“What are you doing?” Johnny asked. He was clearly annoyed. “We heard crashing coming from up here and thought it was someone breaking in or kidnapping someone. Jesus, you guys.”

  “Oh. Sorry,” Blair said as she joined Leif in looking down at Johnny. “That was me. I uh, got a little carried away.”

  “Why do you have a knife and salt?” Leif asked.

  “Knife for if it was a human, salt for if it was paranormal,” he said, as though it was obvious. “Anyways, I’m going to tell the others that you’re fine. Don’t do shit like that. We’re all on edge enough as it is.”

  Leif watched Johnny head back down the hallway, before turning to look at Blair.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” Blair said. Her cheeks were tinted red. “I’m sorry if I scared you.”

  Leif shook her head. “You didn’t scare me,” she said. She wasn’t sure why, but she suddenly felt the need to elaborate. “My mom’s a history professor. You looked like a Valkyrie.”

  Blair looked away, a little shower of dust loosening itself from her hair. “I could never be a Valkyrie. I’m not brave enough.”

  Leif reached out to grab Blair’s hand before she could really think about it and stop herself. “I think you’re incredibly brave,” she said. Blair blinked, and her long lashes and big eyes were suddenly all that Leif could see. That and the blush that tinted her cheeks. “You’ve made it through a lot of horrible things, Blair. That’s incredibly brave.”

  “But I’ve been so scared,” Blair admitted, her eyes growing wet around the rims.

  “My mom always says that bravery isn’t about not feeling fear. It’s about feeling afraid but doing it anyways. Existing and fighting even when things are hard,” Leif told her. “Which I think we’re both doing.”

  Leif let Blair’s hand go, despite how she wanted to hold it longer. Blair smiled at her, and it seemed to cast such a bright light through the darkened room that Leif felt dazzled.

  “I think I’d like your mom,” Blair said. “She seems cool.”

  “She is,” Leif replied. She shook her head a little to try to clear it, as Blair kicked a stray piece of the radio out of the way.

  “I’m going to go apologize to everyone for the noise,” Blair said. “You coming with me?”

  “Sure,” Leif said. She was suddenly very aware of the darkened corners of the attic. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Eight

  Voice Memo 38

  Abe is…he’s gone. He’s dead. Someone killed him—God. This can’t be happening. I can’t—I can’t. (sobbing)

  July 16, Masonville

  Blair was exhausted. Outside the sun was high in the sky, but all she wanted to do was sleep. Still, she apologized again to the group before she and Leif retreated to the hallway again.

  “Do you want to come up to my room?” Leif asked. “It’s a little quieter and we can chat without Johnny, like, bursting in and screaming about something.”

  Blair felt her face warming, which was just silly. She was an adult! And hanging out in someone’s room with them didn’t mean anything. It was just a more comfortable space.

  “Sure,” she said, aiming for a bright and casual tone. She wasn’t sure she’d hit her mark, but Leif just smiled at her and headed up the stairs. Blair did her best not to stare at Leif’s ass, but she was only human.

  When they arrived, Leif opened the door and gestured Blair inside with a little flourish. God she was cute. Blair felt so fucking guilty, noticing that. Abe was dead. Two others were dead too. They were trapped in this hellish town, and here she was being attracted to another woman like a kid with a crush.

  “I used to call this the death room,” Leif told her. “But that was freaking me out. So welcome to the fox room!”

  Blair’s eyes were immediately drawn to the large painting above the bed. The fox was being ripped into pieces. She closed the door behind her, hoping that Leif wouldn’t read into it. She just thought some privacy might be nice. That was all.

  “Why not the hunting room, or the hound room?” Blair asked. She watched Leif saunter over to the bed and throw herself down on it. Oh boy, she was so pretty and so very on a bed. And that was inappropriate to think about. But what else was there to think about? The brutal murder of one of her best friends?

  “I felt for the fox more,” Leif said with a little laugh.

