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“There haven’t been any for quite some time.”
“How much time?”
I make a show of tallying the centuries off on my fingers. “Only about...five hundred years or so.”
“You’re full of shit,” she says, tossing a blade of crumpled grass at me.
I pretend to be offended.
“If you’re that old,” she says, “how is there a photo of you in the house? Also, this estate was built way later than that. How can you be haunting a place you’ve never lived in?”
“Some ghosts haunt objects. Others haunt people.”
“What do you haunt?”
“Your dreams, obviously.”
She shakes her head. “Is there, like, a vase somewhere in the house that you belong to?”
“Do I look like a genie to you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one. Technically, I’ve never seen a ghost either.”
“I’m not a ghost.”
“But you just said you were dead.”
“Dead doesn’t necessarily equal ghost.”
She eyes me like I must have a few screws loose.
“Well,” she says, “if you’re not a ghost, then you’re a figment of my imagination.”
The possibility that I might just be a very elaborate fever dream seems to disappoint her greatly.
I brace for the shock of physical contact and reach for her hand. She’s warm to the touch. I want to press her palm to my face, or smooth it under my shirt. Disperse her heat all over me so I can recall what it feels like to have a body that does more than ache.
“Perhaps you’re a figment of mine,” I say.
“I doubt that.” She frowns. “But hey, if I am, do me a solid and imagine me literally anywhere else.”
“Where would you like me to imagine you?”
“Home.” She sighs, her gaze wistful.
“And where is home for you?”
“The house I grew up in,” she says. “It’s in Baltimore.”
“That might be a bit further than my range will allow. Why not just go there yourself?”
She cradles her jaw in her hand. “Before my mom died, she told me I needed to come here. She didn’t tell me why. But now, something’s happening to me. I don’t understand it, but I know it has to do with this place. I couldn’t see ghosts before, and now I can. In my dreams, at least. I feel like part of me is waking up after a long sleep.”
The dormant psychic parts of her are indeed waking up, but it’s not because of this place. It’s because of my blood. Whether she’d be horrified to know the truth or see my pain as a means to an end, like her siblings do, remains to be determined.
“I keep thinking, if I can see ghosts in my dreams, maybe I can see my mom’s ghost someday. I’m afraid if I go home too soon, before I figure out what’s happening to me, I’ll lose the ability to see them altogether.”
She allows herself a moment of sadness before springing to her feet and offering me both her hands.
