Page 54 of How I Met Your Murderer

They hadn’t gone over that in training, either, but I think my gran mentioned it once.

“When the veil thins,” she said patiently, “the boundary between the living and the dead weakens. Spirits feel more present, more themselves. More tangible—especially, I would imagine, ones as strong as you say Eric is.”

My mind flashed back to Eric’s hand last night. How it had felt—not exactly warm, but also not like I was clinging to a piece of ice straight from the freezer. It had been cool, though not unpleasantly so. Closer to alive than he’d been before.

Guess that explained it.

I thanked Niamh for all her help and returned to the brilliance of the morning. Limped right to the van, the glass of the pendant cool against my chest—still terrified, but also more determined than ever.

The mist had thinned while I was inside, and now sunlight was breaking through in pale gold shards that dappled the village’s narrow streets. Yet the kiss of the light didn’t fill me with hope like it usually did. Today, it felt like a warning. A reminder that time was marching swiftly on whether I wanted it to or not.

Every step forward stung, as I knew I was getting closer to the moment I’d have to surrender Eric over to another world, one he deserved more than I deserved him.

The thought hollowed me out, and even made my lavender oat milk latte taste bitter.

But wanting him, deserving him—that wasn’t the point of this.

Keeping him wasn’t the point.

So I forced myself down the path anyway, dread settling cold and heavy in my chest, because doing right by him mattered more than whatever it would cost me in the end.

The drive up the hill to the castle felt longer than it usually did. Even after I parked in my favorite spot—the lot being particularly empty today, as it was the weekend—my progress toward the castle dragged, like the ground was trying to hold me in place. Slipping free of my shirt, my protective pendant thumped against my chest with each movement—a reminder of what I was going to tell Eric.

By now, the morning’s mist had burned off completely. The castle stood stark against the sky, its jagged stones throwing towering shadows that watched my approach. And like it had since I was a lad, the place looked hungry, like something inside it was waiting to devour me.

A cold ripple moved through the air—not the wind, but more like a shift in pressure that raised all the little hairs on my arms.

Then the birds in the nearby trees went silent all at once. Not gradually. Not naturally.

My gaze cut to the woods on the far side of the castle, gnarled trees that somehow were still clinging to most of their green.

Something old was awake in there.

Something that had noticed me.

I paused my limping steps, not letting myself look to see if the torn animal carcasses had been carted off by a groundskeeper yet, and directed a sharp gaze in the direction of the forest as I laid a hand on the holster of the PolterPulse strapped to my side. “I know you’re in there, Gary, and you can feck right off today. I’ve had enough out of you.”

A single bird trilled. A magpie. Maybe in agreement, or maybe commenting to all its little bird friends that I was completely out of my tree.

This place would do that to a guy.

I hummed the chorus of “All Star” as I made my way through the castle in search of Eric, hoping the song might encourage him to come to me like it had in the past.

Not this time.

I found him eventually, though, sat on a low stone wall in the grassy courtyard. He was half-visible, knees drawn up and arms wrapped loosely around them. He glanced up at me with a startle the second he sensed me, and the way his face lit—soft and relieved—was nearly enough to unravel me wholly.

“You came back.” His voice was warmer than it should have been.

God, this was going to hurt.

“You sound surprised,” I teased, forcing a smile. “I, uh, had a long talk with Niamh in the village.” As I drew closer to him, he manifested more fully. I rested my back against the wall alongside where he sat, not quite looking at him. It would be too hard that way. The words already felt too big to get out. “She gave me what we were hoping for—a way to move you on properly. Peacefully. No matter what’s happening at the castle.”

His expression flickered, and dimmed—hope mingling with fear, settling into resignation—all in the space of the heartbeat in which I dared to meet his eyes.

“Okay. That’s . . . that’s good. Thank you,” he said quietly. “So what do we do?”

I inhaled deeply, trying to get some air despite every breath feeling like it snagged on something sharp. “We’re going to make a list of all your unfinished business. And I’m going to help you complete it. Simple, right? Stuff you never got a chance to finish from when you were alive. We’ll write it all down and tackle it together. Halloween is when the veil between worlds is thinnest, so it’ll be easiest for you to pass over then.”