THE BITCH, SOPHIE, is headed into the house. My house. I didn’t want her in here again. Ever again.

Mother would never let me use those words. But I am her daughter no longer. I never was. I never carried her thirst for blood.

Spencer had been home for hours. With him so close, for so long, my hands became solid. I was able to yank back the drapes to watch that red-haired trollop climb out of Spencer’s living box.

Camper. That’s what he calls it. 

She isn’t what he thinks she is. She’s something different, and I’m not the only one that can tell.

The ravens frightened the workers. I saw them. I felt them gather in the trees, knew when they took flight, and felt their warning vibrate the backyard sassafras trees. I know what called them here. Spencer is a fool, blinded by lust.

Furious, I drop the curtain. My hands are real again. The reminder nearly dissolves my will to confront her. It wasn’t long ago that I wished only to be real... to feel as I once did. I cross my arms, relishing the sensation of almost-flesh against almost-flesh.

Then Spencer came. Our brokenness is different, but the impact is so much the same. It makes us other. We should be other together. Or I should be free.

Let me die.

Or let me live.

“I would be whole.” I whisper the words at the universe that allowed me to be trapped in this place, in the in-between, perpetually punished by the demons my mother conjured in her vile heart. I curse the gods that allowed the foul woman to capture me as her scapegoat.

Spencer is mine. I know his taste, I know his heart. This house gifted him to me. He’s mine. I clench my fists at my side. I took my mother’s punishment. Everything I was has wasted away to this. I hold up my gray hands, throwing supplication into the void that I cannot see beyond.

Take my soul. Threadbare and tattered, take whatever’s left. I will bear the punishment no longer.

I will end this. May grace find me.

Squeezing my eyes closed, I fight against the desire to weep. Hot tears slip out from beneath my lashes. The time for mourning has past. Sorrow has been my bedmate for far too long.

Screaming. So much screaming. A thousand voices. I can hear them coming.

The woman with the ripped out belly croons, “My baby, my baby, you have my baby.”

The man, her accomplice in my torture, bellows, “Give her back the child.” When I don’t answer, he adds, “Or I will rip it from your womb the way you did hers.”

They come to drag me away, but I will not go. I place my hands on my hips, focusing on the world beyond my prison. Sassafras trees turn bright orange every year. The pecans ripen and fall to the ground; the leaves turn yellow soon after. Birds come and go. Life continues while I observe, but no longer.

I refuse.

The voices fade slightly. My toes turn pink. The floor creaks beneath me.

I refuse.

I repeat the words over and over. They’re a spell freeing me from the bonds of the spirit realm. My hands are pink now. In the window, my cheeks begin to color.

I take a step, the boards groan once more. In one hundred eighty years, the floorboards have never complained beneath my weight. Ephemeral creatures have no weight in the real.

The kitchen door slams, and I feel the sensation of her foot on the floor the moment it lands. It wasn’t like that yesterday.

I feel the vibration of her. Of Sophie, but not-Sophie. Something else directs her.

Wind careens around the corners, buffeting my nightgown, slipping through the holes, blowing toward the creature that stepped inside. Dust devils form in the corners, spinning on their own. The house shudders, and I shiver. A kind of recognition tickles my spine, but that can’t be.

Impossible. It can’t be her. I don’t believe it.

I cross the floor, relishing the sounds of a person walking. At the next window, I glance out. Spencer meets my gaze. At the next, the roof man meets mine. I can’t be sure, but I think they both see me.

I keep on. There’s the sound of running and a car leaving. Gravel pelts the front of the house as the last of the workers leave. Physical men scared away by what they do not understand.

The wood grain of the stair railing is smooth beneath my fingers. Perhaps that was her plan all along. The ravens were Sophie’s doing, and she waits for me below.

At the bottom of the stairs, I turned toward the formal dining room. I take a breath, almost tasting the air. The memory of the sweetness seeps through.

