"So the Shadow had been bothering you, before it moved to Cecily?" Zander asked.
Callum gave a nod. "Yeah. That's what fucked up the cups at the coffee shop that day, by the way."
Zander's smile was small, her chuckle nearly silent, but then her expression turned serious again. "So why'd it turn to Cecily?"
"I go dark whenever I’m in my house—and whenever I’m with you. It probably went searching for a new access point when I disappeared,” Callum replied. He looked to Cecily. “When was the first time you saw it?”
“Last Friday,” Cecily said. “It was late.”
When Callum looked to Zander she was already looking at him.
“I was with you that night,” she said.
Callum gave a nod.
“It hung around all weekend after that,” Cecily said.
“That makes sense. I was home most of the weekend,” Callum replied. “On Monday and Tuesday, it was like a total powerup. It was way worse than it had been before.”
“I’d been scared of it all weekend,” Cecily said. “I’m the one who powered it up. And then Monday is when it attacked me at work.”
“So it must have jumped between the two of us on Monday and Tuesday, because it was a pain in the ass those days” Callum replied. “I fucked up and bitched at it.”
“I slept all day Tuesday,” Cecily replied.
“That explains it,” Callum said. “And then Wednesday I stayed home. I didn’t go anywhere.”
“It was here all day Wednesday.”
Callum gave a nod. “Okay. So... yeah. It's sort of my fault it found you to begin with,” Callum said. ”And then my fault it kept up stalking you.” Way to make a good impression on Zander’s family, dip shit, Callum thought at himself. Hi, I’m Callum, the reason your family is being tormented by an evil being.
"It sounds like we’re equally to blame,” Cecily replied. "But I gotta get you to show me more runes so I can put them up here. It would have been way easier if it hadn’t been able to get in."
Callum gave a nod. "Absolutely. Now that the Shadow’s not inside with you, we should rune the apartment."
"They're tattooed on you," Zander said. "So shouldn't you always be invisible to the other side?"
An apt question, Callum thought. "You'd think so, but no. It doesn't work like that. No idea why."
She stared at him for a breath, and he stared right back. She was still fighting the whole thing, still trying to apply logic to the illogical—which made perfect sense. Zander found comfort in knowledge and understanding—he'd figured that out in the mere days they'd spent together—and nothing about this was logical. Eventually, it would feel natural to her, the way it felt to Scott. At least he hoped so.
"When we talked that morning, you said I have my own veil, right?" Zander asked after another stretch of quiet around the table. "You said it's opaque—they can't see me at all."
Callum gave a nod. "That’s the idea." Though it wasn’t entirely true.
And she saw the caveat written on his face. “But...?”
“It saw you once,” he explained. “I don’t know how—through me, maybe? And it figured out you were part of why I kept going dark. It was the night you left.”
She stared at him for a beat, like she was putting it all together, adding it all up.
Her hazel eyes were bright now that her coffee cup was empty. And her bed head hair above that T-shirt of his was almost more than he could handle.
Jesus, he wanted a cigarette.
"You said they can’t see you, either, when you’re with me,” she said. “I make you ‘go dark.’”
He felt himself smile. "You do,” he replied. Then he turned the lamp around so the holes he’d made weren’t visible to her and Cecily any longer, only the soft glow of the polka-dot shade through the dish towel. “You turn us blue, so we look like everybody else.”
Then he unzipped the hooded sweatshirt he'd thrown on in his mad dash to get out of the apartment, earlier, and shrugged it off, revealing a white tee that matched the one Zander was wearing. "And, from what I've been told," he said, "you can do this."
He tossed the sweatshirt over the lamp, dousing its light completely.
⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸
The words to ask what in the hell Callum meant with that little sweatshirt trick weren't yet out of Zander's mouth when the sound of a key in the front door cut her off.
