TW: Mention of Suicide
I didn’t have to look far. Cassie had stopped just down the road and was leaning against a lightpost, looking forlorn.
“They are trying to help,” I informed her as I approached, “but sometimes these things take time.”
“I know, but it’s still not fair.” She folded her arms around herself as if she was cold, when of course, as a ghost, she couldn’t actually feel weather. “I almost want to go find the contract holder and yell at her to find out what the hell she was thinking and ask if she even has a conscience but…I’m kind of worried about doing that, at the same time. What if by going and seeing her I’m then trapped in her task? I’m not feeling any pull in particular right now, but I’m guessing if I see her, I’ll actually recognize the pull then. I’m scared to see her. Just in case – just in case I lose my free will when I do.”
I wanted to tell her that it didn’t work like that for ghosts, but truth was, I didn’t know for sure. I had only dealt with ghosts directly on a few rare occasions over the centuries and I was far from an expert on ghosts. I might know more than the average person, simply because I’d been around for so long, but that didn’t mean I knew anything about how much free will ghosts really had. I was guessing not a lot, since they were bound by a contract and couldn’t disobey it.
I could understand why she’d be frustrated.
A thought occurred to me, a wild thought I wasn’t used to popping in my mind like this, but it had been decades since Alice died and I was free to try something new that interested me if I wanted, right? Try to rekindle that spark that Cassie mentioned?
“What if you did what you wanted, then? Ignore the contract for now – run, for the time being. Explore the world, see things you always wanted to see. You cannot avoid coming back forever, but you could give Adair and Violet time to change the laws here before coming back.” I paused. “If you do not wish to go alone, I have nothing in particular tying me here.”
She swung around to look at me, eyes wide. “You’re offering to run away with me and show me the world?”
I hadn’t worded it quite like that, but in a way, yes. “Essentially. I imagine it would be somewhat easier to travel with someone who can see you and knows a lot about the world and where to go – including all major and most minor languages throughout the world.”
“Ha!” She started laughing. “Hell, why not? I don’t want to stay here and do some stupid contract – yeah, let’s just make a run for it!”
Gleeful, she started out down the road, then stopped and frowned, a serious expression crossing her face. “But…can we swing by my work trailer before we go? I had one real friend, I kind of want to say goodbye to her even though she won’t be able to see me.”
I was in no hurry, so I agreed to her request, realizing as we got closer to where the trailers were parked, though, that my presence might be hard to explain.
“I’ll wait for you here,” I motioned to a place a little ways off from where I could see the shiny silver trailers. “I don’t think they’ll let me in without an explanation.”
“Oh, right, well…it’s probably no big deal, I can just walk over there anyway.” She hesitated, then gave me an awkward wave. “I’ll be right back.”
I leaned against the side of the building, waiting. It was something I was good at doing, having literally sat around for years at a time. I could wait here for as long as she needed to tell her friend goodbye.
I was waiting there, almost as still as a statue, when I spotted Cassie starting to approach some time later. Before I even got a chance to push myself off the wall, though, someone darted out of the boarding house and ran in her direction.
“Cassandra!” She called. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, I was so worried!”
Cassie paused, clearly confused and not recognizing this lady, but my instincts were instantly alert.
This woman was a witch.
“Cassandra!” The witch attempted to grab Cassie’s hands, forgetting she couldn’t, then looked directly into her face. “Cassandra, I’m so happy to find you! Do you – do you know me?”
Cassie seemed very uneasy and took a step back. “I don’t recognize you, no.”
The witch frowned. “But – wait, it should have worked, what is – you do see me, right?” She demanded, looking into Cassie’s eyes again. “Just recognize me already!”
Cassie started edging her way around the increasingly agitated witch, closer to where I was approaching.
“I don’t know you,” Cassie repeated. “We’ve never met before.”
“Well, no, we haven’t,” the witch agreed in a rush, “but I still know you! I’ve watched everything you stared in, every interview, every ad. I read anything everyone ever wrote about you. I wrote you a lot of fan letters!”
I started putting two and two together, while Cassie started to get tense.
“I love you more than anyone else,” the witch went on, not even noticing my presence, “but they wouldn’t ever let me close to you – I tried and tried, but some of the guards know about witches and knew how to counter my spells, so uggh, it never worked!”
