Outside, the mist billows in waves, swallowing the world inch by inch. In its slow, deliberate silver whorls, I catch flashes that don’t belong—skeletal hands clawing upward, sewn mouths, eyeless faces lurking in the night.
“I could venture further out during the day, I think,” she says on a sigh. “But I’d be more comfortable leaving if I knew a way to kill them.”
I don’t want her to leave. Not even for a second, and especially not without me.
“They can’t be killed,” I say instead.
She tilts her head toward me. “How do you figure that?”
It’s another thing I just know, but I try to explain it as best as I can.
“Because they’re already dead. Living things have a soul, a light you can see within them. They don’t. They don’t even have a dark light. They’re empty shells, nothing more. I’m sure they can be destroyed or deactivated?—”
She grazes the fogged glass. “Look. You’re here,” she says on a rushed inhale.
I squint at the window and see the faintest hint of a man—the blurred outline of someone where I’m standing. The tiniest, barest hint that I exist.
Max appears mesmerized by the trick of light, her fingertips gently touching the window. “So you’re a soul without a body, and they’re a body without a soul?” she muses.
A smile touches my lips. “Who’s to say I have a soul at all?”
Her gaze softens. “You do.” She spins around, turning away from her reflection and whatever shard of me she saw in the glass. “I’m sure you do.”
We were speaking of empty things, of creatures that walk without souls, yet her certainty that I don’t belong in that category warms me all over. I don’t feel soulful. I feel impatient. Hungry. Wrong in familiar ways. If Max believes I’m more thana monster, I don’t know whether to cling to that belief—or fear what might happen when I disappoint her.
“My garden used to be my safe place,” she whispers before pulling the drapes shut. “It sickens me to see them out there.” With a frustrated huff, she turns away from the window.
“Read me,” I ask quickly.
“What?”
“Get your handmade tarot deck, and read me.”I don’t care if she knows I eavesdropped on her evening with Lachlan. “I want you to read my past, present, and future. How does it work for a ghost?” I add.
Her eyes shine with a hint of curiosity. “I’m not sure.”
She slides open the dresser drawer and pulls out a hand-painted box. Inside is a deck of cards, each longer and slightly wider than a playing card, and she shuffles them with practiced ease.
Max squares the cards and lays them face down on the quilt. “Touch them, first,” she whispers, nudging the deck toward me.
I press one finger to the top card, and it doesn’t pass through. A faint ripple of magic blooms beneath my touch, barely there, but enough to send my heart into a frenzy.
Max fans the cards. “Now, think about your question, and let the cards speak to you.”
I concentrate and point to three separate cards. Max slides them free without revealing them, choosing the exact ones I wanted from the deck, a sure sign that she sees me without seeing me. I don’t understand how it works, but every day the veil thins, and it terrifies me how much I want to step into her world and pretend I still belong there.
“First card.” She flips it. Her brows rise, and her voice dips, catching on the edges of something darker. “The Devil.”
The bedside lamp flickers, and a tangle of regret knots in my chest. She doesn’t explain the symbolism. She doesn’t have to.
I know what she’s thinking.
I know what she’s afraid of.
The Devil she painted is nothing like the snarling creature the card is meant to warn against. He is a man, rendered in shadow and light, his wide wings spread behind him, each white feather painted with such care they look ready to lift off the cardstock. The details are exquisite, and an itch sparks between my shoulder blades at the sight of them.
The barest hint of a memory flutters in my stomach. Of what I once was. Of what I’m not anymore.
The Devil stands for obsession, temptation, and self-imposed bondage, but the way she painted it moves me. Something dormant stirs under my ribs, no longer content to ache in silence. My heart—once still as a stone—beats like a beast waking after a long winter, famished and violent.
