Ghosts with a Deadline
I woke to Raven’s gentle nudge. Sleeping upright in his arms inside the closet had left my body stiff. The wood slats had left indentations on my cheek.
“Shh,” he whispered, his breath warm against my ear. “Everyone’s asleep. We’re going to slip out, head to the woods.”
My limbs were heavy with interrupted sleep, my mouth dry. How long had we been in this closet? Hours? The night had deepened around us, and something about the air felt different—cooler, thinner somehow. Each reality shift seemed to pull away another layer of substance.
The closet door opened without the creak I’d feared. The room was still warm, though not as warm as when we’d first hidden. Each shifting reality had been cooler than the last, as if the universe itself was slowly freezing. The fire had died down to coals, but they glowed bright enough to illuminate the room.
The girl was asleep on a blanket on the floor with some smaller children nearby. Their small bodies were curled together like puppies, seeking warmth and comfort. Their faces looked peaceful in sleep—the only time, I imagined, they could forget the harsh world they’d been born into. The kids had been left in the warmest room.
I tiptoed across the floor but stopped beside one of the tables. Food. Real food. My stomach clenched painfully, reminding me I hadn’t eaten in what felt like days. I scanned the table for scraps—anything that would spoil before morning anyway. A piece of hardtack with green edges sat abandoned, too moldy for the children. I handed it to Raven, knowing it might make us sick but desperate for any sustenance.
Guilt still pierced through my hunger, but I told myself these would be thrown out by dawn. These children had so little, but at least I wasn’t taking food from their mouths.
I scraped the crusty, burnt bits from the bottom of the cast iron pan—potato remnants too charred for anyone else to want. The grease had congealed into a thick layer, but I managed to get a few mouthfuls. I found a strip of jerky so tough and dried it had been left behind, the end piece nobody wanted. I split it with Raven, both of us chewing the leather-like meat.
After swallowing, I wiped my hands on a scrap of cloth from the table. When I looked up, the girl was staring at me.
Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated in the dim light. She wasn’t looking at me with anger or accusation for taking their food—she was looking at me with raw, primal fear. As if I were something from her nightmares made flesh. I froze, sadness settling over me. In her eyes, I saw myself reflected—not as a person, but as something unnatural. A violation of the natural order.
Raven’s protective bubble must have flickered—he’d said he couldn’t hold it long. But then why couldn’t the adults see me?
Then the girl screamed, “Ghost!”
The word stopped me cold. I stood paralyzed, the cloth still clutched in my hands, as her scream echoed through the room. Part of me wanted to go to her, to explain, to comfort, but that would only terrify her more. What must it be like to see a stranger appear from nowhere, eating your food in the dead of night?
Raven grabbed my elbow and tugged me toward the door. His grip was tight, almost painful—protective but strained, as if he too was fighting panic. We weren’t moving like librarians or scholars anymore. We were moving like fugitives.
The man and two women rushed into the room with the fireplace and table. I dropped the cloth back on the table, but it landed on the floor. The world lurched around us. Suddenly the table was a few feet in the other direction, and the hardtack and now cold potatoes were gone.
“Just a bad dream, little one,” the man said gently, kneeling beside her. “You’re safe.”
The woman behind him crouched down. “Would you like to share a blanket with me? Stay here with the other kids?”
She turned to look for an extra blanket and looked directly at me but didn’t seem to notice me.
Raven tugged at my elbow. “Come on. Just follow me.”
We slipped outside into the cold. The teen was still pacing the perimeter, but with only one dog this time. But the compound was more dilapidated.
The landscape had transformed in our absence. Vines snaked up the sides of buildings that seemed more broken than before. The sky above was bleached, almost burnt-looking, with stars that seemed both too bright and too few. Parts of the fence had collapsed entirely, though the section nearest us still stood, topped with rusted barbed wire.
We could reach the fence quickest by taking the path by the pool. The alternative meant going the long way past the teen with the rifle. Neither of us wanted to go by the pool, since that’s where Emry died in front of both of us in the reality we came from.
I found myself staring in that direction anyway. The pool seemed to have its own gravity—an emotional pull I couldn’t resist. Memories surfaced no matter how hard I tried to tamp them down: Emry’s face, still and lifeless. The splash as she fell. Raven’s anguished cry.
Raven seemed to sense my thoughts. His hand came to rest on my shoulder, gentle but firm, trying to steer me away. “Lilah,” he whispered. “We should go the other way.”
“How much longer can you keep the bubble around me?” I whispered. “So we aren’t noticed by the man or his faction?”
“I, um, didn’t put the bubble around you. I couldn’t summon it again. That girl saw you, but the adults didn’t. Something shifted, but not by much.”
The sun was starting to come up. We hid in some bushes and watched the boy. We tried to figure out how to distract the teen and the dog so we could leave the property.
I finally said, “Hey, we both know we’re avoiding the pool and what used to be Dru’s main living quarters, and we both know why. What would Dru and Emry say?”
My voice caught as I spoke their names. Sometimes I still forgot—that Emry was gone, that Dru was gone too, that everything had changed. The dawn light made Raven’s face look older, the shadows under his eyes deeper.
