sell it?
I have no idea, and that’s yet another thought to tuck into a box for now.
I sit, and I think, and then I refill my cup, and my cookie plate and curl up with my kitten and my book. I read as the clock chimes eight and then nine. When it strikes ten, I declare it’s late enough to call it a night.
I take Enigma upstairs and tuck her into her box. Then I step into the hall, heading for the bathroom and . . .
A shape flits past the doorway to the master bedroom.
I go still. In my mind’s eye, I see it again, a dark human figure sliding past.
I swallow and squeeze my eyes shut. Then I glance back at Enigma. She’s curled up in her box. When she sees me watching, she only lifts her head with a drowsy meow. Nothing has set off her internal alarms. So whatever I saw exists only in my imagination.
It only ever existed in your imagination, Bronwyn. It’s time you accepted that.
I square my shoulders and stride down the hall into the master bedroom and—
A woman stands at the open bay window. A woman wearing what looks like a long dress of black lace with a veil over her face.
She turns to me, and I stagger back and knock something behind my foot, and thank God I still have the mental awareness not to step down because it’s Enigma. The kitten stares at the figure, her eyes wide, fur on end, tiny tail bristled like a bottle brush. Then she leaps in front of me, hissing and spitting.
The figure steps toward me. She doesn’t float like a horror movie spook. She walks, one soundless step at a time, her face hidden behind the veil. As she grows closer, I’m not sure it’s a lace dress at all. It seems more like a swirling layer of black, obscuring her from view.
Enigma shoots forward, hissing. The figure slows, veiled face lowering to look at the kitten.
I dart forward to scoop Enigma up. The figure lifts her head, watching me, and I’m close enough to see through the veil, and yet I can’t. There is only that fluttering black, by turns solid and semi-translucent, pale skin shimmering behind it.
The woman lifts a hand swathed in black. Glimmers of moonlight shine through her body. I see that moonlight gleam, and I swallow hard.
I’m looking at a ghost.
Not a hallucination. Not a prankster. Enigma sees the figure, and so it exists. Yet light shines through it, and so it’s not real, not solid.
That hand reaches toward me, and I shrink back. Enigma growls, her eyes huge as they follow the hand. When I flinch, it pauses there, a finger outstretched toward me. Then the hand drops, and the figure steps forward.
One step. Another. Closing the gap between us.
I wheel. Something flickers by the linen closet door, a shimmer of light and shadow. I don’t pause to look—I race past, careering down the hall, Enigma clutched against me.
I spot the stairs. I could turn that way. I should. Instead, I barrel toward my room. At the last second, I realize I’m running deeper into the house. But the last time I fled a ghost, I ran outside and—
The black-veiled figure rounds the corner, and that settles the matter. I race into my room and slam the door, the whole house shaking with it. I back up until I hit the bed, and then I half-sit, half-fall onto it, my gaze fixed on the door, expecting the woman to walk right through.
She doesn’t.
I sit there, Enigma’s tiny heart tripping under my fingers, my own heart pounding so hard I can barely breathe. When I finally wrest my gaze from the door, I scan the room, my muscles tensed.
It’s empty.
Enigma relaxes into my arms. Her purrs come jagged, like someone laughing in a carnival spook house, trying to convince themselves they’re okay. After a moment, though, those purrs smooth out, and she lifts her head in a miniature lion’s roar of a yawn, her needle-teeth flashing.
Still clutching her, I scuttle up the bed until my back is firmly against the headboard. When I listen, I hear only the kitten’s purrs and the ticktock of the grandfather clock.
I’ve seen enough horror movies to know that the moment I relax, the woman will pop up from the foot of the bed. It soon becomes apparent, though, that the ghost has never seen a horror movie. She doesn’t pop up. She