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CHAPTER TWELVE

WILLIAM

A hundred years of haunting SilverGate Academy has taught me patience, but watching Isolde Morvoren fumble with spell components is testing the limits of my ghostly tolerance. She’s beautiful when she’s concentrating—brow furrowed, lips pressed into a determined line, dark hair falling across her face as she concentrates.

I hover near the ceiling, observing her from above. She can’t see me yet, of course. No one can. Except at random times that I have no control over. Even then, it’s merely a fleeting, terrifying glimpse that sends most creatures scurrying away in fear. But she’ll see me soon if this spell works, and the anticipation makes my spectral form flicker with nervousness. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. I’m not sure if this is fate or just my lucky day, but this vampire has not only seen my attempt to contact her, but now she is trying to contact me. I can’t hold on to the hope that it will work. I’ve waited too long for this.

“Blood of the forsaken,” she murmurs, carefully uncorking the vial containing the fallen angel’s blood. The irony isn’t lost on me. She fears I’m threatening her life, when all I’ve been trying to do is solve the mystery surrounding my death.

WILL DIED.

That’s what I was attempting to write on her window before my energy dissipated. My name and fate. Not WILL DIE. I never intended to frighten her, but communication is damnably difficult in my state.

I drift lower, circling her. Her defensive magic shimmers in the air around her. It’s a field of energy that’s remarkably potent for one so young. She’s special, this vampire. I knew it the moment she was assigned to this room. My room.

For a century, I’ve haunted these quarters, watching students come and go. Most stay for a term or two before requesting transfers, unnerved by the cold spots, the whispers, the occasional book that flies across the room when my frustration gets the better of me. Not a single one of them thought to do a reveal spell or find out what was going on around them. So focused on their own little lives, that mine, dead as I am, meant nothing but an inconvenience or something to fear. But Isolde is different. There’s something about her that resonates with my spectral frequency, a connection I haven’t felt since... well, since I was alive.

“Please work,” she whispers.

I wish I could tell her she needn’t fear me. That I’m merely curious about her. The vampire who appeared so suddenly in my domain. That in a hundred years of watching the living, she’s the first to truly capture my attention.

Isolde peers at the book and centres herself to begin the incantation. The ancient language rolls off her tongue with surprising fluency.

The air in the room grows heavy, loaded with magic. I feel it pass through my spectral form like static electricity. It’s not uncomfortable, but decidedly strange. The spell is working, reaching out, seeking the hidden, the concealed, the unseen.

Seeking me.

I move closer, hovering with an anticipation I try to shove down. She’s applied herself admirably to this spell, especially for one with no practical experience. Perhaps she truly is in danger, though not from me. SilverGate has always attracted darkness, drawn the malevolent and power-hungry. I’ve witnessed countless plots unfold within these walls over the decades.

The man who spies on her through the mirror, for instance. Although I doubt that is who she is afraid of. But I can see through his actions that his possessiveness of Isolde borders on obsession .

“By veils torn and shadows burned, reveal what eyes cannot discern,” Isolde chants in Latin, her voice almost a command now. “By blood forsaken, freely given, show what darkens where I’m living.”

The magic flares with brilliant light, momentarily blinding. When the glow subsides, Isolde lifts the mixture and daubs it on her eyelids.

I wait, my entire being focused on her face. Will it work? Will she see me? A hundred years is a long time to be unseen, unheard, except through cryptic messages and half-formed manifestations.

She blinks rapidly, her eyes adjusting to whatever changes the spell has wrought in her vision. Her gaze sweeps the room, passing over me once, twice...

Then she freezes.

Her eyes widen as they lock onto mine.

“Hello,” I say, the word strange on lips that haven’t formed proper speech in a century. “I see the spell worked.”

She screams, scrambling backwards until she hits the wall. Her hand flies to her mouth, stifling the sound, but her eyes remain fixed on me, wild with fear.

“Please don’t be alarmed,” I continue, maintaining my distance to avoid frightening her further. “I’m William. William Harrington. Former student, current resident ghost, and I assure you, not a threat.”

She lowers her hand slowly, her initial terror giving way to wary curiosity. “You... you threatened me on my window,” she hisses.

I shake my head, offering what I hope is a reassuring smile. “Not a threat, a cut-off message. I was trying to get you to understand that I was murdered. ‘WILL DIED.’ You will forgive my lack of effort. After a hundred years, I got complacent.”

“A hundred years?” she chokes out. “You weren’t threatening me?”

“If I’d wanted to harm you, I’ve had ample opportunity over the past day and night.” I gesture around the room. “This has been my haunt for a century. I’m rather protective of it, actually. I had some good times here before…” I make a slashing motion at my neck.

Her eyes widen further in horror. “Someone slit your throat?”

I blink. “Well, no. I was pushed from the Bell Tower. Forgive me. I was being dramatic.”

Isolde swallows hard, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. “A ghost. So you’re a ghost.”

“That would seem to be the case.”

She almost smiles, which I count as progress. “Why are you haunting my room specifically?”

“It was mine, once,” I explain, drifting a bit closer now that she seems less likely to scream again. “When I was a student here. Before my unfortunate demise.”

“Someone pushed you from the Bell Tower?” she asks, looking through the window at the ominous structure that is positioned in full view. A vista that ironically haunts me.

“Quite.”

“And you don’t know who?”

“Nope.”

“Or why?”

I laugh. “I have my suspicions. Creatures here aren’t exactly innocent.”

“What were you? Before you became a ghost?”

“Now that would be telling.”

“Isn’t it important to the story, though?”

“Clever little squirrel, aren’t you?” I murmur. “This is definitely fate.”

“How so?”

“You are the first person in a hundred years to figure out how to see me.”

“Really?” She scrunches up her nose. “I find that hard to believe.”

“I’m a lot of things, Isolde, but a liar isn’t one of them.”

She gives me a sceptical look. “You think I’m here to help you solve your murder?”

“I have waited too long to think otherwise.”

“I—” she starts, then notices my form fading. “What’s happening?”

“It appears your spell isn’t strong enough to give you access to me full-time, squirrel. Work harder.”

“Wait!” she cries, reaching out as if to grab me, her hand passing through my increasingly insubstantial form. “You can’t just leave! I have questions!”

“Look in the eastern wall,” I manage as my visibility fades to almost nothing. “Third stone from the floor, fourth from the corner. There’s a loose?—”

And then I’m gone, at least to her perception. I’m still here, of course. Always here. Watching. Waiting. But once again invisible to the living, dragged back into the half-existence that has been my fate these hundred years.

I hover near her as she stares at the spot where I vanished, her expression frustrated. She moves towards the eastern wall, running her fingers along the stones, counting under her breath.

“Third from the floor, fourth from the corner,” she mutters, pressing against the indicated stone.

It gives slightly under her touch, and I smile as her eyes widen with surprise. One hundred years, and that loose stone has remained my most reliable hiding place.

As she works the stone free, revealing the small cavity behind it, I drift closer, watching over her shoulder. Inside lies a leather-bound journal, its pages yellowed with age but preserved by the spell I cast on it all those years ago.

My journal. My story. And perhaps, the beginning of her understanding .

She removes it carefully, running her fingers over the embossed initials on the cover: W.H.

“William Harrington,” she whispers, and hearing my name on her lips after a century of silence sends a strange thrill through my spectral form.

She opens the journal, and I watch her face as she reads the first page, my script still clear despite the passage of time:

Property of William Harrington, SilverGate Academy, 1925.

If you are reading this, then the past has come calling once more. And heaven help those caught in its wake.