Page 76 of Where the Roses Bloom

Butthen I heard it.

A softclick. The sound of something small shifting on porcelain.

From the bathroom.

I crossed the hallway, each step slower than the last. The door was halfway open, the light already on.

I hadn’t left it that way.

And there, on the edge of the sink, sat Willow’s hairbrush.

Not tossed like she usually leaves it—half-hanging off the counter, caught in a tangle of shed strands. No, this was placed. Centered. Clean.

No hair in it at all.

The kind of careful, sterile neatness that made my stomach twist.

She doesn’t leave it like that.

Sheneverleaves it like that.

I stepped inside, hand brushing the light switch, though the overhead fixture was already buzzing dim and yellow. The mirror was fogged over like someone had just gotten out of the shower, and my own silhouette managed to spook me a little.

Or…wait.

That wasn’t my silhouette.

I stood stock still, watching the figure in the mirror. It was so foggy that I couldn’t quite see…but it didn’t move with me. Not exactly. It wasn’t shaped like me. I leaned a little closer, torn between running or taking this thing on.

“Grandma Hazel?” I murmured. “That ain’t you, is it?”

The mirror didn’t respond. Of course it didn’t—because it was a goddamn mirror and I was a paranoid asshole, and I was gettin’ more superstitious by the day?—

“MINE.”

I jerked backward from that harsh, otherworldly whisper, stumbling until I bumped into the door. Fuck me…it was shut. I hadn’t shut it.

The fog was already fading, slow and streaky, as if it wasbeing drawn back into the glass. The shape dissolved with it. Just steam now. Just a mirror. Just me, pale and shaking and barefoot in my own damn house.

I yanked the door open and stepped out fast, but I didn’t run. I stood there in the hallway, jaw clenched so tight it ached.

I didn’t believe in ghosts.

Not really.

But I believed in this: in memory, in violence that stains places and people, in the way a man like Carter could haunt someone without ever setting foot in their house again.

I stared back through the doorway.

And I said it, low and furious.

“She ain’t yours.”

My voice shook. I felt like a fuckin’ lunatic. I didn’t care.

“You don’t get to come back here and make her feel small. You don’t get to twist what she’s buildin’ with your bullshit echoes and your creepy little games.”

I stepped back into the bathroom—just far enough to make sure the mirror heard me.