Shoo, Mr. Oblivious. Run. Run away and never return.I’m internally cheering for him to get the fuck out of my house, but instead, he pulls Max in for a kiss.
The sight makes me nauseous. How can he be so blind, so entitled, that he never noticed the yellowed bruise on her bottom lip, or the bandage still wrapped around her palm? He missedhow shaken she was last night, and couldn’t care less about her tarot deck, yet she still spent the night in his arms.
I’ll kill him. Ghost or not, I’ll find a way.
When the door closes behind him, Max lets her arms fall at her sides. “Oh, just come out and say what you want to say. I can practically hear you biting your tongue.”
All the jealousy and anger that boiled in my blood overnight pour out of me unchecked. “That man doesn’t love you.”
She folds her arms tight around her chest, clearly taken aback. “Excuse me?”
“He wants you to be a jewel on his arm, to please his mother and her choreographer, but he doesn’t know you. He belittles your passions and your family. You have to hide the very core of what you need and who you are when he’s near, and that’s not love.”
There. The dams are open. And I won’t let her think this is what love should look like when he could barely be bothered to ask how she felt at all.
Max turns her back to me, shaking her head. “He’s mortal. He couldn’t begin to grasp the truth. I’ve painted Mabel in a bad light, so it’s my fault, really, that he doesn’t like her.”
“What about his blatant disregard for your wishes? His snarky, undermining comments? Couldn’t he grasp how they made you feel?”
“Who should I marry, then?” she snaps, spinning back to face me and threading her fingers through her red hair. “I’ve tried to date as myself, but no man is interested in a quirky, fairy-light-loving witch with an adopted shapeshifting family. A girl who saw her mom’s head being cut off in front of her eyes. Who would want me as I am, without the lie?”
The lights above her head flicker. She’s not really asking, but her question dares me to admit the truth. That I’m in love withher, even though I've only known her a few days. Even though it doesn’t make sense.
“The darkest parts of our souls can’t be dissolved,” I breathe. “The deepest scars can’t be smoothed over. When you have to paint over the bruises to keep someone close, you’re not truly loved.”
Before Max, I was fading. Each day, I sank deeper into silence, into nothingness, unravelling thread by thread. Max has stopped, or at least slowed, my decay. She laughs with me, asks things of me. I can’t help but hold on to her light.
“I’ve been haunting this earth, stuck in this lantern for a long, long time. Most days, I wish for oblivion. It seems a better alternative to endless boredom, but the more I fade…” My voice cracks. “The more I fade, the less connected I feel to anything. But it’s different with you. You being here has me convinced there might be more waiting for me than eternal darkness and silence.”
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “And I’m glad of that. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d go mad without you here. But we’re not a couple, alright?”
“No, we’re not a couple.”
Yet.
She wants to set the record straight, to ease her guilt, which means she feels something for me.
“So, friends?” she offers with a thin, tentative grin.
Fuck that, but I’d say anything to make her smile again. “As you wish.”
She turns her back to me, pulling open the top kitchen drawer to grab a pair of scissors. “I need to get something from the garden and test the theory that I can leave during the day.”
The thought of her stepping outside fills me with dread. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
She shrugs as though her safety can be made light of. “It’ll only take a second.”
“Take me with you.” The plea comes out rough and demanding.
She opens her mouth, and I expect her to refuse, but instead, she says nothing. When she picks up the lantern, that same hot, overwhelming pull takes hold of me.
Even without the magic of the séance binding us, I’m a molten haze, desperate to be made flesh, desperate to know more than the fleeting press of her hand.
Outside, the sky is a vast, cloudless blue. Harsh morning light blazes across Max’s face, setting her red hair aflame with gold and orange hues. The scents of damp soil and decaying leaves, of things dying for the season, invade my nose.
Leaves crunch beneath the soles of her shoes, and I wish I could hear my own footsteps falling in rhythm with hers. My gaze drifts to her hand, to his ring on her finger. It catches the light in a quiet reminder that she belongs to someone else. I want to slip it off, crush it under my foot, and grind it into the dirt until it disappears. Let the soil keep it. Let the world forget it. She was never meant to wear another man’s promise.
“No need to stand so close,” she mutters under her breath.