She turned to see her mom let herself into the apartment—then stop mid-stride when she saw them all around the dining table. Her sandy brown hair was pulled into its requisite at-work ponytail; her black scrubs looked like she'd worked a twelve-hour, overnight shift, just like her blue eyes did.
Zander lifted a hand, "Hey, mom."
A smile lit her mom's tired eyes as she sat her bag down and crossed the room, lifting her arms as she went. "Zander! It’s so good to see you! Alyssa mentioned you were coming but she didn’t mention why—or that you were bringing a friend.”
Standing to meet her, Zander laughed and hugged her mom tight.. "Flights were cheap, and I needed a break from the heat," she said. She turned to Callum. "And this is Callum. We met right after I moved into my place."
Zander's mom reached across the table and Callum stretched to shake her hand, pinning his best, warmest smile on his face. It looked good.
"I'm short on family so Zander said I could tag along," he said. "It's nice to meet you."
"You, too," her mom replied before looking to Cecily, still sitting in her chair at the table. "Your color looks better. How are you feeling?"
Cecily smiled up at their mom, the messy bun of a ponytail on top of her head sliding back as she did it. "I feel a lot better. I got some sleep, and I think that helped."
"That's wonderful! I was starting to worry."
She went to the kitchen—but not before giving Zander a stealth eye tick toward Callum and an appreciative eyebrow raise.
Zander had to fight to keep from rolling her eyes as she took her seat at the table again. Apparently, Callum's looks weren't lost on anybody.
"Alyssa is still sleeping, I assume?" their mom remarked, a smile in her tone.
"Of course she is," was Cecily's response.
Alyssa was a night owl who liked to sleep in. Honestly, so was Cecily most of the time, Zander thought to herself, curious as to why she was up so early.
"Well, have you had breakfast yet?" her Mom asked from over the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the dining room. "Not that I'm offering to make you anything, but there are toaster waffles in the freezer, and fruit in the fridge." She held up the French press, half full of coffee and grounds. "I see you found the coffee."
"I've been gone three weeks, not three years," Zander replied with false exasperation. "The coffee was where it always is. And we're just getting up. We'll consider breakfast in a bit."
"Okay, okay," her mom relented, holding up her hands. "You can take care of yourselves. Which is good, because I'm taking a shower and then going to bed." She reached into the fridge and came out with a bottle of water. Then she crossed the apartment to her bedroom, picking her bag up from the floor along the way. "I'll leave for my next shift at six, but I’ll get up a little earlier than usual so maybe we can spend an hour together before I leave?" she said to Zander as she passed. "I want to hear all about New Orleans and your new job!"
Zander smiled. It was good to see her Mom, even if it had only been a few weeks since she'd said goodbye to her. "Yeah, that'd be nice."
Her mom smiled. "Well, I'll have my sound machine on while I sleep, so don't worry about waking me. Good night—or, good morning, rather."
"Morning," Zander said. She breathed a laugh when she realized Cecily had said the same thing in unison.
When she turned back, Callum's expression caught her attention. He was looking to where her mom had just disappeared behind her bedroom door, but not in a creepy way—more thoughtful, introspective, similar to how he'd been looking at the apartment yesterday wh
en they'd first arrived.
Then, with a breath, he smiled, returning his attention to them. "She seems nice."
Zander found her own smile slow to spread at first. It must be hard, she thought, for him to meet other people's parents. Or maybe that's not what he'd been thinking at all. Was it her place to ask? She wasn't sure. Regardless, now wasn't the time, so she let her smile broaden. "Yeah, I like to think so."
"Okay, so what's the plan?" Cecily chimed in, refreshingly oblivious to any subtext in their exchange.
Zander held up a finger before Callum could open his mouth. They all sat silently around the table for a few seconds—until the sound of the shower in her mom’s bathroom could be heard through the walls.
"We can't do anything about this Shadow until Mom leaves," Zander said. "That gives us eight hours to research and make a plan before she wakes up." She looked to Callum. "First, you're going to explain what you meant about me and the sweatshirt."
⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸
Thirty minutes later, with a fresh, hot cup of coffee beside her and her laptop front and center on the table before her, Zander settled in for what was certain to be the strangest research session of her life.
Callum had explained that, from what he'd heard through a cryptic, broken grapevine of information encountered over the years, a cloak could block a spirit from interacting with the living side of the veil—forever trapping it on the other side.
In another version he'd heard, a cloak had the ability to destroy forsaken spirits—or any spirit, for that matter—simply by absorbing them.
Whatever “absorbing them” meant.
Maybe that was like the “purify” thing Wren had mentioned, she thought.
Either option—blocking or purifying—was fine, in Zander's opinion. She didn't care about the details surrounding where the bastard would end up. What she did care about, however, was how to put it there. Because none of it mattered if she couldn't figure out how to make it happen.
Alyssa had woken up in time to hear both explanations—and to decide that all of this was way more than she had any interest being part of. She'd left as quickly as she could, saying she'd come home when the whole thing was over.
All the stories about spooky stuff happening in the apartment when Zander was gone—the stories she'd taken as jokes for years—had creeped Alyssa out more than anybody else. So it was no surprise when she left. In fact, Zander thought it was probably best.
It was strange, she supposed, the way she wasn't completely tweaked about the whole thing. She knew she probably should be a little freaked out, and she certainly wasn't comfortable—it was all very far from normal, obviously—but something within it just made sense. Almost like something in her brain, after all this time, had finally clicked. The last piece of information she hadn't realized she'd been missing.
So while Callum's explanation hadn't caused undue stress, the deadline was making Zander twitchy as hell. Eight hours to find some answers and make a plan, twelve hours after that to put that plan to use and destroy this Shadow motherfucker before her mom got home from work.
Zander glanced up in time to see Callum, parked behind his own laptop, do the same. He'd showered and his hair now hung damp, falling into his eyes, sending the gentle scent of shampoo wafting across the table. Zander would have liked to take that shower with him, but that definitely wouldn't have been in line with the whole let's-not-draw-attention-to-our-relationship idea. She'd already caught a couple of suggestive smirks from Cecily. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't have been so cagey about the whole thing. But this was just about the farthest thing from normal circumstances she could imagine, and the thought of throwing the family-meets-boyfriend variable into the mix was just a little more than she cared to deal with at the moment.
If boyfriend was even the right word for Callum...?
Ugh. Now is so not the time to be thinking about this, she reminded herself.
Under the table, Callum's socked toes brushed up one of her ankles.
He gave her a smile when she looked at him and she shook her head, laughing silently to herself.
If someone had told her, before she moved to New Orleans, that she would meet a guy like Callum within the first week—and be pretty damn crazy about him—she'd have told them they were nuts. And that wasn't even including the part where he could talk to ghosts, and where her sister was a medium, and how they were now trying to hatch a plan wherein she would destroy an evil spirit in her family's apartment.
Life was weird. Every time she thought she knew it, something else came along to show her just how much more unpredictable it could be.
She turned to her laptop, forcing her attention on the task ahead as a thrill of nerves ran up her spine. Eight hours to hatch a plan—to kill a ghost.
Yeah, she had not seen this twist coming in the Lifetime movie that had been her life over the last few years.
The next few hours passed with incredible speed. Like when she'd worked beside Callum those times at the library, Zander was comfortable, efficient, and focused—though ever-aware of his presence. They exchanged glances and smiles every now and again, his foot brushing against hers from time to time. When Cecily sat a plate of food onto the table next to her, it took a moment for Zander to realize the sandwich was for her—that it was lunchtime. So, she held the sandwich in one hand while she manned the keyboard with the other. She paused once when she caught Callum putting his potato chips onto his PB&J, but other than that moment in observance of his seven-year-old culinary preferences, she was honed in and on point.
That said, there wasn't a lot to find.
