I, in the Shadows E-Book

Tori Bovalino

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 389

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

From the author of My Throat an Open Grave and Not Good for Maidens comes a bewitching, passionate tale of the unlikely alliance between a ghost and the girl who moves into a haunted house. Cyrano de Bergerac meets Beetlejuice in this story perfect for fans of supernatural small-town horror, witty ghosts and amateur teenage sleuths.  There's a ghost haunting Drew Tarpin's new room. Liam Orville has been dead for ten months and has no idea how to move on. But the longer he stays, the more likely it is he'll degrade into an energy consuming husk—which Drew is more concerned about than her grades or her inability to make meaningful connections with other students. Drew is everything Liam never was when he was alive, but they do share some common ground: Drew finds herself hopelessly attracted to—and completely tongue-tied around—Hannah Sullivan, who happens to be Liam's former best friend. After a run-in with a ghost-eating monster leaves Drew and Liam desperate for answers, they strike up a deal: In return for Drew investigating why Liam is still around, he'll help her talk to Hannah. But Liam's time is running out, and if Drew doesn't help him move on, he risks becoming a monster himself.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Acknowledgements

About the Author

PRAISE FORI, IN THE SHADOWS

“Bovalino has reeled me in once again with her loving and nuanced character work—two flawed, emotionally complex teenagers trying to make sense of the strange tangle of life, death, and love. She deftly folded all-too-real topics like addiction and complex family dynamics into the otherworldly elements, offering readers a story that is engaging, funny, and bittersweet.”

ERICA WATERS, AUTHOR OFTHE RIVER HAS TEETHANDALL THAT CONSUMES US

"I, In the Shadows made me feel so much! Drew, Liam and Hannah are charming and complicated, and their story is haunting, healing, and imbued with deep emotional truths."

VANESSA LEN, AUTHOR OF THE ONLY A MONSTER SERIES

"I, in the Shadows is a deeply moving exploration of grief and love in all its forms – and I swallowed it whole! Drew and Liam are heartbreakingly compelling, as they try to grapple with the messy aftermath of death. It’s gloriously haunting and human, all at once."

GEORGIA SUMMERS, #1 SUNDAY TIMES-BESTSELLING AUTHOR OFTHE CITY OF STARDUST

“A haunting meditation on loss, guilt, and the ghosts we create from our own desperation.”

KIRKUS

“[I]n this pensive horror novel by Bovalino [...][,] charged romantic chemistry and [...] sparkling banter brighten a sometimes somber narrative that thoughtfully and sensitively addresses issues of grief and loss.”

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

PRAISE FORMY THROAT AN OPEN GRAVE

“Raw, brutal and heartbreaking in turn, Bovalino masterfully weaves deliciously sinister horror with unflinching, complex themes. I am in awe.”

KAT DUNN, AUTHOR OFBITTERTHORN

“A deliciously creepy, haunting exploration of love, hate, and what it means to forgive yourself.”

KATE DYLAN, AUTHOR OFMINDWALKER

“Whimsical, dark, and acutely painful. This is a story that will reach into your soul, pull taut, and make itself at home there.”

M. K. LOBB, AUTHOR OF THE SEVEN FACELESS SAINTS DUOLOGY

“Propulsive, original, and deeply compelling, My Throat an Open Grave whisked me straight into the dark and mysterious realm of the Lord of the Wood, where nothing was quite what I expected. A fascinating blend of folk horror and fairytale, just as I’ve come to expect from the talented Bovalino.”

ERICA WATERS, AUTHOR OFTHE RIVER HAS TEETH

“Sweet as honey and brutal as a knife—Bovalino has crafted a parable of self-forgiveness and community power fearsome enough to drive men and gods, alike, to their knees. If only all vengeance could be so lush.”

GENNAROSE NETHERCOTT, AUTHOR OFTHISTLEFOOT

PRAISE FORNOT GOOD FOR MAIDENS

“With equal measures of terror and tenderness, Tori Bovalino crafts a vivid story as alluring as the taste of goblin fruit.”

LYNDALL CLIPSTONE, AUTHOR OFLAKESEDGEANDFORESTFALL

“A spellbinding dark fantasy of generational magic and mischief. With haunting prose, this riveting tale will hold you captive like the call of the Goblin Market itself.”

ROSIEE THOR, AUTHOR OFFIRE BECOMES HERANDTARNISHED ARE THE STARS

“Even though I know the Goblin Market is full of human body parts, I still wanna visit! Not Good for Maidens was a compelling read and I would love another book set in this world.”

ERICA WATERS, AUTHOR OFTHE RIVER HAS TEETHANDTHE RESTLESS DARK

“A beautifully imagined examination of the bonds that tie sisters, friends, families, and lovers [...] A violent and voluptuous adventure.”

KIRKUS

“Bovalino constantly keeps you wanting more, drawing you into this blood-drenched world where every action has consequences and everything has its price. Her writing is stunning in every way.”

THE NERD DAILY

“Not Good for Maidens is a violent and magical coming of age tale.”

PASTE MAGAZINE

PRAISE FORTHE DEVIL MAKES THREE

“Bovalino delivers an ink-splattered love letter to old books and dark academia. Wicked and sharp as a pen stroke, this is a delight for library goths—me included.”