  Blair swallowed and forced her legs to work. To carry her forward toward the bed. She sat, and then figured to hell with it, and scooted up to lie beside Leif with a few inches between them.

  Leif turned her head to look at her. Her blonde hair fell in such a lovely way to frame her face. Her blue streak was fading into a blueish green, and it looked beautiful next to her green eyes.

  “My brother’s favorite animal used to be a fox,” she said. “So, I’m rooting for the fox in the painting.”

  “You have a brother?” Blair asked.

  Leif nodded. “I had a brother, yeah. I was six when he died,” Leif said. “He was my mom’s first kid, before she met my dad. He was only fourteen. He was crossing the street, and there was a drunk driver.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Blair said. To have such a tragedy in her past, Leif must have gone through so much. Blair wasn’t on speaking terms with her siblings, and that hurt enough. But they were still alive. She couldn’t imagine how much pain Leif had gone through. “That’s awful.”

  “Yeah. That wasn’t the last time we spoke, though,” Leif said. Blair tilted her head in question and Leif took a deep breath.

  “When I was seven, Erik sat with me in the backyard and told me how the car hit him. He said he was only scared for a minute or so before everything went calm. He said the man who hit him tries not to drink anymore. He says sorry to Erik every day when he prays. He told me he was happy. That I had to wait, for a long, long time, but one day he’d show me around. I asked him where, and he just smiled. And then Mom called me, and when I looked back, he was gone.”

  Blair felt goosebumps rise on her arms. Leif told her story with such conviction, and despite the fact that it was a firsthand account with no evidence to support it, Blair believed her.

  “We sat and talked for three minutes straight, Blair,” Leif said. She was crying for real now, and Blair desperately wanted to comfort her, but she wasn’t sure how. Tentatively she reached out and grabbed Leif’s hand.

  “I know because Mom had given me three more minutes to play before dinner was ready.” Leif laughed. The sound was a little bit wet, and definitely nowhere near her normal chime-like laugh. “No one ever believed me, so I stopped telling people.”

  “I believe you,” Blair said. Leif looked at her, surprised, so Blair continued. “Some of the things I’ve heard in my studies, they don’t seem possible. But they happen, time and time again. People see ghosts. People experience the paranormal all the time. It’s like if you showed someone from ancient times a microscope. They likely wouldn’t believe that the microbes they were seeing were actually little tiny organisms. But they are. It’s like that with ghosts. As one of my favorite professors, Dr. Edmond, used to say, we just don’t have the right microscopes yet.”

  “You somehow always manage to make ghost hunting sound nerdier than it already is,” Leif said. Blair shrugged, feeling a little bit sheepish. “I like it, though,” Leif continued. “You’re really smart, Blair. That’s a good thing.”

  For some reason that made Blair’s heart rate pick up, and she felt her face heating under Leif’s gaze.

  “Yeah, I know,” Blair said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “You’re smart too.”

  “Thank you,” Leif said. Leif looked away, her eyes trained on the blanket on her bed. “And thank you for believing me. Sometimes I’m scared that I don’t even believe myself.”

  Blair nodded. “I understand. That’s why I do this research. I need to find evidence. I believe, but I don’t know if that’s enough.”

  Blair sighed. She felt bone-tired, and talking about her family was never nice, but Leif had shared so she felt like she should share too. And besides, it didn’t feel bad to share back, even if the subject matter left her feeling wrung out. “My family is religious. Like, really religious,” she said, pushing her glasses back up her nose. “Christian. Of the non-accepting variety. When they found out I was gay, well, it didn’t go well.”

  “I’m sorry,” Leif said. She sounded so sincere. It was sweet. Blair appreciated it, especially since the story always got harder to tell before it got to the nice part.

  “I believed all my life in what they told me,” Blair went on as she fiddled with one of the rings on her fingers. “God and Jesus were my whole existence. And then when I fell for a girl in my class, my parents started to push me away.” Blair felt tears threatening, and blinked, trying to will them away. She always said that she was finished crying over her parents, but it never really got easier, remembering how they’d gone from praising her to keeping her at arm’s length. The conversations that cut off abruptly when she entered the room. The way that even her siblings had started to treat her like an outcast.