Scratch that. There was a lot to find, just not a lot of anything worth finding.
She read a few parapsychology papers she would have never given the time of day before. There were a couple of long-abandoned blogs that looked coherent and well thought-out, each with some posts that were somewhat useful, if poorly written. Even the highest rated YouTube channel she could find she wasn't sure she could take seriously due to the poor production quality and general ghost-hunter vibe that rang way too much like the Sasquatch hunters she'd known in high school. The farther down the rabbit hole she traveled, the more homespun and off-kilter each website became until she wasn't certain what was real and what was just the ramblings of a run-of-the-mill internet-weirdo.
Zander glanced at her phone lying on the table beside her laptop. She'd texted Wren again while Callum was in the shower. Not to bother her, but just to see how she was doing.
She hadn’t received a response. And she understood why, she really did.
She just sure-as-shit-wished she had Wren on her side right now.
Days ago, when Wren had said she was a witch, Zander hadn’t believed her.
Now she did. And now she needed her help. But she wasn’t about to demand it or badger Wren into helping her. Lord knew she had enough to deal with.
Zander pulled her eyes up and looked across the table to Callum, then to Cecily, who'd been doing research of her own. It looked as if she wasn't the only one finding less than stellar sources; furrowed brows on top of looks of panic they were clearly trying to ignore were on both of their expressions. She recognized the look because the same panic was ringing in her veins.
She hadn't found much. And she wished she could find more. But from what she had found, combined with what little Wren had been able to tell her, a plan was coming together in her head. And if they weren't able to find more resources, it was the only plan they were going to have to work with.
It was completely crazy. And probably unreasonably dangerous.
But it was something.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Cecily's heart was pounding as she watched Callum brace his hands on the back of the sofa in front of him. His head hung from his shoulders and his eyes closed like he was thinking—or maybe praying.
She hoped he was praying.
She knew the second Zander reached the bottom of the stairs outside because Trevo
r appeared beside her. Unfortunately, the palpable stress in the room meant her greeting for him wasn't much more than a weak smile.
"Hey," he said, stepping close. "What's going on?"
"We're going to destroy the Shadow," Cecily replied, her voice low, head dipping toward Trey but with her eyes still on Callum.
"Wow, okay." Trey sounded surprised, even as he matched her volume. "How?"
Lifting his head and standing fully again, Callum scoffed. "Good question, my man. And not enough time to explain."
Cecily watched as Callum fished his phone from his back pocket. After consulting the screen, he crossed the room and handed it to her. "If this...goes bad, call Scott," he said, "His number is pulled up already—all you have to do is hit send."
Cecily took the phone from him and looked at the screen; a picture of a good-looking guy with short dark hair, black vintage-style glasses and a ton of tats stared back at her. She looked up to see Callum lowering himself to crouch in front of Rhia, just feet away. "Is Scott your brother?" They didn't look a thing alike, but that didn't mean anything.
Callum shrugged, bringing his hands to the ruff of fur around Rhia's neck. "Basically." He rubbed Rhia's fur and brought his face to hers. "I need you to go with Cecily when Zander gets here, okay?" he said quietly.
Rhia's tail wagged gently, making a soft “whoosh” noise as it went.
Callum chuckled. "Yeah, I didn't figure you'd mind. You keep her safe. Got it?"
"This feels like a bad idea," Cecily cut in, speaking aloud the words that had been ringing in her head since Zander had explained this cracked plan.
Callum gave one humorless laugh as he stood, patting Rhia on the side. "That's because it is a bad idea—or a crazy one, at least." He turned to face her. "But Zander's right, it's the best chance we've got."
His gaze went to the floor for a moment, then returned to hers with a breath. When he went on, his voice was grave. "Promise me you won't tell her what it's like—how it felt when the Shadow tried to take control of you. She can't know what her plan is going to do to me." He looked her square in the eyes, then flicked a glance to Trey. "I'm keeping your secret. You get to keep this one for me."
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