Page 11 of Grave Expectations

“Silence?” she asked, retrieving something and popping it into the microwave. She turned to watch him, her back pressed into the counter. He tried not to stare at her.

“Yes—no one can see me, no one can hear me. It was…lonely,” he said. Was, because now she could hear him and see him.

“That’s awful,” she said, tilting her head slightly. “So, what’s your plan for breaking the curse? It’s a curse, right?”

Ah, yes. That.

“I was hoping that if someone did manage to see me or hear me, they’d have some idea of what held me here. I’ve many years to think back on it, and I believe the reverend cursed me.”

“You mentioned that—how is that possible? Wouldn’t that make him a witch?” Rosalin asked.

“Magic does not always care. It is about intent, is it not? Humans create magic every day, though they don’t often realize it,” Alaric said. “Or perhaps his god was listening, or perhaps one of ours thought I needed a punishment.”

“Or redemption,” Rosalin suggested, pulling her food from the microwave. She shifted it from hand to hand, blowing on the surface of it. “I really need to get microwave-safe bowls,” she murmured, dropping the bowl loudly on her small kitchen table. Alaric sat across from her, considering.

“I had redemption quickly, no need to stretch it several centuries. A punishment, then,” he said.

“Kinda funny how it backfired,” Rosalin said, blowing on her food. His gaze instantly dropped to her lips as she puckered them to blow. He was suddenly glad—and so, so very sad—that he was a ghost and not of flesh.

“Hmm?” Alaric said, forcing his gaze back to her eyes. She raised an eyebrow at him, slowly parting her lips to slide the food between them. He couldn’t not stare as she closed her lips over the silverware, slowly sucking the food off it.

“He wanted you to watch Pumpkin Hollow fail,” she said after she swallowed. “Instead, you watched it prosper. Still a punishment to be alone, that part must have been awful. But the other part?”

“Not so bad,” he agreed.

“Did you know my ancestors?” Rosalin asked.

“Yes, not well though,” Alaric admitted. “They did not like to associate with those without magic.”

“Sounds about right,” Rosalin muttered, taking another bite, this time without lingering. Alaric wasn’t sure if he wanted her to continue to eat normally or torture him more with the way her lips closed on the silverware.

“Your mother seemed supportive,” Alaric offered.

“Seemed, yes. She doesn’t know what to do with Delia and I. We very well may be the end of the Graves line, and I can’t do anything, and Delia rots,” Rosalin said.

“You can’t do anything?” Alaric scoffed, leaning over the table. “You succeeded where everyone else failed.” Rosalin’s spoon paused halfway to her mouth, her eyes widening, pupils dilating as he leaned toward her. “Do not make me remind you once more what you did, without even intending to. I do not like repeating myself.”

The vessel in Rosalin’s neck pulsed faster. She swallowed, nodding. “Yes, sir.”

“That’s better,” Alaric said, leaning back in the chair. He frowned and looked down at the chair, considering it. “I am sitting in a chair.”

“I noticed,” Rosalin said, laughing.

“I have not sat in a chair in three hundred years,” he reminded her. He reached across the table for her bowl, pressing his hand to it. It went through it.

“Looks like only your ass is solid,” Rosalin said. Alaric glared in reply.

“Okay, so this is where we’re at,” Rosalin said, setting her spoon down in her mostly empty bowl. “I bled on your statue and I could hear your voice. Then you…touched my hand⁠—”

“Your bloody hand,” Alaric reminded her.

“Ah, yes. You touched my bloody hand and I could see you. Then you wiped the blood from my head. Now you can sit in chairs, but you can’t touch anything. In the past, did you just, like, float through walls?” she asked, waving her hands and wiggling her fingers.

“Yes,” Alaric said. “Though not without invitation. Public places only, I’m not in the habit of spying,” he added with disgust. He mostly frequented the downtown, the diner, the coffee shop, the bake shop. He liked to watch dates, bachelorette and bachelor parties, birthdays—anything that brought a group together. Over the centuries, he’d watched so much happiness, all because the reverend did not succeed.

“So you’re like…a ghost vampire,” Rosalin suggested.

“I am not a vampire,” Alaric said. “I am a ghost.