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Kelley at least had enough chutzpah for the both of them. They’d be a great couple, if Drake ever decided to return her feelings. Whatever the outcome, it would be interesting to watch their story unfold.

I, for one, was glad I had time to consider such matters. With each new day that passed, I worried less about the ghost. Each night I slept better. Each day I was able to focus on the people and cats in my life, try new makeup techniques, and just generally relax and enjoy myself.

It was divine.

I was right in the middle of a fantastic dream in which I won a lifetime supply of cosmetics from my favorite cruelty-free company, when—

Meeeeeeeeh!

REOW! HISSS!

Meeeeeeeh!

I bolted upright in bed as both cats continued to caterwaul in the hallway. This could only mean one thing. Our ghost had returned. And just when I was starting to believe our first visit had been a fluke.

I pulled on the robe that hung from the back of my door and stepped out into the hallway. Sure enough, both cats were going ballistic.

And I do mean ballistic.

Merlin had even begun kicking back his feet in that familiar chicken scratch maneuver, which meant—

“No! Stop! No lightning in the house!” I screamed, but my warning came too late.

A zipping bolt came crashing straight through the roof, illuminating the wayward spirit in the process. Suddenly a bright swatch of blue appeared right where my cats had been staring. Now I saw it, too.

Oh, Merlin. He’d meant to destroy the thing, but he’d only given it more power.

The house let out a giant whomp, and everything went silent—and even darker than before.

“Merlin, you fried the electricity,” I shouted, unable to tear my eyes away from the transparent blue blob floating just a few feet away from me in the hallway.

And then it started to rain inside the house.

“Merlin!” I screamed.

“It wasn’t me,” he shouted back.

I raised my eyes and saw that—yes—the rain was coming through a newly made hole in the roof. That would not be cheap to repair. “You better be able to fix that with magic,” I mumbled.

“You’re worried about that when we now have this?” Luna cried, motioning toward the ghost frantically.

The sudden motion startled the spirit, and it took off down the hall and moved on to rattling about the kitchen.

“Why wasn’t it captured by your spell?” I demanded of the cats.

Meeeeeeeeh!

REOW! HISSS!

Meeeeeeeh!

Not the answer I was looking for. Clearly they weren’t much help in this situation, given their desire to scream about the ghost rather than to capture it.

Come to think of it, I’d been shouting a lot, too. Ugh.

Never mind my initial reaction. Someone had to deal with this thing, and I guessed that someone might as well be me.

I marched into the kitchen and stumbled right into the table. Ouch!

The only light came from the ghost itself, thanks to Merlin’s lightning-induced blackout. The pulsing blue blob didn’t appear human, but what else could it be?

“Hey, Virginia,” I called out, working hard to hide the quiver in my voice. “Why are you here? What do you want?”

The ghost floated closer to me, and it took everything I had not to run out of the house screaming. I guess I couldn’t hold the cats’ reaction against them when I wished I could do the exact same thing.

The spirit continued to inch forward, slow as molasses. I could have run, but I stood transfixed, unable to pull my eyes away from the spectral sight.

Moments later, it completed its journey, stopping less than a foot in front of me.

And then it spoke in a terrible rasping echo that sent a shiver straight down my spine.“Who’s Virginia?”

18

It was hard to tell given the strange echoing quality of its voice, but I was pretty sure our ghost was a boy.

“Who are you?” I murmured. I couldn’t believe I was talking to a ghost. This topped all the strange things that had happened so far these past weeks. I’d reached a new peak of weirdness here and wasn’t sure I liked it. Well, at least the spirit seemed gentle. That’s definitely better than I’d have gotten were it actually Virginia.

“Gracie?” the ghost asked, moving so close to me that the glowing blue blob was but a hair’s breadth from my face.

“Uh, ghost?” I responded stupidly.

“I never wanted to be a ghost,” the strange creature moaned as its blue light undulated. “I don’t know why I’m here, and I don’t know why I came to you.”

That was when I finally recognized something familiar in that eerie voice. This wasn’t Virginia, but it was someone I’d known—someone I’d watched die not too long ago.

“Harold?” I asked in serious disbelief. “Is that you?”

“It’s me,” the spirit confirmed. Wow, I couldn’t believe my former boss had returned from the spectral plane to pay me a visit. He’d hated me, and even more than that, he hatedpaying me anything—especially not what I was owed for all the hours I put in at his coffeeshop.

“No wonder the spell didn’t work,” I murmured to myself, thinking of the useless ceramic frog in the hallway. “It was made for Virginia. And you clearly aren’t her.”

“Who’s Virginia?” Harold echoed.