Page 20 of Ghoul Me, Maybe
He presses his hand lightly to my chest, right over the charm.
The room disappears.
There’s a jolt—not pain, not pleasure, butrecognition. Like the first gasp after surfacing. Like falling and flying at the same time. My body goes hot, then cold, thenhis. Like we’re two storm fronts colliding.
When he pulls away, I’m gasping.
“You felt it,” he says quietly.
I nod again.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I did.”
CHAPTER 8
ELIAS
Lowtide Bluffs feels like a fever dream.
It smells the same—salt and mildew, rot and rust—but now it hums under my feet with things I don’t understand. Buzzing wires, glowing signs, tiny machines that sing in people’s pockets and light up their faces like fireflies.
I don’t belong here.
But I can’t seem to leave.
Every step I take away from her, the world gets grainy. Like I’m walking backward through a half-finished painting. Colors fade. Sound warps. The town turns into ghosts worse than me.
So I stick close.
She doesn’t know I’m following. Not all the time. I don’t mean to, exactly. But when the bond tugs like a shipline in a storm, I follow the pull.
I’ve taken to wandering the town when she sleeps.
It’s easier at night. Fewer eyes. Less noise.
Tonight, I slip through the alley near the bait shop, where the tide reaches under the boardwalk and whispers secrets in sea foam. I pause to listen. Not to the ocean—but to the madman who lives two doors down from the post office.
“Ley lines, I’m telling you! Theycrisscrossright under the chapel. That’s why the crows won’t land there!”
That’s Lyle Brightwater.
Tall. Wiry. Wearing three different plaids and no socks. He’s got a chalkboard propped against a cracked flower cart and he’s drawing circles like he’s planning a ritual or a conspiracy. Possibly both.
I watch him for a while, curious despite myself. He mutters to himself like someone’s answering back. Then, suddenly, he freezes and turns toward me.
And stares.
Not through me.
Atme.
“Well, helloooo there,” he says. “You’re new.”
My heart—or whatever’s left of it—jerks.
He shouldn’t see me.
“Don’t be shy,” Lyle says, stepping forward. “You’re one of the old ones, aren’t you?”