  “I just wanted some acceptance. I wanted someone to tell me that what I felt was normal. Instead, I got dragged to church. They took me up to the altar, in front of the whole congregation, and had the priest try to pray the gay away,” Blair said. Leif looked horrified, and Blair felt momentarily better. It was nice to have someone who understood how horrible it’d been. “I was twelve. The whole church rushed forward to put their hands on me. To heal me.”

  “Holy shit,” Leif said quietly. “That’s so fucked up.”

  “Yeah,” Blair said. “I moved to my aunt’s house the next week. She took me in as soon as she heard. My parents didn’t even fight to keep me. That’s what blind faith did.”

  Leif reached out to comfort Blair this time. She placed her hand on the back of Blair’s, and in a fit of boldness Blair flipped her hand so that they could entwine their fingers. The inches between them on the bed were shrinking. They were pretty much skin to skin now. Blair felt warmed through, and it had nothing to do with the heat of the day.

  “My friends all heard what happened. All of them stopped talking to me, except for my best friend Hafsah. They abandoned me just like my parents and siblings did. So now I’m a scientist. I don’t know if I believe in a god, or goddess, or whatever. But I believe that when I look into a microscope, the wonders revealed to me will always be there, swimming around in front of my eyes. Microorganisms exist. They’re a fact. I guess I just really want the paranormal to be seen as a fact too. I want to know for sure that there’s something else out there.”

  “I get that,” Leif said. “I really, really do.”

  Blair nodded, but then she wasn’t sure what else to say. The silence between them wasn’t necessarily uncomfortable, but there was a tension there. Like the air was thick with the possibilities of what they might say or do next.

  “I miss my dog,” Leif said after a moment, filling the silence.

  Blair grinned, feeling a little bit less stuck in the past now that the subject had changed. “You have a dog?”

  “Yeah! She’s a Brittany. I named her Britney with an ey,” Leif said.

  Blair laughed, probably harder than she should have. But Leif was funny, and laughing after all of the crying she’d been doing felt good. Refreshing.

  “I know, not the most creative,” Leif said. She was smiling though, and didn’t seem at all offended by Blair’s overzealous laughter.

  “I don’t know. I think you’re fascinating,” Blair said.

  Leif huffed a laugh. “Sounds to me like that’s a code for weird.”

  “No,” Blair protested. “I think you’re clever. And like mischief. Naming your Brittany Britney is fun and on the nose. I like it.”

  Leif looked incredibly pleased by that. It was kind of fun, making her smile. Way more fun than antagonizing her.

  “Thanks. I can’t wait for you to meet her. She’s very sweet. Full of energy too. I don’t bring her ghost hunting, though, because she’s a coward. She’s scared of the dark.”

  Blair laughed. “That’s so cute, oh my gosh.” She felt warm and happy at the thought of Leif wanting to introduce her to her dog. It was sweet. It meant that Leif wanted to keep her in her life. That was astounding to think about, given that just a few days ago neither of them could stand the other.

  They lapsed into a comfortable silence. Blair was suddenly keenly aware of how little space was left between them on the bed. Leif looked at her with an expression that made Blair’s stomach flip. It almost looked like she was going to kiss her.

  Blair leaned in, just slightly. Leif leaned in too. They were so close to each other. All it would take was to close the rest of the space and—

  A loud bang startled them both apart.

  “What was that?”

  “Ah, fuck,” came Johnny’s voice from somewhere in the house. “Sorry, everyone, dropped a damn bronze bust.”

  Blair burst out laughing.

  “Why was he even touching that?” Leif said, sounding halfway exasperated, halfway fond.

  “No phones to pass the time?” Blair guessed. “We all gotta keep ourselves occupied somehow.”

