on, if you feel ready.”
A muted crunching sound came from near her feet. The daisies under the headstone were withering. The petals turned black while the leaves darkened and shriveled. Even the blue-tinted paper holding them together seemed to age, curling as though from water damage while the color bleached out of it.
Keira still couldn’t see anyone, but fog thickened between the headstones. The sky had been overcast all morning, but it deepened further into an angry black.
“Emma? Is this what you wanted? He was punished for his crime. I know it doesn’t undo what happened, but—”
Frost spread outward from the dead flowers. The white crystals threaded up the headstone and spread over the grass, transforming it from brown to gray. Keira inched back from the ice’s reach and wrapped her arms around her torso. She felt as if she’d fallen into a frozen lake.
Run, her instincts pleaded, but she still hesitated. She’d promised to help the ghost if she could, but her news seemed unwelcome. She couldn’t understand it. Hadn’t Emma wanted justice? Did she think prison was too light of a retribution?
Hearing a faint exhale, Keira turned. Behind her loomed a wall of fog. It was dense, suffocating. Keira tried to draw breath, and her lungs stung as frozen air hit them.
Black eyes stared out of the mist. Emma’s beautiful face was contorted. Wild. The blood streaking down her cheek was no longer transparent monochrome but bright, violent red.
I can hear her breathing. I can see her color. What’s happening?
The spirit’s jaw stretched open. Behind the teeth was an endless pit of rotting flesh and squirming maggots, stretching away, as the throat shook with a howling scream. Keira pitched backward. Her legs hit the tombstone; she tumbled over it, gasped as she fell, and smashed into the dirt. Something—a rock or the corner of a gravestone, she wasn’t sure—scraped the back of her shoulder. Red-hot pain pulsed through the shock.
Get up! Run!
The cold was all-consuming. Ice crystals flowed across Keira’s skin as she scrambled to regain her feet. Emma reached toward her, her howling cry a deafening, unending tone that filled Keira’s head and drowned out conscious thought. The outstretched hands hit Keira and passed through her. Cold burrowed into her chest, and she felt her heart miss a beat before stuttering back to life.
She couldn’t tell if the spirit continued to scream or if the wails were merely trapped in her ears, destined to loop forever. She was blind in the impossibly thick mist. The freezing blanket of white pressed against her on all sides, so dense that she felt as if she were drowning in it. She couldn’t see anything—not the spirit, the gravestones, or even the ground.
A tiny, muted meow came from somewhere to her right. Keira responded instinctively. She staggered toward it, holding her breath, simply hoping that she wouldn’t collide with any of the hidden stones. Something dark flashed through the endless white. A cat’s tail, its tip curled, bobbed like a lantern in the void, and Keira focused her remaining energy on following it.
The shape wove and flicked. It moved faster than Keira could have imagined; even at a full run, she only caught glimpses of the little black cat’s twitching ears before it faded back into the fog.
Then, abruptly, the cat slowed to a trot, allowing Keira to catch up to it. A dark shape emerged from the drowning mist: a familiar wooden door. The cat craned its head toward Keira, whiskers puffed and tail twitching, as it waited impatiently.
Keira felt emotionally numb as she turned the handle. She followed the cat inside the cottage and slammed the door. Suddenly, she could breathe again.
Her chest ached. She sucked in fresh oxygen as she pressed her back to the wood. The mist had drenched her and soaked through both layers of clothes; water dripped off her face and hair. She wiped the moisture away from her eyes and turned toward the window.
It was a cold but relatively clear day. The graveyard, dappled by muted sunlight, appeared peaceful. Keira swore under her breath.
The cat wove around her legs, rubbing itself against her jeans and purring so loudly that it sounded like a motor. Keira stared at it, then bent, picked it up, and cuddled it to her chest as she carried it to the empty fireplace.
This isn’t just a regular cat, is it? She found me; she led me out of the mist. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d been