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“You’re already distressed enough, my dear. Let me handle Gracie,” he offered magnanimously.

“I don’t like it when you talk about me as if I’m some kind of liability,” I muttered as I wrapped both hands around my coffee mug to soak in its warmth.

“Look,” said Merlin, approaching me slowly from across the table. “Luna and I are both young witches. Or, at least she was until… Anyway, the point is, I’m still a witch. A young one.”

I groaned at his jumbled mix of explanatory stops and starts. I wish he could just tell it to me straight, no matter how bad.“Your point being?”

Merlin looked to Luna, who nodded for him to go on. He swallowed hard, then said,“Well, neither of us has had any experience with ghosts before now, either.”

I didn’t understand their worry. So they didn’t have practical experience. Book smarts could do in a pinch, and these two witchy cats seemed to have a limitless supply of knowledge when it came to the hidden world of magic.

When neither said more, I put on a smile.“No big deal. You learned how to deal with ghosts in witch school, right?”

A growl rumbled in Merlin’s throat, and he lowered his eyelids as if it pained him to look at me. “Oh, you humans. So myopic in your world views. Just because you need years of schooling to function in society doesn’t mean other creatures do. In fact, we witches learn much of what is needed simply by observing our everyday surroundings.”

I scowled right back at him. I didn’t get out of bed in the middle of the night just to be insulted by my feline roommates. “Great. And what’s that taught you about ghosts?”

He coughed and looked away.“Fair point,” he admitted. “I guess we aren’t really equipped to deal with some of the rarer magical conundrums.”

I drew in another slow, deep breath.“So where does that leave us? Do we just wait for the ghost to finish materializing and then ask it to leave?”

“Oh, no.” Merlin scoffed. “Surely not.”

“Ghosts are incredibly uncommon.” Luna’s voice was hardly more than a whisper from her side of the table. “The deceased only return to our world when they have a burning purpose. Something they wanted so badly while they were living that the quest for it became embedded in their very soul.”

I shivered despite myself.“Sounds serious.”

Merlin nodded.“To want something that much. It’s often not good.”

“Virginia yearned for power,” Luna said softly. “The same thing that killed her could have brought her back.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely not good,” I agreed, taking another long slurp from my coffee.

Both cats stared blankly at me while I drank. Somehow they treated me as a sidekick but then expected me to have all the answers.

“Um, can we capture it in a positronic box?” I suggested with a shrug. I hadn’t seen Ghostbusters in a long time, but it was really the only frame of reference I had here. And somehow I doubted Virginia would be returning to us as a chubby green pizza-loving cartoon character.

“We don’t deal in science,” Merlin said with an exaggerated shudder. “This is a magic household, and you’ll do well to remember that.”

“To Nocturna then?” I asked, referencing the magical city that we could only enter at nightfall and with Merlin’s aid.

Both cats nodded.“Nocturna.”

3

As much as I wish I could’ve gone back to sleep, the coffee had done its job—meaning I was now up for the day. I had several hours to kill before my shift at the coffee shop, and I would have liked to tell you that I spent them working on my thesis research.

But, yeah, that’s not what happened.

Instead of being productive, I whiled away the hours by watching the two Ghostbusters movies from the‘80s. I didn’t have time to get to the more recent adaptation but promised myself I’d watch it after work, Nocturna, and whatever other surprises managed to set my day off-kilter.

Of course, I got so absorbed in my mini movie marathon that I lost track of time and had to do my makeup in the car. My dark circles would now be on display to anyone who bothered to look at me for more than a few quick seconds.

Stupid ghost disturbing my sleep and messing up my look.

Even though I hoped our visit from that ghost was a one-off thing, I knew better than to expect a sound night’s sleep anytime soon. That was the thing about the magical world—nothing was ever as easy as you’d hope. Even the two-blink teleport thing was full of problems and could kill somebody if not done properly.

Nope, not for me.

I’d stick to going places in my car, which was probably equally dangerous but at least more familiar, thank you very much.

Given an absence of red lights on my journey, I only managed to add a bit of eyeliner and a sassy matte lipstick before pulling into the parking lot at Harold’s, but it would have to be enough.

My new boss Kelley Carmine insisted on having her staff of baristas come into work, even though renovations kept the place closed to customers—and that felt odd to me.