Chapter 7: A Ghost That Should Not Exist
1691 Words
The Academy clock struck six.
Silas was awake.
He hadn't slept.
He sat on the edge of the bed in his private dorm — the one Principal Varnholt had personally assigned, with a view of the old church beyond the eastern wall — his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped so tight the knuckles had gone white.
It was only a scent.
That was what he had told himself for the last fourteen hours.
The courtyard had been full of noise. Mud. Wolf pups in cheap uniforms. Wards that buzzed like flies. Of course he had misread it.
It was only a resemblance.
A girl with dark hair. Pale skin. There had been thousands of girls with dark hair and pale skin. In every city. In every century. His mind was playing tricks because he had come back to this place.
Elise died one thousand years ago.
He had held her body. He had felt it go cold. He had buried her with his own hands where no one would ever find her.
This girl could not be her.
The logic was perfect.
So why had he said her name?
"Elise...?"
He hadn't spoken her name out loud in three hundred years. He hadn't allowed himself to say it aloud in centuries.
And now it was all he could think about.
He stood abruptly. Anger snapped through him — not at the girl, at himself. Cold, precise anger.
He walked to the basin and splashed water on his face. In the mirror, his molten amber eyes looked back at him, calm. Too calm.
He forced his mouth into the easy, lazy smile he had practiced in the car yesterday.
"Get a hold of yourself," he whispered to his reflection.
Margaret first. The church. The seal. That was why he came. He had waited centuries to find where they had sealed her. That was the mission. Not a scent. Not a girl.
It was only a scent.
---
By eight, Silas was perfect.
He walked into Advanced Rune History ten minutes late, and every head turned. Professor Thorne, who had failed three students last term for being thirty seconds late, smiled.
"Mr. Silas, so glad you could join us."
"Traffic," he said, and the class laughed.
Tiffany — blonde, pretty, the kind of girl who thought she was the main character of Ashthorne — had saved him a seat. She leaned in close, her perfume sweet and cloying.
"You missed breakfast. I saved you a muffin."
"You're a lifesaver," he said, his voice warm. He took the muffin. He didn't eat it.
For the next hour he was exactly what they expected. The charming transfer. Rich, a little bored, effortlessly brilliant. When Thorne asked about the Warding of the First Pact, Silas answered correctly, then added a self-deprecating joke about how he had crammed all night.
The girls giggled. The boys nodded, already deciding he was one of them.
Inside, he wasn't listening.
He was counting.
The window in this classroom faced the library courtyard. Aria passed it at 8:42 every morning. He had noticed it yesterday without meaning to.
8:42 came. No Aria.
8:43. No Aria.
Tiffany was saying something about a party on Friday. He laughed at exactly the right moment.
8:47.
There. A flicker of dark hair.
Aria crossed the courtyard quickly, books hugged to her chest, head down. She didn't look at his window. She didn't look at anyone.
Silas's eyes tracked her until she disappeared into the library.
Different, he told himself.
Elise had never walked like that. Elise had floated. Head high. Like the world belonged to her.
This girl walked like the world was going to hit her if she lifted her head.
Different.
He turned back to Tiffany and smiled.
"Sorry, what did you say about Friday?"
---
The library at Ashthorne smelled like old paper and dust and the cheap lemon cleaner the janitors used. Aria liked it. It was quiet.
She spread four books across the table. History of Northern Packs. Curses and Bloodlines: A Compendium. The Fall of the First Coven — Disputed Accounts. Ruins of the North: Maps and Myths.
She was looking for two things and finding neither.
One, any mention of the Blackwood Curse that wasn't just a footnote saying "folk tale, origin unknown."
Two, any mention of the First Vampire that wasn't "a legend to scare children."
Her head hurt. The black lines under her skin had faded again, but she could feel them, like ink moving just out of sight. She was tired in a way sleep didn't fix.
And Leon was in the north. Right now. In the ruins. Alone.
She rubbed her eyes and glanced up — and felt it.
That prickle on the back of her neck.
She looked across the library.
Silas was two tables over, surrounded by three boys, laughing about something. He wasn't looking at her. He hadn't even glanced her way once today.
And yet her stomach turned.
