“SOPHIE, IS THAT YOU?” I’m nearly yelling, my voice frayed at the edges. At first, I’d called out asking who the hell was in my house. But I know Sophie came in here. She’s in here. Isn’t she? Yes. She’s the only thing in here. The only thing.

Yet she’s not. I’m lying to myself, joining my delusions on a precipice of darkness. Soon, I’m going to step over the side, fall downward, and be done with all of this. Maybe I’ll take that final footfall today.

“Sophie?” I question again, this time my voice hovering below normal pitch. I’m fighting back the tremors that want to course through my body.

It is not Sophie that comes into view first as I exit the kitchen into the formal dining room. It is not Sophie’s pale skin and copper hair that catches my eyes by the light of the chandelier. As if drawn by a magnetic force, I see her first. The daydream. The illusion. The woman who first embraced my body as if it were unbroken and satisfying.

Her hair is not the blackened sadness of the ghostly figure I have glimpsed in this house. It is auburn. If Sophie’s hair is summer sunlight, then this woman’s hair is a riot of autumn, as the leaves are changing and a chill has filled the air. Just enough for a light sweater. Just enough for cocoa and cuddling.

She looks at me, her eyes wide and warring between fear and exhilaration.

“You can see me.” It is not a question, but a whisper that floats form her lips to my ears.

“I’ve seen you before. Doesn’t mean you’re real.” My own whisper is hoarse and disbelieving.

“I am real.”

“Marie.” I say her name and it feels so right. “You had black hair before.”

“Things change,” she says.

“They damn sure do.” A grin nearly makes it to my lips; I stop it before the expression takes full control of my mouth. I still have to be careful... it could still be in my head. God, no fucking way this is all in my head. It’s not possible.  

While we’ve had our exchange, Sophie has stood dumbstruck in the middle of the room. She’s soft now, not the hard-faced woman that marched in here.

“Um... do you know one another?” Her arms cross over her chest and her right foot taps nervously. When neither Marie or I answer immediately, she speaks again. “Spencer, what’s going on?” She flicks a glance at Marie and then back at me again.

“She’s...” God, what do I say? I thought I dreamed her up, but you can see her too. And she looks real. And she felt so real when we... “I met her before I met you, but then she disappeared.”

“She disappeared?” Sophie bites her bottom lip, worries at it for a moment. “And now she’s back. Shit, is this one of those ‘she left me, I grief-screwed another woman, but now she’s back’ situations? Cause I’ve been there, done that and I was really hoping to avoid a repeat.”

“No, it’s not like that,” I hold up my hands pleadingly and walk towards Sophie. I don’t want to hurt her, not when she’s made me feel so good for the first time in so long. What I feel for Marie is more complicated, harder to understand. That makes it easier to choose. “She’s not real. Not in that way. Not the way it is with you. You’re real, Sophie. I need real.”

“I am real.” Marie protests. She moves like she’s going to walk towards us, but something holds her back. She seems to be struggling, pushing her body forward hard against some unseen barrier. “I. Am. Real.” She says again, lifting her hands and pressing her palms toward me. The skin wrinkles as if it is actually pushing up on something, like glass so clear I cannot see it.

“Spencer, I need you, too.” Sophie is saying, walking the few feet between us so that we’re so close I can smell her, the aphrodisiac of sex and acceptance.

I look at her, the scent drawing me, but in seconds I am looking at Marie again. So torn. So broken. Marie’s mouth is still moving, but no words are coming out. Sophie lifts up on tip toes, her mouth reaching for mine. Something is wrong with Marie. Her face is beginning to lose color. Her autumn-rich hair is fading. I see death in her expression. I see the battlefields. I see Jace.

Jace.

A figure flickers to life behind Marie. Jace.

“Jace?” Only one syllable, but it’s filled with so much pain. It seeps from between my lips.

He’s yelling, his mouth contorting, but I hear nothing. I can only lip read one word. ‘Enemy’. Does he mean Marie?

“Spencer, do you choose me?” Sophie’s lips hover so close to me. I want to ignore everything and sink into her, sink into the way she made me feel in the camper. “Spencer?”

“Sophie, I can’t think. I can’t.” I stumble away from her, to the nearest wall, and I brace against it. Pounding batters my brain. I can’t tell if it’s my heart beat or the mortars they’re lobbing at us. Shell shock.

Jace?

“Spencer, do you choose me?” Sophie’s voice is more intense, pressing. She wants an answer, wants it like she wants air and food and life. I can feel the urgency. It’s the way a guy used to feel when he was bleeding out, when the end was obviously coming, but he wasn’t ready to march into that unseen purgatory. “Do you choose me?” The hardness is back, the side of Sophie I glimpsed in the camper.

Darkness swims in her eyes. Lines form around her lips. She’s smiling, but she’s not... There’s something...

