20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

T he heavens promise rain. It’s a building pressure, a movement in the air, alerting everyone that a storm is on its way. It blows in quickly, a summer storm darkening a sky that normally would be bright for hours still.

It’s not just the turning weather that makes my solitary walk to Henry’s house so different now than last night. Then, I was telling myself to be brave so that I could be strong enough to embrace who and what I love while I have it.

Now, I need to be brave enough to let him go.

The wind pushes at my curls, frizzing them up more than the humidity already has. Inside Henry’s house, though, it’s as unnaturally cool as it always is, as if reminding all who enter that it isn’t in this world at all but on a different plane entirely .

Anxiety is a knot in my stomach, a twist in my gut. I tried to eat during dinner as Caroline and I told Javi the story of our summer, but I hadn’t been able to stomach a single bite. Javier, as predicted, was worried about the impact long term it would have on my health, but I waved him off.

Ghosthood would do what it would, and if I made it through tonight, I had the rest of my life to eat.

Now, though, I wonder if I should have forced myself, just for the sake of my human body, because I’m feeling lightheaded, panicked.

Inside the little house in the woods, though, all is calm. The interior is immaculate, music playing softly in the background as always. Spectre is curled up on the sofa.

And Henry, sitting in his chair, looks equally at peace. He’s not doing anything at all, although there is a book open and face-down across the arm of the chair. Our eyes lock when I enter and he stands, meeting me halfway with a heart-wrenching kiss. It’s desperate and heart-breaking; it makes me feel complete while completely breaking me.

And then he holds me. I can’t possibly begin to guess what’s on his mind. Relief at being so close to release from the veil? Fear of being trapped here longer? Or, possibly, if I dare to let myself think I matter so much to him, sorrow at slipping away and leaving me behind?

After a few moments, he starts to sway back and forth. He’s playing music on his stereo today, and Sting’s “Fields of Gold” has just come on. I can’t recall this song being sad—I always thought it was so romantic—but wrapped in his arms and knowing that soon, I’ll be saying words to separate us forever, makes the song feel unbearably tragic.

Don’t cry , I tell myself. Be brave.

I can’t catch my breath. My lungs’ need for oxygen is a reminder that I’m skin and bone, not yet fully pulled into the veil. It should reassure me; instead, it surfaces every bit of what I was trying to keep under control.

Henry, tuned into me in a way that feels nearly cellular, can tell right when I tip into a panic. He pulls back, leaning down to bridge our height difference. Eye to eye, he sets his fingers on the back of my neck, thumbs caressing my pulse points. The thumping of my blood rushing through my veins is a bittersweet reminder of what we are doing here: keeping me alive.

And killing Henry.

“It’s going to be okay, Rency.” His voice catches as he presses his forehead to my own, a brief moment of raw vulnerability. “It’s going to be okay.”

It’s not, I want to cry. It’s not going to be okay.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I say. “I don’t know if I can kill y—”

He pulls back, shaking his head. “No. Don’t think of it that way. It’s not. You’re not. I’m already dead, Rency. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. My body isn’t even that . Not even dust.”

“You don’t feel like dust. Not to my hands. Not to my heart.” I choke on the last word and Henry has to swipe away the tear that escapes my eye, his callouses a welcome scrape against the softness of my cheek.

“Never to my heart,” he murmurs. “But we are running out of time. And we knew this would come. That we would have to say goodbye.”

“I know,” I tell him. I knew it would hurt. I just didn’t know it would feel like I’m about to die too.

He presses a kiss to my forehead and I close my eyes, savoring it. Even though the clock is ticking, he holds me for long minutes. The clock, perpetually keeping perfect time, eventually rings out a bright, too-happy chime, ushering in the hour we’ve been waiting for.

“She could be here at any moment,” he says quietly. “You have the book? The braid?” I nod at each. “Tell me the plan. We have to get it right. The counter-curse is simple—it will go fast, like it did when I was cursed. It will be over in a flash.”

In a flash.

He’ll be gone in a flash.

