Page 49 of 13 Nights

It will not cure the curse. It will buy Ashley a year. If I must buy her another year every October for the rest of her life, I will.

Three nights remain, including Halloween. I can hold on for three nights. I can pretend the tea has no flavor, the name has no weight, and the woman in the kitchen has not already dismantled every defense I ever built.

On Halloween night, before the final dawn, I cross the river. For me, no time at all. For Ashley, a year in which I will not exist.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ashley

The marks in the table are deeper this morning. I run my fingers along the impressions where Severin braced himself against the wood, and the grain has split clean through to the underside. He gripped the table at the instant the Void seized him, and the oak recorded what his body did to the furniture on the way out.

I photograph the new damage beside the impressions from October twenty-sixth.

The table is becoming a record of a man growing more solid while the force tearing him away becomes more violent. The contradiction should bother me. A weaker curse should produce a gentler departure.

Last night's pull was the opposite of gentle. Zero delay. Full violence. Every second of progress erased.

I make coffee and sit with my mother's journal. I've read the October 29 entry a dozen times, but the words carry different weight this morning.

I want to stay, but I lack the courage. God help whoever tries to break the curse.

She wrote that and drove home. She locked the drawer, went back to her fiancé, and built a life on the other side of that decision. I wasn't born until the following December. Every October for decades she paid the taxes on a cottage she refused to sell.

I'm the whoever. I'm the woman who stayed.

My phone buzzes early. Lena.

"You said you'd call but instead I got a text with GPS coordinates and the words 'if I don't check in by dawn.' I've been sitting on my couch since then trying to decide whether to drive up there or call the police."

"I'm fine. I'm sorry."

"You're always sorry. Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Is the ghost hurt?"

"He's not a ghost."

"Ashley, you described a man who appears at dusk and disappears at dawn. That is the dictionary definition of a ghost."

"He's a manifestation. There's a distinction."

"The distinction is that you're sleeping with him." Lena's voice cracks on the last word, and the sound of it goes through me like a blade. "You've known him twelve days."

"Eleven."

"That's worse. Come here to stay with me."

"I can't."

"You keep saying that. Come here. Finish the novel. Grieve your mother properly. Stop chasing a dead man through a town that sells his face on coffee mugs."

"Lena." I press my forehead against the kitchen wall. "I'm not chasing him. I'm choosing something I can't explain to you over the phone, and I know how that sounds, and I'm asking you to trust me for three more days."

"Three days."

"Including Halloween. After that, I'll either come to you, or I'll call you and explain everything."