Page 45 of Kat Bethel

“Do you see something I don’t?” I asked her.

The girl yanked the covers over her head and whimpered. The clerk sighed in defeat. “This place is haunted, and she’s… sensitive. It’s not you. Do you want a refund?”

“No.” I smiled knowingly. Old buildings always had something hanging around. I walked over and squatted down beside her, pulling a rosemary smudge stick from my bag and lit it. She gasped as if she felt the difference and poked her head out. “When you get scared, ask to burn rosemary. It will make the spirits rest.”

“Then why are there still two things here?” she whispered softly.

My stomach dropped and my heart sped up. Did Abiel find a way to stretch this far? Why hadn’t I felt him the entire ride?

And…

“Two?” I stuttered, revealing exactly how shaken I was. I fought to keep the hand holding the rosemary from trembling.

There couldn’t be two. I was barely holding one back.Don’t panic.

“Lindsey!” The clerk scolded her.

“One is a giant black shadow monster on four legs, claws like knives, and wild spiky hair. It’s standing right over you.” She trembled. “He’s breathing down your neck.”

I swallowed. I wasn’t sure what he really looked like. I only knew what he wanted me to see. But a giant monster breathing down my neck sounded about right.

No way.

“The other is outside, peeking around the corner at you. Like he doesn’t want anyone to notice him.” She moved her face as if she was struggling to see around the big ass monster blocking her view. “A man wearing a hat. I think he’s gone.”

A hat?

My mind went to that hunt I’d done right before I’d come home and my world fell apart. The box I’d left inside my house when I lit the whole thing on fire.

He’d been a simple, low level wraith, but he’d been wearing a hat when I caught him.

No. The flames and salt would have purified him. It couldn’t be him.

I checked behind me again, but I wasn’t too surprised when I came up empty once more, before glancing back at the girl, who was silently begging me to believe her.

Was she a medium? Did she really see something I couldn’t?

The unease grew, but I couldn’t let this shake me. Abiel couldn’t have followed me this far from his domain. I’d escaped. I’d deal with everything else later.

He’s not a ghost. You don’t know how far he can go.

I swallowed the rock in my throat. No. I didn’t know anything about him.

“They shouldn’t bother you,” I promised her. If something was following me, I’d be the one who paid for it.

“The monster is scary.” Tears filled her eyes as she tracked some movement I couldn’t see.

“They don’t want you. It’s me they want.”

Her face grew concerned. “Why?”

Violence breeds violence.

How did I warn this tiny witch not to seek out the things she sees?

That my family’s curse started five hundred years ago when a medium like her chased after things only she could see and played god with it.

“Because the monsters sense power inside me.” The power that brought them to life. The magic that made them able to step from the shadows and touch the real world.