Hell, Meet Haunted

by Tee, Marian

  I was curled up in the couch, and I managed a weak smile as he came up and loomed over me like a furious Greek god. "Um...hi?"

  "You're alright? Are you hurt anywhere?"

  I barely managed a shake of my head before Hadrian had me up in his arms.

  "Dammit, Saoirse. Stop endangering yourself."

  "It's not like I mean to." My voice came out muffled against the side of his neck. "I just wanted to help with your case."

  "Let me handle my damn case."

  "I can still see her...its...head."

  "You're sure you're okay?" he demanded.

  I nodded.

  "Then close your eyes."

  I did as asked.

  "Done. You can open your eyes now."

  And just like that, the severed head was gone. I supposed I should ask where it went, and I guess I would. Eventually. But right now, I just wanted to forget everything.

  When we got to his room, Hadrian didn't say a word as he started undressing me. I didn't mind. Times like this, you just wanted to feel connected and do what made you feel alive, and that didn't change even when you were a ghost.

  The first time, we made love slowly. Tenderly. The second time was just as sweet, but a lot faster and harder. Wilder. Noisier. The third time, I couldn't even speak. He had flipped me to my stomach before entering me from behind, and he was moving so, so wonderfully fast that all I could do was try catching my breath.

  When it was all over, I felt him kiss my hair before pulling me close, my back against his chest, and our bodies still intimately joined. It was then I knew.

  "Hadrian?"

  His arms tightened around me.

  "I think I'm in love."

  Several seconds passed, and then I heard him say gruffly, "It's about time."

  My lips curved, and I could feel him smiling against my hair. Thank God I was old enough to know when a man was telling me 'I love you, too' without the words.

  I TRIED PLEADING AND wheedling, even tried seducing some words out of him, but Hadrian proved intractable and closemouthed as a clam when I asked him the next day for updates on his case.

  "I'm serious, Saoirse," Hadrian said warningly. "I don't want you involved in this case any longer."

  "Can't you just give me another weapon to defend myself with?"

  "That—-" Hadrian pointed to his front door. "—-is already a weapon." And so it was, with Hadrian having explained to me earlier how the entire place was spell-protected against any entity, living or dead, that intended to do either of us harm.

  "I was hoping for something more portable."

  "Charon's already hard at work minting a special coin for you, and I've already spoken to Hephaestus about your case."

  I nodded resignedly, knowing that he was doing his best.

  "But in the meantime..." Hadrian dug something out of his pocket. "Here's something you can use to contact me while you're here."

  A smile broke over my lips as he dropped a spanking new iPhone on my hands.

  "I've already saved my number." Hadrian brushed his lips over my forehead. "Stay safe."

  "You, too." I saw him to the door and couldn't help snickering when I saw Hadrian walk past the elevator in favor of taking the stairs. Naturally.

  Back inside the apartment, I kicked off my shoes and threw myself on the couch. I might be under house arrest, but this didn't mean I couldn't do anything to help with his case.

  The idea of continuing my sleuthing on the Internet had occurred to me last night, and I had been planning to use Hadrian's laptop in his study for it. But having my own phone was even better, and the first thing I did was go through Edith's memorialized social accounts one more time.

  You could tell a lot of things about a person just by looking at the photos they posted and didn't post. You just had to know what to look for, and in Edith's case, one thing that shone through was her love for books. She just had tons of photos of them, and her captions for those photos made it clear that she was eager to share her love for books with other people.

  Another facet of her personality that her online presence revealed was her romantic side. She had an Instagram story topic labeled with a heart emoji, and saved under it were dozens of highlighted stories featuring romantic quotes. This girl was definitely a hopeless romantic, the kind who'd do anything for love.

  As for Caleb...all of his social media accounts were set to private, and all I had of him were photos other users had tagged him in. Even so, those pictures still said a lot, with Caleb often photographed with a serious look on his face. The comments on those photos were also pretty insightful, with most of his friends joking about Caleb barely saying a word even when he was a drunk.

