Page 56 of Aftertaste

“Everleigh,” Kostya repeated. “Like Madame Everleigh?”

“My sister.” Maura nodded. “Spiritualism was always her thing. The psychic stuff, for me, that…”—she gave an ironic laugh—“career path? It’s just one of the ways I try to keep her alive. After she died, I couldn’t let her go. I did a lot of stupid things, trying to hold on.”

“Holding on isn’t stupid.” Kostya had been doing it his whole life—was, in fact, trying to make his own career out of it. “How did she—was she sick?”

Maura shook her head. “A car crash.”

The air went out of his chest. He thought of his dad. The bus. That phone call.

The sharp knife of sudden loss.

“I’m—God, I’m so sorry.”

“Ev crashed it on purpose.” She sounded numb as she said it, like it was something she’d relived a million times, the memory threadbare. “I was away at school, and she needed me, and I wasn’t there.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Maura shivered beside him. “I didn’t even see it coming. I couldn’t understand why. Like, our dad has issues. He’s bipolar, and our house was never really stable growing up. One day there’d be food in thefridge, lights on, and the next he’d be slamming a wall. Losing his job. Or catatonic, barely there. We never knew what we’d find when we walked through the door. I took the brunt, I guess, when I was home. But for Ev to be hurting that bad? To feel like her only choice was an ending?” She dug the toe of her shoe into the ground. “She never even said anything.”

“You can’t blame yourself.”

“Yeah, that’s what people say to make you feel better, but honestly? Our mom was gone, and then I left, too. I was her big sister. I should have stayed home. I should have—” Her voice cracked, and Kostya pulled her closer. “She must have lived with so much darkness. And now I’ll never know.”

He chewed his lip, the answer right there between them, close enough to touch.

“What if you could?”

The aftertaste had thrown itself at him the very first time they met. He could almost taste the chocolate on his tongue now, the peanut butter, the memory a ghost of a ghost. All those times, all those Reese’s, only and always around Maura.

Everleigh had been there all along.

“I could help you,” he said slowly. “You could see her again.”

Maura turned toward him, her mouth so close. Her lips. Her warm breath.

“I—I thought you said you were finished. One and done.”

There was something different in her voice. Not accusation, or anger, like he’d expected, but possibility. Hope.

“I know what I said.” He slid his arm from her shoulder. “But it wasn’t true.”

His heart was sprinting inside him. Was he really doing this? Here? Now? He looked at Maura, into her eyes, and he couldn’t lie anymore.

“My supper club? The one that closed? It was a ghost kitchen.”

She scanned his face, as if trying to read something, but said nothing.

“And this restaurant with Viktor? It was going to be the same thing,” he continued. “Channeling spirits. Cooking their aftertastes. Trying my best to bring them back.”

“Why’d you lie?”

“I’m sorry I did.Really.It’s just, the other day, when it came up—I panicked. Because I like you. A lot. And I thought it would fuck things up between us, the ghost stuff. I know how you feel about it.”

Her face gave nothing away. All he could see was a flicker behind her eyes, like she was thinking very fast.

“You know how Ifelt,” she said at last. “During one snap judgment at a party. A lot’s changed since Seyoncé.”

“So all that stuff about ghosts coming for me? No Dana, only Zuul. You didn’t mean that?”

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