Page 31 of Love at First Fright

His smile made something twist inside me.

He hadn’t smiled once before this. Not when I’d trapped him in the attic, panic flooding through him as he’d banged against the locked door. Not when he’d played that song, fingers bleeding emotion across the strings, face blank and hollowed out with grief.

But now, watching a cat eat salmon from a bowl, Charlie smiled like it was the best thing he’d seen all day.

Beautiful.

He was so beautiful it hurt.

I nuzzled his hand, and he laughed, scratching behind my ears. “I had a cat once—”

A bang erupted from somewhere below us.

Deep. Resonant. Metal on stone.

The basement.

Terror shot through me, instant and visceral. The sort of fear that bypassed logic and went straight to the brainstem. My fur bristled. Claws extended. The cat’s heart thundered against its fragile ribcage, and mine—my ghostly non-existent heart—seized in sympathy.

The basement.

God, no. Not the basement.

I hissed, backing away from the sound.

“Hey, hey.” Charlie’s hand found me again, gentle and grounding. He stroked the knobbles of my spine, voice pitched low and soothing. “It’s just the wind, yeah? Old house. Pipes settling. Nothing to worry about.”

But his fingers trembled slightly against my fur.

And I knew better.

It wasn’t the wind.

It was never the wind.

The basement held something. Something that made every other ghost in Grimthorne avoid it. Something that dragged at the edges of my consciousness whenever I drifted too close. Something that whispered in frequencies I couldn’t quite hear but felt, bone-deep and wrong.

Another bang. Closer this time. Echoing up through the floorboards.

Charlie’s hand stilled on my back.

I couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t keep playing the helpless cat, letting him stroke my fur and feed me salmon. Couldn’t let him wander these halls with that gorgeous smile, thinking he’d found a friend in a stray.

This house would kill him.

The thing in the basement would kill him.

And I’d be damned—again, apparently—if I let that happen.

Another bang. The lights flickered.

Charlie stood, tension coiling through his shoulders. He stared toward the corridor, where the basement door was.

“That’s not the wind,” he said.

No. It wasn’t.

I watched him square his shoulders, lift his chin, despite the fear I could smell rolling off him in waves. Brave. Stubborn. Beautiful in a way that made me want to weep.