Cassie’s eyes widened and I realized she was putting it together, too.
“So,” the witch announced proudly, “I figured out a way for us to be together forever!”
“Hang on,” Cassie’s voice was calm – too calm. “You’re telling me you murdered me and bound my soul against my will in a contract because you’re a crazed stalker?!?! What kind of insane nut job are you?”
The witch looked like she’d been slapped. She was young, obviously obsessed, but not so young that she shouldn’t have known better. Anyone with an ounce of common sense would know better than to murder their love interest, let alone force them into a contract without their permission.
Talk about a doomed romance. This witch didn’t even seem to realize that forcing Cassie into the relationship would not go over well with Cassie.
“But…I love you!” She announced, as if that clearly fixed all the problems with her logic. “And this way we can be together forever!”
“Oh no.” Cassie started shaking her head, her hands balled into fists. “You killed me, you freaking moron, because you imagined yourself in love with someone who wasn’t even real! That wasn’t the real me, that was an image my agent made up! Then you just decide to force me to do what you want as a ghost? Nope. No fucking way. I am not your friend, I am not your lover, I am not,” she waved her hand, agitated, “whatever it is you expected to get out of this. I’m out. You just go – get a real life or something useful for a change. Don’t involve me in it anymore.”
The witch stared at her, aghast, as Cassie turned and started to walk away, her anger making her tremble as she walked.
I hesitated, glancing at the witch, but she didn’t seem inclined to attack Cassie and, well, she couldn’t harm her, right? Cassie seemed to still be in control of her free will, so that was a good thing. I guess…this might be simpler than I realized?
I started to follow Cassie when I heard a strange shriek from the witch and glanced back.
“I bound your soul to mine,” she screamed, her eyes fixed on Cassie, “so if you don’t understand what I’m offering and how much I love you, then I’ll just – I’ll just make sure you get what you want, then, and end the contract now!”
I wasn’t close enough to stop her from casting a death spell on herself. I’m not even sure I could have stopped her if I’d been closer, but one moment she was alive and the next she was lying dead on the ground.
Slowly, I turned to look back in the direction where Cassie had been a moment before, expecting to see nothing there anymore.
Apparently, Cassie expected this, too, because she seemed as surprised as I was that she was still there.
“Um,” she said after a long pause, “not sure what this means, but maybe we should go before someone thinks you murdered her and you get arrested?”
“Good point.” I cast a spell with one hand, temporarily hiding the witch’s body, while I opened my phone with the other, calling Adair. I briefly informed him about what had happened, where the witch was located, and then hung up my phone.
Cassie looked at me curiously as I began to walk away. “What – he can handle it?”
“The council,” I explained. “They have a supernatural part of the police force that deals with stuff like this. They’ll be able to confirm that she killed herself. We could stay around and give a statement, but I’d rather not. Witch covens are annoying and I don’t want to have to explain to the entire coven that their girl there was crazy and killed herself for no good reason.” I shrugged.
“So,” I asked her, “are you ready to see the world now?”
~~~~
I rested my forearms on the balcony railing, taking a deep breath as I surveyed the area around us. Mountains to the left, almost reaching into the bright greenish-blue sea to our right, stretching out as far as the eye could see. People called places like this a paradise – it was easy to see why, with the quiet breeze blowing the scent of flowers in my face and the view so spectacular it could even bring someone like me a moment of peace.
Cassie came out on the balcony, yawning as if she didn’t get enough sleep – a habit she never fully dropped, despite not actually sleeping anymore – as she wound her hair into a tight ponytail.
“I like the hair,” she told me as she leaned on the railing, brushing her shoulder against mine. “I think the half shaved look is good for you.”
It had been almost 20 years since we’d left Avenglade, and still we hadn’t returned. In that amount of time, she had changed a lot about me. She’d reminded me how to enjoy life again, regardless of whether I had anyone with me to enjoy it. She’d taught me that sometimes, taking risks could be fun. Like my hair, for example. She’d begged me for a couple of years to dye it, then a few more years before I’d agreed to try the – what I felt – extreme hairstyle she wanted. Apparently, since she couldn’t change her own hair color or length ever, she wanted to live vicariously through me that way. And…well, I actually had to agree with her after I did it. It really did work for me, and now that I was used to it, I kind of liked it.
