Chapter Two

I hear them before I get down the stairs, but I make a quick detour to put the beer in the gigantic bowl of ice with the other refreshments I've provided for this fake little seance.

The small group of friends I invited are still outside, waiting. All of them look back toward the cornfield where Minnie clears out the last stragglers.

"Hey guys!"

Margie and Jonas jump at my greeting. Dylan, Rose and Parry all look at me with amused, but suspicious, glares.

"Were you trying to scare us?" Rose asks. Her face is scrunched, distorting the butterflies she's painted around her eyes. The whole month is Halloween according to her, so she's spent every day in "discreet" costume. But it's a Friday night and she's actually wearing purple butterfly wings, too.

She's got temporary orange hair dye streaked through her blond hair, yellow contacts and Hollywood sfx quality fangs.

"You look like a perfect fairy, beautiful and terrifying," I tell her as she runs up the stairs to hug me. "And if I wanted to scare you, you'd already be halfway back to your car."

"Well you managed it, even if you didn't mean to," Jonas says with an enormous smile. He's eye level with me by the time he reaches the second step.

At six five, he stands a head above the rest, normally. He seems enormous now that he's up here with me.

"This place is creepy as fuck, Genevieve." He takes off his ball cap and nervously runs his hand through his hair before stuffing it back on… he needs a haircut.

"Of course it's creepy. It's a haunted house!" I chuckle and glance inside, but Julia is silent, as planned.

"How haunted?" He gives me a little too familiar of a smile before he goes inside, but Jonas isn't a problem.

Rose pulls a bottle of wine out of her bag and waggles it at me. "I know you said you'd provide the drinks, but I hate showing up anywhere empty-handed."

"Thank you."

"And I love this." She nudges my jacket aside and wiggles her fingers at my top. "Let me guess, you made it?"

"I did."

She groans. "Quit college and start a clothing line already. I'll buy every piece."

"That sounds like a headache and a half."

She rolls her eyes at me in mock disappointment and yells out for Jonas, heading inside.

Parry and Margie follow her, both of them looking around warily and I hear one of them question which kinds of spiders are venomous.

"You coming?" I ask, smiling down at Dylan.

My best friend has his hands stuffed in his pockets as he glares up at the house's chipped and peeling facade.

"Not going to lie, Gen. I thought the first time you had me out here it would be to your actual house and… not with the B team."

"Can't have a seance with just two people."

He doesn't smile at that, he just shakes his head and climbs up the stairs.

He hugs me and pulls me just a little too tightly to him.

I grit my teeth when one of his hands brushes against the skin at my waist. Not an accident.

Dylan is an attractive guy. I know half a dozen women who would jump at the chance to go out with him. But I am not one of them. And in the last week or two, he seems to have forgotten that I'm not into guys… which means his attention would be better placed elsewhere.

"Okay," I say, forcing excitement as I pull back and ignore the way his lips twist. "Let's get inside and get this started!"

Let's get this over with and get back to the way things were.

I lead the way inside, past Jonas, who's stopped to gawk at the ceiling of the foyer.

"This was a farmhouse?" he asks.

"Not exactly." Setting the wine with the other drinks and pointing to the chalk drawing on the floor. "Don't step into the circle or you'll have to wait around for me to draw another one."

They chuckle and agree and rib each other. They all call me a witch as a joke, but none of them actually know . Not even Dylan.

"Is Minnie coming after she's done?" Parry asks. He used to date my twin sister, and I'm pretty sure he only hangs out with me for the opportunity to see her again.

Parry looks like the textbook definition of a farm boy come to life. He's a little too sweet and a little too cautious. Timid times two does not a good couple make.

"She has other plans tonight."

He nods, but doesn't hide his disappointment.

"Alright! Who's drinking what?" I set the bottle of wine beside the other drinks and grab a beer for Dylan, popping the cap and handing it to him while still looking at the others.

"I'll take one of those," Jonas says and I hand it to him. It won't hurt him, so there's no point in being weird over the bottles.

I need Dylan to finish his and I don't need him to question why.

Margie cracks open a can of seltzer as she looks all around the room. "God, this place is begging for a full gut reno."

Petite, with her wild hair caught up in an unkempt bun on top of her head, Margie is the one I would expect to look for improvement. She's a business major, but her passion is interior design.

"Careful. If the ghost thinks you're going to mess with her house, you might wind up on her bad side."

She snickers as I go to sit at the edge of the circle.

"So!" Jonas says, sitting beside me. "We're about to meet a ghost?"

"Yes. This is Julia's house. We're just visiting."

Dylan chuckles as he sits down on my other side and takes a long drink of his beer.

Good.

"Don't you mean, ‘Ghoulia?'" he asks.