A. J. HACKWITH, AUTHOR OFTHE LIBRARY OF THE UNWRITTEN

“A glorious, darkly atmospheric journey into the disturbing power of books, ink and the horrors that live inside them.”

TASHA SURI, AUTHOR OFTHE JASMINE THRONE

“A spine-tingling, entrancing read. The Devil Makes Three is the perfect blend of supernatural horror and contemporary gothic, with each page as heart-pounding as the next. Tori Bovalino is an absolute master at atmosphere.”

CHLOE GONG, NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLING AUTHOR OFTHESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS

“A perfect blend of gothic terror, slow-burn romance, and irreverent humor—this novel is a must-read. I loved every page and paragraph of it.”

JOSHUA PHILLIP JOHNSON, AUTHOR OFTHE FOREVER SEA

“Grimoires, demons, and a creepy school library make this dark academia sure to keep readers up at night. I couldn’t put this book down.”

KRISTEN CICCARELLI, INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OFTHE LAST NAMSARA

“Bovalino’s debut crackles. Dripping with dark atmosphere, The Devil Makes Three is perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House. Make sure to read this with the lights on!”

ERIN A. CRAIG, NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLING AUTHOR OFHOUSE OF SALT AND SORROWS

Also by Tori Bovalinoand available from Titan Books

The Devil Makes Three

Not Good for Maidens

My Throat an Open Grave

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I, in the Shadows

Print edition ISBN: 9781835416495

E-book edition ISBN: 9781835416518

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: January 2026

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Tori Bovalino 2026

Published by arrangement with Page Street Publishing Co.

Tori Bovalino asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Not for sale within the United States of America, the Republic of the Philippines and Canada.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

EU RP (for authorities only)eucomply OÜ, Pärnu mnt. 139b-14, 11317 Tallinn, [email protected], [phone]

Designed and typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro by Richard Mason.

For BeccaIn honor of the impossible projectsMay they never find us again <3

CHAPTER 1

The exorcism didn’t work,” I say into the phone, held not-so-securely between my cheek and shoulder as I fumble with my key with one hand and try not to drop the stack of library books teetering in the other. The stack is a mix of things: books on ghosts and ESP, a Bible, a Quran, a Torah, and a beat-up library copy of The Grapes of Wrath.

I’m covering my bases here. And to be clear: The Steinbeck is for English class, not exorcisms. I don’t think this is a problem I can solve with breast milk.

Finding the house key is a problem, but it’s a problem of my own making. My key ring is cluttered with keys to our old house (which probably no longer work); one to my best friend Andie’s house (definitely works, but is approximately eighty miles away); my car key (works, accessible, rarely used); Dad’s office (works, stolen); and Bee’s bakery (works, also stolen).

On the other end of the line, Reece snorts. “I told you it wouldn’t,” they say. I hear a rustle of pages—they’re probably studying. I’m probably interrupting. The last thing they probably want to talk about is ghosts.

“You’re the one who told me to handle it myself,” I grumble.

“Bro, have you ever seen me do an exorcism?”

I drop my keys, groan, and kneel to retrieve them, tipping over the stack of books in the process. At this point, I think it’s brave of me that I don’t curl up on the front porch and give up. It’s one of those days.

“Oh,” Reece says, ignorant to my suffering. “How was the Stats test?”

“NOPE!” I gather up my books, my keys, and finally find the right one. The door creaks ominously as it opens, but that’s not much of an omen when I already know the place is haunted. And possibly cursed.

The sound would tip off Bee and Dad that I’m home, but neither of them are here. If they were, I would not be talking about exorcisms so openly. I would also, unfortunately for all involved, be answering way more questions about the Stats test.

“But the ghost,” I say, redirecting with all my might as I drop my backpack and leave the stack of books on the table in the hall. “Do you know of anything else that will help? That will work?”

“Not an exorcism.”

“Thanks. Genius advice.”

Reece is quiet for a moment. Usually, they’re the one who . . . well, does anything about ghosts. We can both see them. We’ve both always been able to see them. But I prefer to ignore them, whereas Reece has always taken a more hands-on approach.

Unfortunately, due to proximity, there’s no avoiding this particular ghost—and if he does degrade in the way ghosts do, it could lead to a dangerous situation for me if I leave him alone. It’s one of those moments where I feel Reece’s absence keenly.

My sibling has a much stronger understanding of ghosts than I do, and also a much better moral code. Even after . . . well, my entire life, I’m not sure if I’ve mastered the compass points just yet.

I hang my keys on the strip of hooks by the door and make my way to the kitchen, the wooden floorboards creaking with every step. The house itself is really not that old. Our last place was an early nineteenth-century farmhouse. This house is bright, airy, and open-concept downstairs with big rooms and good closets upstairs. It’s everything Bee and Dad always wanted.

We’ve only been here for about a month, so I’m in that weird phase in which everything about it is pseudo-familiar: the creaking of the floors in every room, worst on the stairs; the scratching of the trees against the windows at night; the far-off whistle of the trains as they pass through, headed for Ohio or across Pennsylvania.