We sat quietly for a moment. I said softly, imitating Emry, “Well, you can’t live in the past, babe. That’s where ghosts live. And you’re not a ghost. Yet.”
I could almost hear her saying it—that tiny inflection on the last word, the way her eyes would crinkle at the corners. She’d always had a talent for making even the darkest situations bearable with her irreverent humor.
“Remember when she said that to us after we found that haunted grimoire in New Orleans?” I whispered. “The one that kept trying to write itself back into existence?”
Raven nodded, a hint of a smile passing over his lips. “She insisted on putting it in the freezer. Said ghosts hate the cold.” He exhaled through his nose, the sound half-chuckle, half-sigh. “She always did have the last word.”
I snickered. “Different vibe than Dru’s but the same message.”
He shifted his tone, deepened his voice into Dru’s dry authority. “Fear is information. Not a stop sign. Now figure out the straightest line to your goal and get moving.”
I smiled, but my eyes were wet. “She never let us wallow.”
“She never had the time,” Raven added.
We were whispering and smiled at each other. The sun was high enough that we could see the pool clearly in the morning mist.
“It’s going to be that way, then,” I said, gesturing toward the pool. “That’s our straightest line.”
Raven hesitated, then nodded. “Just stay close. And… don’t look too hard at the water.”
But we both knew I would.
As we reached the pool and the patio outside of Dru’s favorite gathering area for dinner parties, I paused. I stared into the water. The air was colder near the pool, damp and sharp with the scent of decay. Mist curled off the water like smoke from a dying fire. The patio tiles were cracked. Between the breaks in the ceramic squares, moss crept in like fresh grout.
An overturned wrought-iron chair lay caught in a tangle of vines near the edge. I recognized it—one of the chairs we’d sat in during Dru’s last dinner party, before everything went wrong. Had that been only months ago? It felt like decades.
Raven gestured for me to keep going before I was spotted. Instead, I stared into the pool at the sludge—and didn’t see my reflection.
Unease pressed in around me. The pool’s surface was dull with algae, the water blackish-green and still. I leaned closer, squinting, searching. I held out my hand, waved slightly, watching for any sign of movement in the water. Nothing. No ripple, no distortion, just… absence.
Suddenly desperate, I dropped to my knees. Gripping the pool’s rim, I leaned out over the dirty water.
“Raven! I don’t see myself.”
He caught my arm. “Don’t fall in. Lilah—”
“I’m not going to fall. I just… I needed to know.”
I pressed my fingertips to the surface of the water. The cold bit into my skin, but the water didn’t react.
“If I’m not here, then…then where am I?”
Raven pulled me back from the edge. “The Wards of Braided Light. It’s holding us apart from this reality—from time, space, memory. Like a buffer zone.”
“No, look,” I said. “That last shift happened right in front of that kid. That kid thought I was a ghost. A minute later, her family didn’t see me. Raven… we are ghosts. I don’t exist in this reality. Neither do you.”
Still at first, Raven finally nodded. “Yeah. Ghosts with a deadline.”
We both understood what that meant. Ghosts. Not truly here, not truly gone. Caught in the in-between, with time running out.
“They may not be able to see us, Lilah, but they may be able to sense us. Come on—we’ve got to get out of here. This may not be our reality, but they’re still members of the priesthood, and we don’t know how they might feel about trespassers in their territory.”
“I have an idea.” I bit my lower lip. Did I dare say what I was thinking?
“Emry once told me something… about spells and places. How they’re connected.” I closed my eyes, trying to recall her exact words. “She said places remember magic. That’s why some locations feel charged, why certain spots become sacred over centuries.”
“She was talking about how energy lingers across time,” Raven said.
“Exactly. She meant across progressing years, not across timelines… but what if it works the same way? What if the energy of the spell remains there, anchored to a specific location, regardless of which reality we’re in? Raven, what if we can find The Wards of Braided Light book again?”
“If it even exists here.”
“But remember what Jakin said at dinner with Sammi and Dru?” I pressed. “He told us we needed to make our way back to the book.”
Raven shook his head. “The book we authenticated isn’t there.”
“But the moment still is,” I countered. “And we were there together. The vault may not be a ‘when,’ but it’s a ‘where’—and that’s the best we’ve got.”
“And even if it’s not there,” Raven added slowly, “maybe the place remembers. Maybe the vault holds the echo of it.”
I touched his arm. “We just have to get there. Before time runs out.”
As we stepped away from the pool, electricity seemed to charge the air. In the distance, a flicker of lightning split the sky, though there were no clouds. I felt a tug, subtle but unmistakable, pulling me eastward, toward the library.
“Did you feel that?”
His eyes fixed on the horizon, Raven nodded. “It’s calling us home.”
We stepped off the patio. Boots crunched on dry leaves. The compound faded behind us, still half-asleep.
My limbs ached from the night spent crammed in the closet. The meager food we’d stolen had barely taken the edge off my hunger. Each step felt like a countdown, each breath like the tick of a clock. Mentally, I tracked the minutes. The seconds slipped away.
“How far do you think it is?” I tried to orient myself in this altered landscape.
Overhead, the sun was rising.
Raven glanced west, then at me. “Best guess? Eight hours.”
“Then we walk—fast.”
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