  For Ghost Caleb to have made several attempts to communicate with me, he must've had something extremely important to say about Edith's death and his. But how could I know for sure when I hadn't heard from him again?

  Think, Saoirse.

  If a ghost wanted to contact you but was unable to...

  Then you try contacting him back.

  Ten minutes later, and I had an ouija board layout drawn on a blank sheet of A4 paper. Something bigger would've been better obviously, but beggars couldn't be choosers even in the afterlife, and A4s were the only paper size Hadrian had in stock in his study.

  I reached for my iPhone and compared my drawing to the picture wikiHow had on its page. Yes. No. Alphabet. Numbers 1-0. Hello. Goodbye. Everything seemed right, so all I needed now was a planchette, which of course I didn't have.

  My fingers drummed over the coffee table until I was able to think of a reasonable alternative. Mm. I think that would do. And off I went to grab a shot glass from the drying rack in the kitchen before padding back to the living room.

  After tucking my legs under me, I placed the shot glass on the space between Hello and Goodbye and took a deep breath. Let's give this a shot. I closed my eyes and recited all the prayers I had memorized from childhood.

  Here we go...

  I placed my fingers on the shot glass. "I would like to speak to Caleb—-" My words ended with a gasp as the shot glass flew out of my hand and landed smack on top of Hello.

  What in the—-

  But confusion instantly gave way to shock when I heard a familiar voice come out of the shot glass.

  "Who's there?"

  I sat up, unable to believe that the whole thing actually worked. "Caleb? It's you, isn't it?"

  "Saoirse? How is this possible?"

  "Ouija board," I answered in a rush, "but I don't know how long this will work. It's my first time to do this. Where are you? Are you okay—-"

  "I'm being hunted."

  A curse word escaped me before I could stop myself. "Um, okay, just stay calm, and let's figure things out. But you need to tell me everything you can remember..."

  CALEB WAS A WRITER in his former life. He had met Edith through a dating app, they had hit it off, and they had only been dating for three months when Edith had invited him to stay the night. He had been surprised at first, since they had initially agreed to take things slowly. But he had said yes in the end, and it had cost him his life. Edith had stabbed him in his sleep, and when he had woken up, he was already a ghost, and Edith had just completed a ritual that allowed her to conjure a ring of fire out of thin air.

  A fascinating story with a horrible ending, but also a little TMI, which I didn't expect at all. For one thing, wasn't Caleb supposed to be the private type? And secondly, while I did ask him to tell me everything he could remember, I didn't mean that he should share his entire love story with Edith. A subject from Tartarus was hunting him down, for heaven's sake! It made me wish I could shake some sense into him, and I had to firmly remind myself that people had different ways of reacting to fear.

  And for Caleb, maybe babbling about unnecessary stuff was his coping mechanism, and who was I - a ghost who was afraid of other ghosts - to question that?

  "That was very, um, informative, Caleb. Thanks." I cleared my throat. "Bu
t now we need to focus on keeping you safe. When you were in Edith's room, did you happen to notice a pink leatherbound book? This is terribly important, so I need you to try to remember—-"

  "I think I know what you're talking about. There was a pink leatherbound book in the room. A first edition of Alice in Wonderland."

  I sucked my breath. "That's...that's exactly what I'm talking about. Do you know where it is? Hadrian told me it's the key to everything—-"

  "Edith made it disappear."

  "When? How?"

  "I don't know. I'm scared, Saoirse."

  "Don't be, we're talking now, and I'll do everything I can to help you." Think, Saoirse. There had to be something else I could ask. "Can you come back here? We can keep you safe—-"

  "I can't. There's a spell on that place. I saw what happened to the poltergeist following you—-"

  "Is that the only thing that's keeping you from coming here?"

  "It's a very strong spell."