“I’ll wait in the bathroom,” I manage to get out. “Once she comes in and is in the kitchen, I will come out and I’ll read the passage from the book. And I’ll burn the braid in the lantern set up in the kitchen. And then…”

“And then the ties will be severed and you’ll be alive again,” he finishes. “Alive, Rency, and with a half-century of living left at least.”

Alive but empty, I think.

“We have to begin,” Henry says. His hand slides from between my shoulders to rest on my lower back. I let myself be ushered into the little bathroom, feeling dissociated from this moment, from what I’ll have to do. Once inside the small space, Henry leans down and presses his lips to my own.

What will life look like without him?

How will I ever move past this moment?

“I know I shouldn’t say it, but I can’t help myself,” he whispers. “I’m too selfish to hope you forget me, but I’m not too selfish to let you live a good life. So please, please promise to live a good life. For me. And know that I… I care about you so much. More than I ever thought was possible.”

I can’t say anything. The words are caught in my throat, in my chest, in my heart. He doesn’t wait for the promise, though. Instead, he kisses me, urgent and electrifying and bittersweet.

When he draws back, my eyes are wet. I swipe at them, and I could have sworn that, in the flicking lantern light, there’s a tear track on his cheek, too.

Her feet don’t make a sound, but I know the moment she walks onto the porch and crosses the threshold. It’s as if the little house itself remembers that, the time she was here before, she altered the very nature of its reality. The air feels cloying, and I worry that, like some sort of mythic, evil creature, she can hear the sound of my pounding heart through the walls .

“Interesting place you have here, Henry,” Mallory sneers. “Very… quaint, even after a century of opportunity. Well, your family always was so… small-town.”

Even through the nearly closed door, I can tell that Henry is angry. It’s his tense silence that tips me off. For a man who has seen tragedy after tragedy, it’s this that seems to affect him the most: the way people treat others for no other motive than greed.

“I’m sure you’re happy to no longer associate with small-townish people like us,” Henry replies, tone flat.

“Yes, death may not have suited me well in many ways, but in that way, it was certainly a relief—leaving your family behind.”

“My uncle was a lucky man when you died.”

“Ugh, you always were so melodramatic. I thought you would grow out of it.” Mallory tsks. “I guess not.”

“I never thought that you would grow out of your vanity, and you haven’t surprised me.”

“You see it as vanity. I see it as power, influence. You never did get the difference.”

“No, Mallory. You never saw anything but your own selfishness.”

“Did you invite me here simply to trade insults? Or are you going to sign over the property to me? I thought we had an agreement, you and I.”

This was my cue. My palm is slippery as it turns the knob, trying to quickly pull the door open so that I can recite the words I have practiced over and over again.

I trip over the first words. They’re death sentences in my mouth, like balls of lead loaded into the muzzle of a gun. I don’t get past the first line before Mallory realizes what I’m holding.

“Ugh, you again?” she mutters, eyes raised. “You are the most annoying little—hey! My book!” She lunges, knocking the book from me, even as her own hands pass through mine.

The book skitters across the floor, paper trapped inside. Mallory launches herself towards it with a shriek, and I follow, trying to pull her back.

But, of course, I can’t—I might be able to see her, but I can’t touch her. She might as well be mist. Still, I manage to scramble up fast enough that my hands brush the book. There is a strangeness in touching it, as if my hands are sinking into its very form, fingertips melting into the cover like its birthday cake.

“Let go, you pitiful little girl ,” the woman snarls.

I don’t reply, too focused on the book and the spell and not screwing up the chance to do what I promised I would do: to release Henry from the veil. Except, it doesn’t matter because the otherworldly sensation of gripping the same item as a ghost turns into the book slipping from my hands as I flicker in and out of existence. The book falls right through my ghost grip. One second we are grappling over it, and the next I’ve fallen to my knees, thrown off balance by the sudden shift in layered realities.

Mallory crows in triumph, book clutched against her chest. Henry is next to us by now, and he looks fairly murderous. “ Drop the book, Mallory.”

