Page 29 of Ghoul Me, Maybe

ELIAS

T he ocean sounds different now.

Not quiet. Not really. It’s still got its moods—still snarls during storms and whispers when the moon’s high—but it’s lost the edge it used to carry. Like whatever ghost was snarling through its tides got finally laid to rest.

I know how that feels.

I lean against the porch railing of the house Sienna and I have been rebuilding—her father’s place, now ours.

The wood smells clean. New. It’s not done yet, not by a long shot.

The roof still leaks on the north side and there’s this one window in the back that sticks like hell. But it’s holding. Just like us.

Behind me, there’s the clatter of dishes, the low hum of Sienna’s voice singing off-key to an old record playing in the kitchen. She’s been in there baking again. Something that smells like cinnamon and rebellion.

I take a long breath. Let it fill my chest. Human breath. Real. Warm.

It still knocks me off balance, sometimes. Waking up with a heartbeat. Getting tired. Being hungry. It’s like the whole world is louder now. Every breeze. Every heartbeat. Every time she looks at me as if I’m more than a myth.

And somehow, the town’s starting to see it too.

The first time we stepped back into town after the blood moon, I expected pitchforks. Or, at the very least, whispers behind closed doors. I still get a few stares—the kind that say that’s the guy who fought a demon at the wreck and didn’t die. And yeah, okay, fair.

But it wasn’t like that.

The real shift came when we walked into the Seabreak Café two weeks ago. Sienna tugged me by the hand—confident on the outside, but her fingers were tight with nerves—and slid into a booth like she had something to prove.

When the waitress came over, it wasn’t the usual stiff smile or sideways glance. Just a plate of biscuits, two mugs of coffee, and a soft, “Good to see you back, hon.”

That was the beginning.

Since then, it’s been… slow. Uneven. But different. Real.

The grocery clerk doesn’t fumble the scanner when I show up. The mechanic down the road offered to patch the bumper on Sienna’s car— again —without charging. Even old Marla from the bookshop stopped glaring long enough to ask Sienna if she’d start restocking her dad’s mystery section.

Hell, last week some teenager asked me if I was the ghost guy. I said no.

I told him ghosts don’t get to feel this kind of wind on their face.

And then there’s Mira.

She’s been showing up like clockwork every other morning, arms full of fresh bread or old grimoires, depending on her mood. Sometimes both.

She never apologizes. Not directly. Not for trying to banish me. Not for the screaming match that happened under the sycamore tree when Sienna nearly died.

But she brings Sienna lemon tarts. She asks me if I’m sleeping okay. She shows up, sits on our unfinished porch with her boots up on the railing, and talks about ley lines like they’re sports stats.

And I guess that’s how she says it. Her version of I’m sorry.

I let her. Because I get it.

Because if someone had asked me, before all this, if I’d die to protect Sienna, I’d have said yes in a heartbeat. What Mira did? That was her own twisted version of trying to do the same.

One afternoon, I catch her watching me while I hammer up siding. She’s quiet, which is rare. Then she says, “You’re not fading anymore.”

I look down at my hands. Solid. Calloused. Bruised from dropping a damn toolbox on them last week.

“No,” I say. “Not anymore.”

Mira nods. Like that’s good enough.

And for once, it is.

Evenings are the best.

We sit on the bluff, just above the edge where the sea gets loud. Sienna leans against me, her head on my shoulder, and we don’t talk much. We don’t need to. She curls into me like she’s anchoring herself, and maybe I do the same.

She still has nightmares. Not every night, but often enough. Wakes up gasping, sweating, whispering things like the wreck, the blood, the flame— and I just hold her. Tell her she’s here, she’s whole, she’s safe.

And when I wake up from my own, she does the same.

I’m learning what it means to heal.

Not just to survive. But to stay.

Tonight, we finish painting the last room in the house. It’s a disaster of bad tape lines and splattered jeans, but Sienna looks around like it’s a goddamn cathedral.

“This room’s gonna be your office,” she says, standing back with her hands on her hips. “For writing… or brooding. Whichever you feel like.”

I raise an eyebrow. “What about for kissing you against that wall?”

She pretends to consider. “Acceptable use of space.”

We end up on the floor, covered in paint and each other, laughing into each other’s mouths like the world didn’t almost end.

And for a little while, it feels like it didn’t.

The Collector’s gone. The veil has sealed. The relic’s dust.

The town doesn’t love us, but they’ve stopped fearing us.

And Mira—Mira's here. Often. Eating our food. Yelling at crows. Teaching Sienna enchantments I really don’t want her to know.

The past still clings to us, sure. But it doesn’t own us.

Not anymore.

The sun’s just cracking the horizon when I step barefoot into the sand.

The tide’s pulled back, the sea slick and shimmering like molten glass. My breath fogs in the chill, but it doesn’t bother me. Not anymore. My lungs ache with the cold and the salt, and for once, I’m grateful for the sting.

This stretch of beach used to hold me like a noose—pulling tight around my ribs, reminding me of everything I’d lost. Now it feels like something else.

A promise, maybe.

I walk the shoreline slow, toes sinking into wet sand, gulls screaming overhead like they’ve got gossip to spill. The wind tangles in my hair and pulls at my sleeves, and I let it. I let the world move around me, through me.

Not as a ghost. Not as something cursed or bound or forgotten.

Just as me.

Just as a man in love—with the storm-tongued girl sleeping in our half-built house, who saved me from the wreck I became.

And every morning, I walk this beach to remind myself…

This is real.

This is ours.