Page 88 of The Witch

“She did!” Lina insists. “She was spooked! I told you that you need to get a better haircut, Henry! Time to enter the twenty-first century, you know?”

He shoots her a look. “Gee, thanks for the tip.”

“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I…I didn’t really believe…”

He crooks a finger at me. “Come on. We need to talk.”

Lina is still giggling as we enter the museum, but Henry seems less than amused. I didn’t actually believe he was a ghost. Okay, maybe for a millisecond, I thought it was a possibility. I’ve seen a lot of wild things in the last couple of weeks, and maybe I’ve opened my mind up a bit too much.

“Sorry,” I say again. “It’s been a bit weird since I moved into Pemberton.”

He stops walking abruptly, right in front of what looks like a mounted rug from many centuries ago. “Tell me you didn’t actually think I was a ghost.”

“I…I didn’t.”

“Oh God.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “You did.”

“That girl is very convincing.”

“Julia, we kissed.”

“Well,” I say, “you should take it as a compliment. The kiss was so good that I didn’t think any human man could have done it.”

Henry does not appear to be taking it as a compliment.

“Look,” I say, “I’ve told you all this stuff about my life and my family, and whenever I ask you anything about yourself, you shut down. And you’ve also been so weird anytime the subject of anything supernatural comes up.”

“It’s weird to think that there aren’t dead people floating around us?”

“Well, when you say it like that…”

He looks at me for several seconds, peering through his black-rimmed glasses. Finally, his shoulders sag. “You want to know something about me?”

“Yes. I do.”

“My parents were both killed in a car accident when I was eight years old,” he says. “That’s why my grandparents raised me. And my whole life, people kept saying things like, Your parents are looking down on you. When I graduated from high school, my grandmother said to me, Your mother and father were with us in the audience, watching you.” He pauses, his brow furrowed. “But that’s bullshit, Julia. My parents are dead, and they haven’t been following me around my whole life, being proud of me when I accomplish anything. I know everyone is trying to make me feel better, but it pisses me off when they act like I didn’t lose the two most important people in my entire life for good.”

For a moment, I’m not even sure what to say. But he’s looking at me, waiting for some kind of response, and all I can manage is “I’m sorry. That really sucks.”

“It does,” he agrees.

“And…I’m also sorry that I thought you might have been a ghost.”

My words finally manage to break his composure. He cracks a self-deprecating smile. “I guess it was sort of funny.”

“You were very light on your feet,” I point out.

He laughs out loud this time. Then he reaches out and takes my hand, lacing his fingers through mine. “Let me give you back that bone.”

I follow him to the room where we talked the other day. This time, the pelvic bone is lying on the table in some sort of specimen bag, which makes it all seem so terribly official. My stomach flutters slightly as he slides it across the table to me.

“My friend estimated the age at around three hundred years,” he says. “So it sounds like we don’t need to bring in the police.”

Oh, thank God. “So it was Caroline Eldridge after all.”

It’s all true then. Her execution for witchcraft, her husband burying her in the backyard, and now…

“Not necessarily.” Henry leans against the table, casting a sideways look at the specimen bag. “Here’s the thing. When I talked to my friend, we had a discussion about the appearance. I had some suspicions, and he verified what I was thinking.”