  “Right,” Leif agreed. “I, um, I have an idea. Of how we could pass time together.”

  “Oh?” Blair said.

  Leif leaned in, purposefully this time. “I’d like to kiss you,” she said. “Would that be all right?”

  Blair nodded eagerly. “Yes,” she said. “That would be very all right.”

  The kiss sent little sparks through Blair, as though Leif’s lips were live wires. She shivered, and when the kiss ended it was Blair who leaned back in for more. Leif made a cute little sound of surprise against her lips, then kissed her back.

  Leif cupped Blair’s cheek in her hand as they kissed. It was such a sweet and intimate gesture that for a moment the pain in Blair’s soul eased slightly.

  “That was nice,” Leif said, sounding a little breathless.

  “Mm-hmm,” Blair said. “Very.”

  They existed together in comfortable silence. It was nice. It felt almost normal, despite the situation they were all in. A stolen moment of peace amidst the tragedy that surrounded them. It was better to think of it that way than to compare herself to lovestruck heroines who proved useless against the threat facing them, like in that novel she’d read. She would fight tooth and nail to keep everyone left safe. She didn’t need some knight to do it for her.

  When Blair finally turned back to look at her, she found that Leif was fast asleep. Blair grinned. She was cute when she was sleeping. God, she was cute when she was awake too. Blair didn’t know what to do with herself. She had spent so much time thinking of Leif as someone to dislike, it felt strange to admit that she was starting to like her quite a bit.

  Blair rolled over, just looking at Leif’s sleeping face. She felt her eyes closing. She was exhausted. Maybe she’d just slip her glasses off and rest for a minute longer. Just a little nap. Then she’d go. She didn’t want to be presumptuous just because Leif had fallen asleep.

  She’d just close her eyes for a minute. That was all. Then she’d go back downstairs. Gen would worry if she disappeared. Just a little snooze would be enough.

  It was to the strangely soothing sound of Leif snoring that Blair fell asleep.

  When she awoke, it was to Abe at the door. He was half obscured in the shadow of the hallway. What was he doing out there?

  It took her sluggish brain a few seconds before it clicked that it couldn’t be Abe. It would never be Abe again.

  She shot up in bed, scrambling to find her glasses. She put them on with trembling hands, but the shadow in the doorway was gone. She blinked a few times to focus her eyes, but the doorway remained empty.

  “Blair?” Leif mumbled. She was still half asleep. Blair was unfortunately very awake now.

  “It’s nothing,” Blair told her. “Just a dream.”

  Leif seemed to accept that, as she soon began snoring again. Blair put a hand to her heart and felt it beating hard. It had to have been a dream.

  Except for the fact that the door was open. The door that she remembered closing earlier.

  She stood, walking as quietly as she could across the creaking floor boards to the doorway. No one was in the hallway. She let out a heavy sigh and closed the door. She was being silly. Unless…unless someone had opened the door and seen her wake up. They’d have had time to run down the hallway while she was trying to get her glasses on. Had she heard footsteps? She couldn’t be sure.

  She made her way back to bed, unease crawling under her skin. As she wrapped her arms around Leif she tried to take comfort in having another person near her, but it didn’t feel all that comforting. Leif was in just as much danger here as she was.

  With shaking hands, she woke Leif up.

  * * *

  Leif woke up to the sight of Blair’s face, creased with worry. “What happened?” she asked. She sat up so fast that her head started spinning.

  “Your door was open,” Blair replied. “I thought I saw someone. In the hallway.”

  Leif felt her stomach drop. “That’s not the first time my door has been opened.”

  Blair looked at her quizzically. “This has happened before?”

  “Yes. Only once. I thought it was a fluke, or that maybe the door is prone to opening. But I don’t know. It seems to close just fine, and it’s stayed shut loads of times.”

  Blair nodded. “Okay. Maybe it was just one of our friends, and they didn’t expect me to be in here?”

  “Let’s go ask,” Leif said. Something about it didn’t feel right.

 

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