Page 21 of Ghoul Me, Maybe

ELIAS

I don’t remember hitting the sand.

I just remember falling .

Not through air.

Through everything .

Light bends around me. Sound forgets how to exist. My thoughts scatter like ashes in wind I can’t feel. The relic’s gone. The tether’s cut. And I’m slipping fast.

But something holds.

Not tightly. Not kindly.

More like fingers in the dark, digging in, refusing to let go.

A voice pulls me back.

Not hers.

Older. Rougher.

Lyle.

“—he’s not completely gone,” he says. “His signature’s tangled up in hers. We still have a shot.”

Mira answers, sharp. “We don’t have time. If the binding cracks completely?—”

“It won’t,” he cuts in. “I’m not letting it.”

I want to speak.

But my mouth’s smoke.

When I come back, I’m on Mira’s floor. Salt lines every corner of the room. Candles burn low, wax dripping in perfect, deliberate circles. There’s a chalk pattern around me—a tight labyrinth of fae runes and elder glyphs. Some pulse like living things.

Mira kneels beside me, her face drawn, shadows under her eyes. Her hands hover inches from my chest, palms shaking.

“Sienna?” I rasp.

“Still breathing,” she says. “Barely slept since the wreck. She’s upstairs. You—” Her voice catches. “You weren’t.”

I sit up slowly.

Wrong move.

The room tilts, bends inward. My limbs pass through the air like they’re wading through molasses.

“What... is this?”

Lyle steps out of the shadows. His clothes are rumpled, his long hair tied back haphazardly, glasses cracked. He looks like he’s been living off fumes and spite.

“We anchored you,” he says. “To her.”

“What?”

“You were slipping. Sienna kept you here—pure will. But that only goes so far. We had to do more.”

Mira wipes her face with the back of her hand. “We bound your spectral essence to her energy field. Old ritual. Half-druidic. Half-stupid.”

“It worked,” Lyle mutters, “but barely.”

I stare down at my hands. They’re whole—sort of. Solid enough . But the edges flicker. I don’t cast a shadow. My skin doesn’t warm. I’m a photocopy of myself.

“How long?”

Mira’s voice is tired. “A day. Maybe two. Unless we reinforce it again.”

Lyle snorts. “Or unless we find the relic and use it to stabilize your tether properly.”

I drag a hand through my hair, fingers slipping through it like mist.

“So I’m on borrowed time.”

“You’ve been on borrowed time,” Mira snaps. “This is just... more expensive.”

I push up off the floor, barely staying upright. “Where is she?”

“Elias—”

“Where is she?”

Lyle nods toward the stairs. “Haven’t let her out of our sight. She nearly walked into the surf again last night.”

I don’t wait.

My feet don’t make noise on the steps.

Upstairs, the room is small, warm, full of candlelight and exhaustion. Sienna’s curled on the bed, still wearing the same salt-stained hoodie from the wreck. She’s pale, bruised, asleep.

And even in sleep— hurting.

I sink down beside her.

She stirs instantly, eyes flying open. The second they land on me, she gasps.

“ Elias? ”

I reach for her.

Our fingers touch.

It’s not solid.

But it’s there .

Her lip trembles. “They said... they said you were gone.”

“I was.”

She grabs my face like she’s anchoring me now. “Don’t you ever do that again.”

“I didn’t exactly schedule it.”

She exhales, head against my chest. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Good,” I whisper. “It means you care.”

She punches my shoulder—soft, shaky. “I care so much it hurts, you idiot.”

I lean into her warmth.

I can’t feel her pulse.

But I remember it.

Mira and Lyle appear in the doorway.

“We need to start the second circle,” Mira says. “If we wait too long?—”

“I’m not leaving her side,” I say.

“You don’t have to.” Lyle tosses a satchel onto the floor. “We’re doing it here. ”

Sienna looks between us. “What’s the catch?”

Mira starts unpacking stones, twine, a mirror splinter, and three vials of her own blood.

Lyle says it flatly: “If it fails, Elias disappears. And Mira and I probably don’t walk away whole either.”

Sienna bolts upright. “ What?! No. Absolutely not?—”

“I’d rather die doing something that matters,” Mira mutters, sketching the circle.

Lyle shrugs. “Ditto.”

“Then we do it now,” I say.

They nod.

The room goes still.

Then the spell begins.

The air tastes like iron.

Sienna sits beside me, her knees drawn up, hair wild from wind and sweat, watching as Mira scrawls the last glyph in blood across the floorboards. Lyle lights the final candle, his hands shaking from spellshock.

The circle hums.

So does the world.

Outside, the wind rises, dragging mist in tight, lashing coils against the windows.

Something’s thinning.

Something ancient.

Sienna jerks suddenly—like a string in her chest’s been pulled hard.

Her eyes widen. “The moon,” she whispers. “ It’s almost full. ”

Lyle glances up. “Yeah. So?”

Her voice turns sharp. Urgent. “No—listen. The veil’s thinning. That’s why the relic’s pulsing louder. It’s not just memory—it’s a door.”

A beat.

Then Mira swears under her breath. “She’s right.”

I lean forward. “What door?”

Sienna looks at me. And I see the truth hit her as she says it.

“It’s a bridge. Between realms. The relic’s not just a binding tool—it’s a key. And Grey doesn’t want to control it... He wants to open it.”

I go still.

Lyle mutters, “Open what?”

“Whatever the fae buried,” Mira answers darkly. “And if they buried it, it wasn’t meant to be found.”

Sienna grabs my hand, eyes locked on mine. “We have to get it back. Before the moon hits full.”

“You can barely stand,” I say.

“I’ll crawl if I have to.”

Outside, the sea howls like it heard her.

The veil isn’t just thinning.

It’s watching.

And time is running out.