Not good.

A lamp in the foyer starts to flicker.

"Don't call her that. She might kick you out… With a few broken bones if you're unlucky." I need him to finish that beer and say my spell before I can let her "remove" him.

His brows pinch. "Seriously? You still believe in this kid stuff?"

"Of course she does," Margie says. "And you would too if you had any sense."

Dylan leans close and I lean away because I am not about to let him get close enough to do something silly, like kiss my cheek.

"So, do you have a chair rigged to fly away? Or magnets under the floor boards."

"Nope. Just a ghost and a little magic." I wiggle my fingers and Rose giggles.

His gaze goes to my mouth as I speak, but he finally goes back to sitting normally when I turn to look at the others.

Rose and Margie sit opposite me—they both give me a look that tells me they're not comfortable with Dylan right now either—and Parry follows behind them.

"I for one, am looking forward to meeting her," Rose says.

The foyer lights pulse with a gentle glow. Julia likes Rose. And I don't blame her in the least.

"Before we start, who wants to hear how this house became haunted?" I ask.

Parry raises his hand and sets a can of soda on the floor. He's playing designated driver tonight.

The others murmur agreements and affirmatives, except Dylan, who looks a little like he'd like to get this whole thing over with.

Me too, buddy.

"About two hundred years ago, this house was owned by a woman named Julia Wittaker. She lived alone, tended her apple orchard, and was generally liked by the others in the nearby village. But no one knew how she had built the house. No one knew where she came from or who her family was. That, of course, made some people suspicious.

"Back then, this was still technically the American frontier. When the law man wasn't looking, people did what they wanted more often than not. And there was a man who wanted Julia's house, her land… and everything else she had. Back then, men stupidly thought that women were something to be owned, not someone to own things."

Dylan snorts, and I flinch, looking at him, trying to figure out why.

"Did he kill her?" Rose asks, glaring at Dylan.

I nod. "First, he tried to marry her, but she refused. Then, he tried to get the villagers to believe she was a witch so that she would be hanged. They didn't believe him… But he was right. She was a witch."

"So, what happened to this so-called witch?" Dylan asks, taking another long sip.

"He came to her home in the dead of night and strangled her in her bed upstairs. He got her house… and he got her wrath as well."

"Good." Rose says. "Fuck him."

"She came back to haunt him?" Margie asks, with a little more hopeful bloodlust in her voice than I would expect.

"He tried to bury her, but her body kept returning to the house. So he burned it and buried what didn't turn to ash in the cellar. But when her body couldn't return to her home, her soul did… and that was so much worse for him."

"Fuck yeah. I hope he got what was coming to him." Margie shifts to crossed legs, leaning forward.

"Wait." Parry looks confused. "What didn't burn?"

"Teeth!" Rose says, a little too excitedly. "And bone? I think one of my podcasts said those are hard to get rid of."

"There are certainly some bones down there, but it's her heart that keeps this place haunted. If you listen closely, in the dead of night, you can still hear it beating."

That is met with silence.

I let it linger for a moment before I ask, "Do you know what a poltergeist is?"

"I've seen the movie," Jonas says.

Margie screws up her face in a frown. "Isn't it like a malevolent spirit that throws stuff around?"

"Yes. And when that malevolent spirit doesn't like you… you're the thing it throws around."

"Oh my gosh," Rose shifts to sit on her knees. "Did she yeet the guy out of her house?"

"Eventually, she threw him down the stairs and broke his neck, but not until after she'd tortured him for a good long while."

"I like her." Rose and Margie clink their cans together.

"I'm sorry," Parry says, glancing around the room. "She's a murderous ghost and you want us to bring her out to say ‘ hi' ?"

"Exactly."

"Is that a good idea?" he asks.

Dylan snorts a half laugh. "I mean, ghosts aren't real, so it's not going to matter anyway."

I glance sideways at him and wonder if this is a side effect of the first half of the spell he's drinking.

But I ignore him and smile at Parry. "As long as you don't give her a reason to want you out of her house, you're fine."

Grumbling something I don't understand, Dylan finishes his beer and sets the bottle aside.

I nudge him with my elbow. "Stop being a spoilsport. This is supposed to be fun."

He looks at me, a little disgusted. "Sorry if I don't think this occult bullshit is fun."

While the others talk, I watch him, wondering…

We met in an occult shop six months ago. He was into it then.

"Are you feeling okay?"

"Yeah, it's just a little crowded in here."

Margie hops up to grab another seltzer and comes around to our side and hands Dylan another beer before going back to her side.

I don't stop him from taking a long swig from the bottle. If the ingredients I added to the beer are making him like this, there won't be enough time for more of it to make him worse.