I’m panicking, no idea what to do next. I can’t touch her, she can’t touch me, but the book . It’s all I can think: the book, the book, the book . Henry carefully steps in front of me as if he’s scared of what Mallory could do to me now that she has the very weapon that banished him to a life in- between.

“You don’t need it,” he says, looking at me over his shoulder. His eyes widen with purpose, darting to where I dropped our intertwined pieces of hair. “You have everything you need.”

It’s ironic that he says that, because my brain is on the fritz and I can hardly remember my own name, let alone the words to a counter-curse we made up just a few hours ago. I step back anyway, moving towards the little braid of hair. Henry has his arms crossed, intimidation in every muscle and feature of his form.

When my fingers make contact with the token, it’s like my brain resets. With sudden perfect clarity, I remember the counter-spell.

“Do it, Rency,” Henry prompts. “Do it now .”

Mallory snickers. “Did you think you came here to… what, do something to me?” She barks out a laugh. “As if you could! You don’t know what you’re messing with. As if—”

“I release you from the veil,” I begin, feeding in the pieces of hair. “Breath, Life, Love yours to avail.”

“Stop!” Mallory snaps, tone shifting as she moves towards me. Henry blocks her, keeping his body between us. “You don’t know what you are dealing with. You don’t understand the consequence—”

“Untethered well, for this reversal prevails.” I have to yell out the last lines over the words of the woman who cursed us both to this torture of a life without each other.

For a moment, it’s just like the last time we attempted the counter-curse. Nothing happens. Henry is there, Mallory is there, even Spectre is there, his bright eyes blinking from the safety of the narrow gap under the sofa.

Mallory smirks. “See, you’re—”

And then, it begins.

First, there is a tinkling sound—the pull chain of the coffee table lamp, shaking against the bulb. Then, the shifting of the ground under our feet. Henry rushes towards me, but Mallory grabs the fabric of his shirt, pulling him back.

“What did you two do? Tell me. Tell me now!”

Henry yanks back from her, attempting to break her grip on his shirt, unable to move towards me. And me? I’m frozen, caught between worlds. Part of me feels like it’s being sucked away, like water rushing down a slide at a waterpark.

“Henry.” It’s a gasp when I mean it to be a shout. My lungs start to burn as if there isn’t enough air to breathe.

“Rency,” he cries, eyes darting back over to me. “Rency, just breathe. Breathe!”

Spots fill my vision, the world tilts. Something is coming towards me—no, past me. A darting shadow of fur and sinew, Spectre leaps onto Mallory, claws and teeth flashing.

“What the—Augh!” With a cry, Mallory releases Henry, the book dropping from her grasp as she lifts her arm to defend herself against the dark creature.

The second the book hits the ground, it’s like a rock sinking into the fabric of reality. The walls and ceiling start to dissolve in drips and ripple waves. It’s a Dali painting: the house is melting, someone is screaming, everything is distorted. Is it me who’s crying out?

Spectre has landed his blows well and darted away again, and as Mallory bends over, clutching her stomach, I see red slashes across her cheek. Her face is twisted in pain, and then—

And then she shatters into dust. One moment she’s as solid as a ghost can be, and the next the ash of her physical form is nothing but a dustpan’s-worth of debris on the ground.

Henry looks over at me, eyes wide. He starts to walk towards me—we are just feet from each other. Something in my brain screams lies to me, telling me that if I can just reach out and touch him, I can save him. That I can anchor him here. And yet, I’m stuck firmly where I stand, unable to move.

“Rency,” he says, and even though there is somehow both a vacuum of sound and a roar of energy in my ears, I hear him clearly, see him clearly. He’s the only thing I can focus on.

It doesn’t last. A split second later, he gasps, clutching his chest. His eyes are on me, and it’s a look I know. A look I know I will never, ever be able to forget.

“Rency, I love y—”

And then, in a boom of thunder that shakes me to the very marrow of my bones, he’s gone. And less than a heartbeat later, the house follows him, flashing out of existence, fading along with a forking white snap of lightning against the dark sky, and I’m alone in the woods, with nothing but the book as evidence that there ever was anything here at all.