Page 30 of Ghoul Me, Maybe
He just felt us breathing down his neck.
We don’t go back to my place. We go to Mira’s.
Because if there’s one person in this town who’ll shoot me straight—even if it hurts—it’s the girl currently grinding dried nettle into something that smells like regret and elderflower.
Mira doesn’t look up when we walk in. Doesn’t have to.
“You’ve been somewhere loud,” she mutters. “Your aura’s frayed like barbed wire.”
“You get that from sniffing herbs?” I ask.
She finally glances up, eyes narrowing. “No. I get that from the ghost-shaped migraine standing behind you.”
Elias, ever helpful, leans against her wall like a brooding coat rack.
Mira wipes her hands on a towel and gestures to the cluttered kitchen table. “Sit. Talk.”
We do.
I give her the rundown. The journal. The name Greaves. The coin, the bar, the runner who bolted like we were made of fire.
Mira listens in silence, arms crossed, foot tapping.
Then she says, “It’s a soul anchor.”
I blink. “What is?”
“The relic. Has to be. It’s not just cursed. It’sanchoringhim to this world. If you break it—carelessly, incorrectly?—”
She turns to Elias. “You’ll vanish. Gone. No ghost. No aftershock. Just…unmade.”
The word drops like a bomb.
My throat goes dry.
Elias says nothing. Doesn’t flinch.
Mira rounds on me. “You didn’t know. But now you do.”
I stare at her. “So what, I just leave him cursed? Trapped forever?”
“I’m saying you can’t just rush in with a hammer and hope for closure.”
Her voice softens. “Sienna… he’s real now. Realbecauseof you. That bond? It goes both ways.”
And suddenly I’m not so sure anymore.
Not about the relic. Not about the mission. Not even about myself.
I glance at Elias.
And I wonder—I don’t know if freeing him is the same thing as saving him.
CHAPTER 12
ELIAS
The night turns thick with strange omens.