It wasn't attraction. It was cold. Like standing too close to something that had been dead a long time and was pretending not to be.
She didn't like him. She couldn't explain why, which made her like him even less. Everything about him was too perfect. Too smooth. Like paint over a cracked wall.
She pulled her books closer and looked back down, forcing herself to ignore him. She had more important things to worry about than a rich transfer student. Leon. The northern ruins. The curse eating her from the inside.
---
Silas wasn't laughing anymore.
The boys were still talking, but he had stopped responding. His amber eyes, under the guise of staring idly at the library shelves, had fixed on Aria across the room.
He was watching her like a problem he needed to solve.
Her eyes. Elise's eyes had been a lighter grey, almost silver in certain light. This girl's were dark grey, storm-cloud grey.
Different.
Her smile — when the librarian passed and said something quiet and Aria gave a small, polite smile. Elise's smile had been wide, sharp, unafraid. This girl's smile was small. Guarded.
Different.
The way she tucked her hair behind her ear when she was concentrating. The way her left hand curled slightly when she wrote.
Different.
He listed each difference like a prayer. Each one was proof.
Then she laughed.
The librarian had knocked over a stack of books and Aria had let out a short, surprised laugh — airy, startled, a little embarrassed.
The sound hit him like a physical blow.
The library, the boys, the wards, the smell of lemon cleaner — all of it vanished.
---
She was laughing, head thrown back, bare feet in the river.
"Silas, you are so serious! It's just water!"
"It's freezing," he had said, but he was smiling despite himself.
Then wolves. Howling. Too many.
Blood. So much blood on the snow.
Elise running. Her hand in his — slipping —
"SILAS!"
---
Silas gripped the edge of the table. The wood creaked under his fingers.
The memory was gone as fast as it came. One second. Maybe two.
No one else had noticed. The boys were still arguing about the border patrol drills.
Across the room, Aria had gone back to her book, completely unaware that the monster behind the perfect smile had just bled in front of her.
Silas stood up. So suddenly his chair scraped loudly.
"Are you okay?" Tiffany asked.
"Fine," he said, his smile back in place, but his eyes were still on Aria. "I need air."
He walked out, his steps calm, measured, until he was out of sight of the library windows. Then he walked faster.
He needed to look at the church. The seal. He needed to remember why he was really here.
He stepped outside and forced his eyes toward the eastern wall, toward the old, sealed church that stood beyond the Academy grounds. Cold stone. Warded shut. Margaret was in there. Under it. In a coffin of stone and spells.
Margaret first. The church. The seal. That was why he came.
Then Aria's face intruded again. Her laugh.
Different. She was different. He needed to find one flaw that would shatter the illusion for good.
He couldn't.
And that was what terrified him.
---
Dusk fell.
The courtyard was packed. Dinner rush. Students spilled out of every building, shouting, shoving, laughing, the patrol wolves changing shifts with low barks.
Aria came out of the library, her bag heavy, her head pounding. She had found nothing. Again.
She told herself not to look for the black car. It was still there, parked exactly where it had been yesterday.
She told herself not to look for him. The uneasy feeling he gave her was not curiosity. It was discomfort. Like a warning.
She looked up anyway, just to check the sky. To see if it would rain.
For one single, accidental second, across fifty feet of crowded courtyard, her eyes met his.
He was standing alone by the fountain, apart from everyone, his black coat making him a shadow among uniforms. He wasn't looking at the old church anymore.
He was looking directly at her.
Aria didn't mean to stop. Her feet stopped on their own.
Silas froze.
The noise of the courtyard — the hundreds of voices, the footsteps, the clatter — all of it went silent for him.
For the first time in one thousand years, the ancient, "...listening to his own dead heart beat for a girl who could not possibly be Elise... and praying there was another explanation."
He didn't understand how that was possible.
His hand went to his chest without thinking.
Aria frowned, confused by the strange look on his face — pain? shock? — but before she could place it, someone bumped her shoulder and broke the moment.
She shook her head and kept walking, completely unaware that she had just become his focus.
Behind her, Silas stood motionless in the middle of the courtyard, surrounded by people, utterly alone, listening to his own dead heart beat for a girl who could not possibly be Elise.
- Writer
