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“I was not.” The back of my neck warmed up.

The end of his mouth curved up, some dark amusement in his eyes. “Like a creeper, you were. Behind the trees. I thought you were there because you wanted to make out.”

Wait. What? I seared him with a look. “You came over to make out with me?”

He shrugged, his chin lifting. The air around him turned cocky. “You were standing behind trees. It’s the best make-out place at school.”

“I’m sure that’s not the case. There’s probably better places.”

“Oh yeah?” He raised his chin up, challenging, with a wicked grin.

I paused. I had to. That grin was doing things to me, sending flutters through me.

That wasn’t right either.

We were flirting. He was flirting. I was doing it right back.

Who was I? This wasn’t me.

Again, no boy was ever interested in me and I went from almost kissing Lee to flirting with Cassian in the kitchen? This felt like a weird paranormal version of Clue, but the real murderer was the crazed ghost who could start fires.

Or, was it?

Poof.

Oh, joy.

“They’ve shared girls before.”

I didn’t look, knowing Noah had come back. He was so smug and I gave in for a brief moment, leaning forward and resting my forehead to Cassian’s chest. He stiffened, surprised, but his arm came around me. He tugged me closer.

“What’s this?” he murmured.

I was tired. Of the drama. Of the confusion. Of the weird ghosts. They were weirder than normal today and yesterday. Sabine tried to stick a hand in my chest when I first met her. The fear. The requests that I wouldn’t come to this house. Of Noah’s murderous hatred toward his ex-best friend.

Noah began laughing. “I don’t want to kill him.”

I lifted my head up, tensing. He didn’t?

This was awkward. I couldn’t look at him or talk to him and I didn’t want him in my head. I never dealt with a ghost reading my mind so I envisioned putting a brick wall in place around my head and waited.

Noah huffed out, laughing. “You need to be way more psychic for that to work.”

With my hands at Cassian’s sides, I tucked my head further down and whispered under my breath, trying to sound menacing, “Go away.”

Laughter peeled from him, but he did poof away.

Cassian had gone cement-like rigid. “Who— What the fuck is going on with you?”

I gulped. Oh shit. “What?” I lifted my head up, trying to play innocent.

He shook his head and moved me away from him, so we weren’t touching. “No. Stop this. Stop the act. I know something is going on. I’ve known since yesterday afternoon. What is it? There’s too much weird shit happening and Lee won’t say a thing about the fucking mysterious fire from yesterday. Did you know it abruptly vanished? A little after you guys took off. It was blazing, like big enough to take down the house and in a second, gone. Completely gone and nothing was damaged. That’s not normal. Lee refuses to talk about it. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened.”

Dread lined my insides.

My voice dropped to a whisper, “What are you talking about?”

“How he got kicked out of school. Same thing. A fire started on the football field. That one left damage though, and the only one out there was Lee. Security footage showed him on one end of the field when the fire started at the opposite end, but no one else was out there. It had happened another time too, in the boiler room. Lee was down there for some reason. Fire broke out. That one got handled right away. Not the football field. It was destroyed. They fixed it over the summer, but Lee can’t step foot on school property anymore. We can’t play Ravens in our rink because of his ban. Our team has to go to their school this year. His dad got involved, but that was the only compromise agreed by the school’s board.”