  "I can ask someone to get rid of it—-"

  "There's no time! I can feel it coming after me, and it's getting close. I need your help, Saoirse. I'm at the park near your place—-"

  The shot glass suddenly shattered on its own, effectively cutting the connection between us. Shit. I jumped to my feet, knowing there was no time to lose. I had to do this on my own. This was our best shot at solving the case so far, and I had to take it.

  I grabbed my phone and typed as quickly as I could. Going to Hudson Park to meet Caleb. Dunno how it's possible but he's the missing subject. I hit Send and then I was off, my heart pounding against my chest as I floated out of Hadrian's living room window.

  I might as well scream 'I'm a ghost' right now, and even though only seconds had passed, it already felt like there were thousands of ants crawling all over my body, with seemingly countless pairs of eyes watching me from everywhere. I turned mid-air towards the direction of Hudson Park...and found myself face-to-face with a violently twitching Caleb.

  "You don't look so good," I blurted out.

  "Shut up! I know you know who I really am."

  Shit.

  "Your voice gave you away. You should practice lying more."

  "And you," I couldn't help retorting, "should also know that no writer would be idiotic enough to buy a book with the title Alice in Wonderland and have it pass off as first edition."

  "Bitch!"

  "The only reason Edith accepted your gift was because she loved the real Caleb—-"

  Caleb's grisly-sounding laugh cut me off. "I get it now. You're stalling for time."

  Shiiiiiit.

  "Smart, but just not smart enough."

  And then he was lunging towards me without warning, and I screamed, my arms instinctively lifting up to ward off his blow.

  But nothing happened.

  I slowly lowered my arms, a part of me already wondering - expecting even - Hadrian to have somehow magically appeared in front of me, my hero coming to my rescue like he always did. But it wasn't like that.

  What I saw instead turned my world upside down. All the ghosts that had been around me...the ghosts that had freaked me out from the very start...those ghosts had thrown themselves at Caleb, and as I listened to Caleb's tortured screams, I started shaking uncontrollably, unable to comprehend what was happening.

  Did these ghosts just...save me?

  Chapter Ten

  DEAR DIARY,

  I learned a new thing today. When your makeshift planchette suddenly breaks into pieces on its own...that's basically the other party slamming the phone down on you.

  I KNOW, I KNOW, YOU have lots of questions, and luckily for you, I'm under house arrest (again). Ergo: I have all the time in the world to break everything down.

  First things first: I only started getting suspicious of Caleb when I went through his and Edith's social media accounts for a second time. Edith had seemed like a nice and honest person to me, so it made sense that she didn't mention anything about the pink book being a first edition on her Instagram account.

  On the other hand, she had made the effort to post it on her stories and even added it to her highlights. She had also given the book a special place in her room, separate from all the other books on her shelves. If I were in her shoes, I would probably have done the same thing if that pink leatherbound book came from someone I loved and whom I thought made an honest mistake. Someone like Caleb, perhaps?

  And as for Caleb, you've probably already figured out that the first major red flag for me was how he had described the pink leatherbound as a first edition of Alice in Wonderland. It's just not the kind of mistake you'd expect a professional writer like Caleb would make.

  The second red flag was when I had asked Caleb what was keeping him from coming back to my place. He had said that it was just a spell and made no mention of Hadrian's presence as a deterrent. If Hadrian's presence didn't make him feel like running for cover, and Hadrian had repeatedly told me that all ghosts were afraid of him...well, then, couldn't that mean Caleb wasn't actually a ghost at all?

  If souls could be swapped by magic, and Mission Impossible could have real people switch faces, I figured it was possible that a soul could magically change its appearance, and guess what? I was right about this one, too, and this is where things get a whole lot more complicated.

  Once upon a time, a book about forbidden magic ended up in the wrong pair of hands: a psychotic little girl's hands, to be specific, and when little Kimberly grew up, she put those hands to use in order to free the man she believed was her savior: the book's author Elijah Moore, a pedophile, serial killer, and secret practitioner of the dark arts who had been given the death penalty in 1958.

