"Remember, the minute the security wanders in, you leave. Understand?"

I nodded nervously, eyes fixated on the looming fog. Oh well. At least I don’t have to use a shovel and spend hours in there.

Selene began to hover ahead, her thin dark robes blending in with the mist. I followed suit, wincing as the gates creaked close. Good God, if mother ever finds out…

"Mother is asleep. Now move." 

I looked over my shoulder at the laying chain. Quickly, I picked it up and hung it loosely around the gate, hoping the guards wouldn’t catch on to it.

I instantly regretted locking ourselves in. Before I could remove it though, Selene pulled my attention towards the tombstones.

The soil squelched beneath my feet, still damp from a drizzle this morning. Quietly, we moved around, looking for tombstones older than sixty years. As I moved farther deep, the air grew colder. The smell of decay intensified. Selene moved closer, narrowing her eyes at a darting shadow ahead.

"Be careful," she warned, "Some ghosts can kill. Don’t leave my sight."

Chills ran down my spine. There was a famous saying in our realm: Mana to a human as the soul to a ghost. People feared that the spirits would consume their souls for energy, and I right here was a walking fish-bait.

I kept my eyes on the floor, hoping that would suffice to draw away their attention. We finally stopped in front of a weathered, white headstone. Engraved on it were the following words:

Felicia S. Moore

Jan 9, 1801 † Aug 16, 1871

Beloved mother and grandmother

Forever loved and missed

"This is it," Selene said, her icy blue eyes crinkling with satisfaction. She looked down at me. "Ready?"

I braced myself and nodded. Closing my eyes, I waited for the familiar jolt of electricity to course down. Selene breezed in, swiftly taking hold of my body.

Now one with each other, we looked down at the grave and raised our arm. Arcane words began to leave my lips and I felt my eyes roll-up. A powerful force began to tug at me from beneath the soil, as if pulling me to the earth, but Selene held her ground, her chants beginning to grow louder. My voice grew into a meld of two as if we were both chanting in unison. 

I didn't realise when my eyes had closed. When it opened, I was staring at the floor, at the rim of crimson symbols spread around the grave.

Glowing white vapours with a faint blue sheen began to rise from the depths of the earth. "The vial," Selene’s words echoed in my head, and I found myself producing a thumb-sized glass vial from my pocket. The vapours began to condense and swirled down into the vial, morphing into a clear, shimmering liquid that barely reached a fourth of the container. My hands corked it close immediately.

"We must leave," her voice echoed again as the arcane symbols began to fade away. It concealed a sense of urgency, forcing me to look around nervously.

We began to move, swift but discreet.

I glanced to my left. Moonbeams filtered in through the gaps of an enormous oak tree. A silhouette peered at us from behind the trunk, clouded in a thin veil of fog. 

A shudder ran down my spine. I lowered my head, beginning to move a little faster. Selene slowed down, momentarily, her attention shifting towards her right. As I followed her gaze, I could see pin-straight tresses beginning to dangle from a canopy.

"Go on," Selene gestured with her chin, her eyes beginning to glint an electric blue.

The front gate was still empty. I began to stride towards it, eyes planted on the floor. My muscles tensed as the smell of rot grew stronger. Cold winds had begun to graze my skin, sending a tickle down my nape. I fought the urge to look over my shoulder. It didn't matter if they had caught on to the fact that their fish bait was leaving, the fish bait had to leave first.

Suddenly, the winds picked up. My legs broke into a sprint. Before I knew it, I was dashing for the gates, my feet crashing against the wet mud with sounds loud enough to awaken any sleeping gatekeeper. I yanked the chains away and shoved the gate wide open, unconcerned about the attention it might have drawn. From the corner of my eyes, I caught a man in rags and a shawl turning around a corner. He stopped dead in his tracks. "HEY!"

I threw on my mother's woollen cap and bolted out of there, not daring to look back. "OI! What were you d–" the man began to shout but was cut off as a gust of wind blew past him. I didn't know what happened after that, didn't know whether or not he had closed those gates. All I knew was that we were most likely being chased by a man and a flock of hungry ghosts.

 "Selene?!" I called, stealing a glance over my shoulder. She was nowhere to be seen.

I clenched my jaws and pushed my feet faster. It helped that I had bagged a silver in our school's hundred metres sprint. The T-section came closer, and then the other T-section until finally, I was in the avenue. 

My legs gave in then. I doubled over with hands on my knees, breathing raspily. Screw the ghosts...oh, I'm so tired!

With a loud huff, I slumped on the pavement, resting my back against a lamp-post. 

After a while, shadows began to emerge from the corner of the intersection one by one; ghosts who had probably followed me this far. I had neither the energy nor the will to move an inch. Strangely though, the ghosts simply stood there, watching. 

I looked away, still trying to breathe, then staggered up while supporting my weight against the lamp-post. Step by step, I made it to the crossroads.

Once there, I looked over my shoulder. The ghosts were still standing at the same spot, watching quietly. It took me a while to realise they couldn't come any farther, perhaps bound by some charm to the cemetery.

For a long while, I was simply focussed on catching my breath. And then, a flutter of black caught my attention, making me glance towards my right. Selene emerged as a swirl of inky blackness until she was looming right beside me. "You fool! What would you have done if someone found the locks open and reported it?" she hissed angrily.

I winced, ignoring her at that moment. The encounter had left me unnerved but thrilled. I had just done something wrong, another wrong on top of the many wrongs in the past one month. "What matters is that we made it," I looked up at Selene with a triumphant smirk, feeling bolder than usual. "What would've happened if I were caught?"

She smiled in annoyance. "Execution."