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Nimrod blinked at him, confused. He had an extinguisher in his hands. “Uh—” He pointed behind us. “That wasn’t like that a second ago.”

We both looked and I blanched, seeing that the fire had tripled in size. And among the flames, perched on the wall, the ghost was laughing. An evil gleam was on his face. Lee looked up… My heart skipped a beat.

Could he see the ghost?

It was so fast and he was back to working on the fire again.

No. He hadn’t seen him.

Did he?

Cassian swore again, shoving me into their arms. “Everyone get the fuck out of here.”

“Wait. No. I can—” I started for the door again. Lee was out there and he didn’t know about the ghost. I’d look crazy, but he needed to know about the ghost.

Cassian yelled, “EVERYONE GET OUT OF HERE NOW!”

Nimrod grabbed a hold of me at the same time Cassian took the extinguisher from his hands. He paused, just long enough to hold my gaze for a second. There was that same emotion that Lee had, just on Cassian’s face this time, but it was gone just as quick. “Go, Josh!”

Josh jerked into action, and Cassian ran back outside the same time everyone seemed to realize there was a real fire in the backyard. Josh carried me outside, and tossed me in the front of a truck as everyone piled in. One of the girls ran for the driver’s side at the same time as he did, but she yanked the keys from him. He started to argue until she yelled in his face, “I’m sober! You are not. Get in the back.”

He grumbled, but got in the back, along with ten other people. Everyone was racing to get away. We shot down the road, just as a fire truck was turning onto our road. We passed them. A few of the firemen’s faces were grim. Some police were behind them. An ambulance was next.

When we got to the end of the hill and turned to go into town more, I looked back over my shoulder.

The fire lit up the sky.

8

Iwent home, then went to Books-n-Brew for my shift on Saturday. Ethan was also working since Halloween was around the corner. Our little town, Haven Rock, somehow ended up being a whole Halloween festival event. Like, the entire month was all Halloween. One of the ghosts mentioned there was a backstory of an actual witch that was killed here and she spawned children who were also witches, and there was a whole fire-burning event to kill those witches too. Remembering the story, and how that spurred a whole month of Halloween festivals, left a sour taste in my mouth considering the size of that fire at Lee’s house.

I checked my phone, but there was nothing on social media about the fire.

Ethan didn’t bring it up.

It was like it didn’t happen.

I even asked my boss how to find where all the nosy townspeople could read about every single event that happened the night before, like fires and arrests. She gave me an odd look. “You mean the public records?”

“Yeah. That!”

She pulled it up on her phone and I read it. There was no mention of the fire. It was so weird.

That’s probably why I found myself walking through town after my shift, and I considered going the shortcut but Melbor would be there and the other ghost might have questions. I decided to walk the whole route. It was more because I didn’t want to see the disappointment in Melbor’s face when he saw me again. Guess I had taken a liking to him the night before.

I was out of breath, a bit more than I liked to admit, when I got to the top of the hill and saw that the gate was closed. Looking from here, I couldn’t see any fire damage, but I breathed out some of my nerves and hit the doorbell.

An intercom came alive. Static sounded from it before a long buzz. The gate unlocked and the door swung open an inch. I pushed it open, stepped through. There was nothing different in the courtyard except all the cars were gone. No lingering smell of smoke. The air was clear, no haze. Nothing burned on the ends of the lawn that I could see as I went to the door. It swung open right before I got there.

Lee stood there in a t-shirt, gym shorts, holding a bowl in one hand, the other extending the door wider. His hair was messily rumpled, and he was barefoot.

He looked so hot.

For a second, I worried I’d made a mistake in coming.

If the fire hadn’t happened, maybe the party hadn’t happened? Maybe I hadn’t happened?

Had I imagined everything?