fingers cramp around my cellphone as I spot the bronze lantern I smashed last night. It lies neatly on the dining table, good as new, and my heart hammers. The blue stained panel—the very same one I had to pry out of my bleeding hand—reflects the sunlight. I check my bandaged hand, my mouth open in a mix of surprise and outrage, but I certainly didn’t imagine the whole thing. I know I swept up the stained glass and tossed it into the fire, along with the rags.
My hands cramp around the back of a kitchen chair, and an unfamiliar bite of power registers. The magic is faint and subdued, almost impossible to grasp, but it’s there. Someone else is in the house.
Bloody hells.
Cold sweat beads along my brows. “Who’s there?”
“Hi,” a voice replies.
My heart somersaults, and I search the living room for the source of the sound. It feels like whoever’s speaking is right in front of me, and I paw at the air. Nothing. I check behind the sofa, then the drapes, but there’s nowhere else to hide.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you,” the voice adds.
Unlike the evil phantom’s telepathic whispers, this voice is warm and more human. It’s deep and clear, the kind of masculine drawl you read about in fairytales. The rich, appealing tone of a beast hiding in some mystical castle in the middle of an enchanted forest.
I make another pass around the room, wondering if something small might have escaped my notice—the likes of Percy, my godmother’s Faeling.
“Who are you? Show yourself,” I croak.
The childhood fears most mortals outgrow still live in me, and goosebumps rise on my arms. Monsters aren’t metaphors. Nightmares and beasts don’t vanish when the lights come on. Some are imprisoned in old realms, eager to escape, while others are simply weaved into flesh by powers beyond my understanding.
Dread coils in my chest. Did I dream a nightmare into existence—give it just enough shape to follow me home? Or did I catch the eye of some dark spirit on my way back?
One careless wish, one unguarded thought, can allow shadows to bleed into flesh and track the scent of longing and desperation into the waking world. And this one wears a voice too perfect and too enticing to belong to anything safe.
Chapter 4
Three Wishes
MAX
The kitchen lights flicker overhead as my fear bleeds into the wiring, the way it always does when I’m upset or cornered. Whatever is here is already too close, encroaching on the sacred space I was taught to guard.
“Show yourself,” I repeat.
“I can’t. I’m a ghost.”
I scoff at the absurdity of that statement, my knuckles clenched at my sides. “A ghost? I’ve lived here for more than a decade, and this house isnothaunted.”
“Not the house, no. The lantern.”
I look at the lantern again. It gives off no light, yet draws my eye all the same. It’s beautiful in a way that makes my skin prickle, one of a kind, crafted with a care that borders on obsession. Ancient. Pristine. Danger often wears the guise of beauty. For a fleeting moment, I wonder if I should smash it and destroy it, before remembering that I already did.
“I used to live here too, you know,” the ghost says, sounding a little tense, as though he followed my train of thought. “In fact,I stayed in this house for about four decades before Mabel sent me to Devi. I suspect that was around the time you moved in.”
The dejected baritone sends chills down my neck. Whereas the intruder’s bite of power is barely noticeable, his otherworldly voice carries the weight of his presence, and the more he speaks, the more I can feel him. The bite of his magic is unfamiliar, unlike ours, and different from Devi’s, too. A brand I’ve never tasted before, yet oddly soothing.
I blink at the empty living room, trying to pinpoint the ghost’s exact location. The air in the center of the room feels warmer, charged with static electricity. I’m almost certain he’s there. The hairs on the back of my neck rise as I inch closer.
“Mabel and Devi know about you?” I ask.
“Yes. They exchange my lantern back and forth every few years.”
Another of Mabel’s secrets, and one that shifts my stance entirely. She might be secretive to a fault, but she would never have allowed some dark spirit to linger in these halls. This house is sacred to her.