“So,” she murmured, looking out at the scenery before us, “we swam in the ocean, climbed up the volcano, it’s been, what, seven months since we came here? You think it’s time to move on, or should we stay longer? You seem to like it here.”
“A lot of places have their own beauty,” I turned my attention back to the landscape. “Someone reminded me to appreciate it, so I’m trying to do so wherever we go. I’m willing to go someplace new – or an old favorite, if you’d prefer. We could go back to that place that had the doughnuts you really liked.”
She laughed. “I still find it weird that I can actually eat food, but I’m not complaining! I’d have been so disappointed if I couldn’t try all the foods from all the places we visited.” She slid her hand to the other side of my arm, so she could link her fingers in mine, pressing her lips lightly against my shoulder as she did. “What do you want to do? Any place you haven’t been to in a long time and want to see again? Anywhere you want to visit again?”
Normally, ghosts couldn’t interact with other people very well. They could, to a limited extent, but for reasons we weren’t sure of, Cassie and I could interact normally. She could touch me and I could touch her, something which turned out useful when, for the first time in centuries, I had taken the initiative to nervously ask her if she might be interested in women and in me particular.
Come to think of it, she’d never actually answered that question, but given the way she’d practically jumped into my lap and started kissing me, I’d assumed the answer – and I was pretty sure the subsequent years confirmed my guess.
There were still moments I felt afraid of losing her. I was tired of losing the ones I loved, and a ghost, of all people, should have an extra fleeting life. We didn’t know why Cassie was still alive – or, uh, not entirely dead? – after all these years and why she’d never felt a pull back to Avenglade. Or why the witch’s death hadn’t affected her and the contract. All we could assume was that something went wrong with the witch’s contract and somehow Cassie’s time here was extended. By how much, we didn’t know, but…Cassie had brought passion back to my life, something I hadn’t had in centuries, even when I had other people in my life. I was willing to risk heartbreak to be with her for however brief the time might be.
I pulled my mind back to the question at hand, away from the fears which lurked in my mind no matter how hard I tried to ignore them. “I spoke with Adair the other day, by the way. He thought I’d forgotten about him, but he and his wife didn’t forget their promise – Avenglade is now ghost-friendly, if you will. They’ve actually influenced several other cities to take similar stances, and Adair’s hopeful it’ll soon be nationwide.”
“Eh, 20 years,” she shrugged, “I mean, we did kind of assume it would take them less time than that, so I guess they’re on schedule?”
I laughed, a warm laugh that I’d almost forgotten I had until I met Cassie. “I think they did it a while back, I just forgot to ask.” I paused for a moment. “The witch’s coven denied knowledge of her murdering you or binding you, but that’s likely a lie – she was too young to have known how to do that on her own. Chances are she had help from other witches who simply don’t want to admit their involvement. At the end of the day, though, he agreed with me – something happened with the contract that the witch didn’t expect, and unfortunately, without knowing the terms of the contract, we have no way of knowing, well….”
“How long I’ll exist,” she finished for me, then huffed out a long sigh. “Yeah, I guessed as much. I suppose the coven might know but they won’t say, will they?”
“Most likely not. Covens aren’t big on sharing information with outsiders, especially if it incriminates one of their own. Anyone involved in helping her could potentially face consequences for assisting in your murder, so there’s that, too.” I gave her a soft smile. “I’m sorry, I wish we had more answers.”
Cassie’s expression turned thoughtful as she continued to survey the horizon. “Maybe we should go back to Avenglade. The coven likely won’t talk to us, but…I feel like they owe me some answers. It’s been 20 years, maybe they’ll be willing to talk now? Maybe the death of their friend won’t be as fresh? I kind of want to try, at least. Then if it doesn’t work, at least we can say we tried.”
“If you want,” I agreed easily. It helped that it was difficult to harm a ghost and, well, I was a phoenix. It didn’t matter much if we were walking into a potentially dangerous situation, it was unlikely we would suffer serious harm from it. Besides, Cassie was right – it had been a long time, by human standards, and if anyone was owed some answers, it was Cassie.
I just hoped the witches would be cooperative.
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