My eyes flick to Marie and Jace again.

Marie is the color of ash, her hair has blackened, her eyes have blackened, her mouth no longer moves. Life has been sucked from her. Her palms still press against the barrier though. I push Sophie aside, something possessing me, pushing me to the wall that shouldn’t exist.

Jace is still yelling. He’s held his ground, several feet behind the woman who is... what? Fading away before my very eyes?

I detour a few feet to a folding wood chair I’ve had leaned against the wall ever since I got here. There’s no table, I eat in my camper anyway, but now that chair is here for this reason.

I grab it and lift it above my head as I move towards Marie. “Move,” I yell.

She scurries away, her back pressing against Jace, who spreads outwards like smoke disturbed by wind before reforming into his own shape a few feet to the right.

The wood slams into the invisible blockade. Splinters and shattered glass flood the house; the shattering is joined by that haunting sound of crows cawing in unison.

Prismatic shards catch light from the chandelier and send stars dancing across the walls and ceiling. A breeze rushes through the space around me and it carries floral notes so heady that dizziness threatens.

Hands wrap around my middle while my brain spins. Even from the short time I’ve known her, I can tell it’s Sophie’s embrace.

“You had another episode, Spencer. Come back to me.”

I set the chair on the ground and frown at her. “Did I?”

“Choose me, Spencer.” Her voice is delicate and clean. Ethereal. “Choose me. I’m right here. I’m the only thing here.”

But she isn’t.

Marie is here, too. I can feel her.

The disorientation fades, and my vision separates the twinkling lights from the busted wall shards from the area where Jace and Marie were standing only moments ago. They’re gone. They were never there.

“Spencer, I’m real. I’m here. Choose me.” Sophie’s grip tightens. “You’re okay. Everything’s okay. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not there. It’s in your head, Spencer.”

I shake my head hard and pull away from her. Did I make all of this up? Is the floor even littered with glass? I look down.

No, that’s still there.

The stars still dance.

And Sophie had seen the woman also. She’d asked about her.

I turn around, my eyes boring into the beautiful ginger-haired woman that had made me feel whole again. She is smiling sweetly, but her expression dies at the eyes. That darkness is there, like a blackened fog roiling across a moor.

“It’s not in my head,” I say, and every molecule of my body is absolutely certain. “It’s not in my head. Not this time.”

The smile on Sophie’s face fades, wiped away quickly and without hesitation. “Stupid little man. You just couldn’t hold onto your crazy a while longer, could you?” Her right hand snakes into her pocket and she pulls out a small satchel embossed with a strange, archaic-looking symbol. “Now, we can do this the hard way.”

“Leave him alone!” Marie’s voice pushes out of nothingness. I turn around and see the ghoulish outline of her. The only thing that is fully-formed is her hand reaching for me.

“You should have left him alone. Thinking he was going to save you, break my spell. My spell. You are as stupid in death as you were in life. His blood will be on your hands. And that is proof that you are no better than your murderous mother who sold you to pay the price on her head.”

“Sophie, what the hell are you doing?” Confusion, like the shining lights, rockets through my brain.

“Sophie isn’t here right now.” She smiles and speaks a few words I do not understand. The satchel in her hand begins to glow with red light. She undoes the tie and reaches in with two fingers. It takes me a moment to understand what she’s extracted. A bone. A tiny, glowing bone. “God, I’ve been aching for this. So many years at half power, jumping from pitiful body to pitiful body. Always tethered here, always unable to be completely me again. I didn’t expect that when I cast the spell. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“You are linked to me.” Marie’s voice sounds again, stronger now. I look, and she is materializing inch by inch, arm joining hand, shoulder joining arm.

Sophie gives a shrug. “Not my finest hour.”

“I don’t understand.” I move, placing myself between Sophie—or the thing wearing Sophie’s body—and Marie. Jace isn’t here. I want him here. I need my brother-in-arms. I need my fucking pills, because this is all batshit crazy.

“Of course you don’t,” Sophie spits, “this is above your pay grade, solider boy. So shut up, sit down, and let me torture the little bitch.”

She’s still holding the bone. It’s an innocuous thing, so unimportant. The red glow is ominous, but it’s still so small, so insignificant.

Until Sophie snaps it between two fingers and Marie falls to the ground screaming, her leg bent at an awkward, painful-looking angle.

I’m seeing this. It’s all real. And she must be real... because you can’t break a fucking ghost’s leg.

I stumble backwards, hands going to grip my hair roughly, yank at the strands—like it’s going to wake me up from the nightmare around me. It’s futile, as futile as pissing into the wind, because I’ve already admitted to the reality of what’s happening. And once you do that, there’s no damn way back to illusion.

Marie is trying to move, trying to crawl, and all I can do is back away and yell.

“Leave her alone!”