I miss life with an ache only the not-dead can know. I wish it to be finished.

In the open space, directly under the crystal chandelier, she floats over the floor. Though faded, her coppery hair floats around her as though she’s suspended in water, her hands outstretched, her eyes glow. She holds her mouth open at an unnatural angle. Darkness obscure her eyes and tongue, pallor has settled in her cheeks. She looks as though her body is topped with a skull.

“Child,” she says. Her lips do not move. “Your exile is not finished. You cannot be made free.” The old voice echoes, moving throughout the room like a breeze. Layers of sound stir the air, made strong by age and time and the dead. I hear the departed in her words.

I come nearer. “But I refuse to bear the punishment any longer. It was never mine to begin with.”

Her eyes flash. “That is not enough to free you from the bonds that hold you here.”

“It’s enough for Spencer.” I lick my lips, remembering the care in his kisses.

She smirks. “It took you one hundred eighty years to figure that out. It’s only you that has made you invisible to all. You prefer transparency. You have always had a frail constitution.”

I smother my gasp, folding in on myself as my intent nearly collapses. The truth of what she says cuts me to the heart. She must not see my weakness. A deep breath soothes the ache in my chest enough to straighten my shoulders.

I lift an eyebrow, even as my chin quivers. “Spencer wished for me every moment he was with you.” Her eyes widen. I’ve struck a nerve. Advance.

“He’ll be mine again,” I say. I don’t care if it’s true or not. I can’t be sure. Yet I won’t back down. Not this time.

She moves back. “He’s mine,” she growls. “You will never be free.”

It’s the clearest sign yet, confirmation of my suspicions. Spencer is the key to my freedom. Her words give me hope. My hands form fists.

“Spencer will choose me.”

“Perhaps.” Her gaze drops to my pink extremities, and my feet that rest flatly on the wood floor. “Perhaps he will not when he learns of your mother and the poison that runs through your veins.”

I grit my teeth to keep from crumbling to the ground.

“Ah, yes,” she croons. “You begin to understand.”

I know this spirit. She trapped me here all those years ago.

To pay for the crimes of the mother, visiting the iniquities of the mother upon the descendants, even unto the third and fourth generations.

Worth so much more than the ilk of her own soul, my mother bargained with the guiltless soul of her daughter. She bargained with mine, assuring that she lived years beyond my entrapment. She exiled me into nothing.

I felt the change in the world when my mother passed. I hoped, for a time, that her death would mean my freedom, but it never came.

“He comes,” Sophie hisses. She settles on the ground, and her hair falls back down around her shoulders. Her eyes brighten, and her skin returns to normal. “We shall see who he chooses, foolish girl.”

And then Sophie scowls. She’s back to her human self. “Excuse me, miss, do you know what happened?” She puts a hand to her forehead. “I need to find Spencer. I’m probably late. I’m afraid I have a gap in my ...” Her voice trails away, but she turns back. “Do I know you?”

I hesitate. On the one hand, I am elated that she can see me. On the other...How can I ask Spencer to love me as though I am real? So broken, he teeters on the edge of sanity. He deserves flesh and blood.

A finch taps on the glass.

“Oh, isn’t that cute?” Sophie clasps her hands.

But it’s out of place. The tiny bird turns her head. It tilts its head one way and then the other as her beady black eye focuses me.

And then I understand.

So long as I am trapped here, Laveau has a hold on this world. She can come and go as often as she likes, stealing the body of any that gives her opportunity. 

I show my teeth. I’ve waited long enough. I have no choice.

The kitchen door slams, and Spencer’s heavy, uneven footsteps draw nearer. “Ghosts be damned. This is my house.” His voice thunders throughout the rooms.

I will save the man I love by dragging him to the edge of insanity. He will see through the thin separation between the real and the world of the dead.

I will ask him to love a ghost. I will ask him to love me. There is no other way.

The reckoning arrives.