  Kimberly, whose psychosis remained undiagnosed, was very meticulous in her planning. Because she had wanted Elijah to have the perfect life in his return to Earth, she had gone through hundreds of Tinder profiles until she found Caleb.

  He is reasonably attractive and appears in good health, Kimberley had detailed in her journal. He is a private person, too, which is good. No one is likely to ask too many questions if he has to disappear for a time. And his parents are rich. Once Master Elijah is back, he can kill the old folks and all their money will be his.

  Once her mind was made up, Kimberley had wasted little time putting her plans into motion. By now, she had known everything there was to know about Caleb, and so it had been easy for her to figure out what to give him to use as a vehicle: a mailed handwritten letter in which she had pretended to be a huge fan of his work. As with all writers, Caleb had treasured this letter, which then allowed Kimberley to use it as a vehicle for a controlling spell, and after that, a swapping spell. When the swap was completed, she had killed Caleb while his soul was trapped in her body, and Kimberley, now in Caleb's body, had proceeded to the next step of her plan.

  She had bought the first pretty book she found on eBay as a gift for Edith, and it was the same cycle over again. The book became a vehicle for a controlling spell, and after that a second swapping spell was performed, with Edith's soul going into the body of a handcuffed Caleb while Kimberley, now in Edith's body, bought herself a catoblepas pill before performing one last ritual.

  Her life, in exchange for opening a portal into Tartarus.

  That was where Kimberley's journal ended, and with Elijah refusing to cooperate even after his capture, we could only do our best in putting the remaining puzzle pieces together.

  I can imagine a devoted Kimberley introducing herself to Elijah, and of course neither pair required a vehicle to make a swapping spell happen. After that, Kimberley jumped into her death, and Elijah, now in Edith's body, used the same portal to rejoin the living.

  More likely than not, Kimberley had kept a journal to help Elijah get up to speed with things (what to do with Edith, who's Taylor Swift, how to use the Internet and the likes), and Elijah, now in Caleb's body, simply left Edith to die.

  I think it's also safe to assume that Elijah didn't immediately reclaim Caleb's life for his own
because he wanted all loose ends tied up first. In his book, Elijah had mentioned his ability to astrally project, a method in which the soul was able to roam free while its human body was in an unconscious state.

  Hadrian and I believed that it was while Elijah had been astrally projecting that he saw Hadrian speaking to the agent handling Edith's murder. And because Elijah had been a soul at that time, he had also seen the ghost - aka me - Hadrian was keeping company with.

  We knew he had used a camouflage spell to disguise himself as Caleb's ghost, but his purpose for doing so was anyone's guess. Did he want to gain my trust in order to extract information about the ongoing investigation on Edith's murder? Or did he have anything more sinister planned?

  And if you're curious about all the twitching and itching he did, well, that was one other thing Elijah hadn't counted on. A little-known fact about camouflage spells was how they were primarily designed to work with living skin. On ghostly forms, however, they tended to itch like hell, and it was why Caleb had abruptly left when he approached me that time at the basement. And honestly, just remembering that incident still gave me nightmares. If the camouflage spell hadn't made him itch, that day might have had a different and far more tragic ending...on my part.

  I had asked Hadrian about Elijah last night, and he told me that the Lord of the Underworld had him thrown into the darkest and hottest depths of Phlegethon. It was only fitting that Kimberley and Elijah be together in their infernal incarceration, with absolutely no chance of being reborn.

  And as for the ghosts that came to my rescue...

  WEDNESDAY HAD FINALLY come, and I couldn't be any happier. Today marked the end of my week-long house arrest, a punishment that Hadrian had meted out and which I accepted without complaint. I would never forget the look on his face when he had come bursting into his apartment and saw me outside his window. He had looked devastated, as if a part of him had already been prepared to see the worst.

  Never again, though, I promised myself. Even now, merely remembering that look on his face made my heart lurch, and I had to take several deep breaths to regain control over my emotions.