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“Willingly?”

“It’s kinda like that, but walking. No running. The trail itself is a few miles. Starts outside of town and ends just beyond our football field. You’ll see all the decorations when we go to school on Thursday. They leave them up through Halloween.” He sidled closer as a customer came into the store and our boss went to greet them. “There’s generally a party Friday night on the football field, back behind the bleachers. I’m sure your boyfriend will be there.”

“I thought Lee was banned from school property?”

Ethan had been reaching for a book on the counter but paused at my comment. “Lee Mckenna?”

It took a second. Then it clicked. He meant Cassian. I said Lee. He used the word ‘boyfriend.’

Oh, fuck.

“Um, I mean…”

“Don’t worry about it, and yeah. Technically, Mckenna is banned, but it’s Friday night. Halloween. School doesn’t know about the party, so it’s not like there’s going to be any school officials showing up. Worst-case scenario, cops show up and Mckenna can run off. He’s super fast and things tend to happen around him.” His eyes skirted around. “You know. Like, weird things, but I’m saying most of the time, it’s like…you know. Never mind. It sounds weird when I’m putting it in words.”

“I know about the fires.”

He went rigid. “It’s not—okay, Josh Nimrod threw a party in a warehouse on the edge of town. It was big, like, even I was invited. The cops showed up. Mckenna took off. We were all running, but he went right past the cops. Had to go through a door. He got through and the cops tried to open it to go after him, but they couldn’t budge the door.”

“It locked?”

“We were inside the warehouse. The lock was on the inside.” His shoulders hunched forward as our boss moved around, showing the customer a section to our left. He lowered his voice. “The door wouldn’t budge, and by the time the cops got it opened, the rest of us were able to get out the back of the warehouse.”

“Lee wasn’t holding the door shut?”

He shook his head. “He was long gone. We could even see that when he ran out. He didn’t stop. There’s a live camera on the street near there and you can see him running out after the cops arrived. There was nothing at the door, but…” He gave me a wary stare. “Cops weren’t pranking themselves. They hate Mckenna. See him as some punk who gets away with all these fires, but it’s not him. It’s like…” He hesitated.

My chest was burning. I had a feeling I knew what he was going to say.

“It’s like he’s haunted. You know? If you believe in that stuff. But anyway, the party will be fun. I’m sure your boyfriend will be there. Mckenna or…whoever.” His eyebrows scrunched together in confusion.

“Ethan,” our boss called. “Could you ring this customer up? I have to make a call.”

I had a hunch that if I looked at that footage, if it was still around, I’d see Noah holding the door.

A bunch of girls from school came into the store at that moment. Claudia. She was with Rebecca, Maya, and two others. I’d gotten the looks all yesterday and today. A couple girls asked what was going on with Cassian and me, but I didn’t answer them, pretending I needed to go to the bathroom. And lunch was spent in the library. Beatrice was appeased by Benji’s help, but I still checked in to make sure everything was okay. There was an extra spark of electricity in the air when I went into the library, which had me worried for different reasons. Was Benji feeding off the Living librarian?

It hadn’t seemed like it. He was the same color, maneuvering the books around when a Living person turned their back or went into a different aisle. There’d been no shouting from anyone or screaming. The only screaming that had happened was from the ghosts, and that was from Shelton. I heard him scream again, but it was after I was leaving the library and going back to classes.

Seeing the gleam on Claudia’s face, a different dread formed in my gut.

“Hi, Colette.” She sneered as she said my name. “We heard you worked here.” She looked around, wrinkling her nose. “Creepy store.”

Maya threw her a frown. “It’s a bookstore.”

Ethan sounded breathless behind me. “Hi, Rebecca.”

She paused and stared before blinking. “Ethan, right?”

“Yeah. Hi. I saw you at the dance last Friday night.”

Her mouth pursed together. “Oh. Cool. Did you have fun?”

“I did.” His voice went up an octave. “Did you too? I didn’t mean like together? Like you were at the dance with me, because you weren’t. You were with someone else, but did you have fun as well?” He blinked rapidly, his mouth working like a goldfish.

“I did. Yeah.”

Claudia was smug, ignoring Ethan’s conversation. “There’s a spiderweb over there. It’s giant.”