Oh, yeah. And the fucking ghost.

He’s not here as I pull down a box of cereal, hop up on the counter, and eat it dry by the handful, as Reece still sighs and mutters on the line.

The ghost tends to prefer my bedroom (it’s very inconvenient for both of us), which leads me to believe that it was once his bedroom.

(You don’t have to tell me I’m a genius. When it comes to ghostbusting, I am a top student.)

(I can’t say the same for real school.)

But back to the bedroom thing. To be clear, he’s not a creeper ghost, from what I can tell. He doesn’t watch me change, or leer, or do anything else that one would suspect of a semi-visible teenage boy now sharing a bedroom with a fully visible teenage girl. Who knows. Maybe he’s queer too. Maybe he likes running. Maybe he also is kind of bad at school. Maybe, if we were living in the same timeline, any of those things would be in the center of our little Venn diagram.

Maybe we would even be friends.

Finally, Reece sighs. “I wouldn’t usually recommend this,” they say, their tone taking on a hint of dubious ness, “but have you tried talking to him?”

Now, it’s my turn to snort. Unfortunately, I do it around a mouthful of dry Cheerios, which leads to a lot of coughing and sputtering, which lessens the effect when I say, “Isn’t that breaking, like, Reece Tarpin’s Rule Number One of Ghost Management?”

“Drew—” Reece starts.

“Maybe Rule One is ‘do not bang a ghost,’” I speculate, this time with less choking on Cheerios.

“Drew—”

“Or ‘no kissing ghosts?’ But I’m pretty sure you broke that one with—”

“ANDREA PENELOPE TARPIN,” Reece shouts. “DO YOU WANT MY HELP OR NOT ?”

I press my lips together. Stop swinging my feet. Set the cereal box down. “. . . Yes.”

Reece sighs, and I can just imagine them pinching the bridge of their nose, eyes closed, trying to tamp down the frustration. I cause this expression a lot, so the image of it comes easily—along with that fierce ache of missing them. Reece is a freshman in college at Boston University, and they moved at the end of the summer, a couple of weeks before Dad and Bee and me relocated here. I’m still not used to the emptiness of my life without Reece’s constant presence—and Reece’s constant willingness to step in and take the lead on anything ghostly.

But let’s get one thing straight: I am not asking for Reece’s help because I’m afraid of this ghost, okay? Fear has nothing to do with it. I just don’t like him, and I don’t want him in my room, and I am a growing girl, and I should be allowed my space and privacy.

Plus, he’s very judgmental, which I can tell because he makes weird faces at me at night when I’m doing my ab routine. I find it very disruptive.

And when Reece is in charge, they just . . . usually go away on their own. Or with gentle convincing from light rituals. They are not usually this persistent.

Enter: Reece.

“I’m video-calling you,” Reece says, resigned. “Switch over.”

I pull the phone from my face and accept the video request. Reece’s face floats up, too close for a moment, their nose and septum piercing and top lip swimming on my screen before they back up. I scan over their freckles and shorn red hair—the shock of copper is the only thing we share between us that Dad does not also have—before focusing in on their brown eyes, still a bit tired.

“Take me to the ghost.”

“You won’t be able to—”

“Just do it, mmkay? You’re the one who wanted my help.”

I sigh, but I take Reece with me upstairs. I also nearly die on the way when I trip over my backpack, discarded on the first step, and I am annoyed to find that, for a brief moment, I understand why Dad is always getting on my case to hang it up or put it in my room.

It’s the worst kind of self-betrayal to find that I agree with my parents’ nagging, even for a second.

Reece doesn’t say anything until we’re in my room with the door shut behind us. Then, they shout, scaring me out of my skin: “HEY GHOSTIE. IT’S DREW’S BIG SIBLING. SQUARE UP.”

“Reece,” I say, aghast.

But something in it works. My eyes snap to a corner, where the bed is pushed against the wall: For the barest moment, the air shimmers, and then the boy appears.

He’s sitting on the bed, back against the wall, one knee tented, arm thrown over it. He died wearing jeans and a short-sleeved top with three buttons at the throat, all open. He’s white, I think, with dark hair and brown eyes and a beaky nose keeping up his glasses. He looks a little nerdy but also kind of nice—not the sort of kid you’d think of dying at seventeen or eighteen or whatever age he was when he kicked it.

He also looks mega bored. I would probably feel the same, if I were dead for an indeterminate amount of time and unable to communicate with the living.

I turn the phone around. I’m not sure if Reece can see him over the video call, but it doesn’t much matter. Reece is good at playing things off, and they know the ghost is there. If I can see it, of course it’s there.

The thing is, I did want to solve this on my own. All our lives, Reece has been the one who cared more about ghosts (see: when the going gets tough, I get avoiding) and knew how to deal with them. And when they lived with us, it was easy to let that be their thing, to let every little issue fall under Reece’s remit. But Reece is in Massachusetts, and I doubt they’ll be coming back—in the last few weeks, I’ve watched them talk about home less and less as they’ve made new friends and gotten used to Boston.

I can’t even blame them. The world is a bit shit right now—I’m proud they’re finding what space they can, carving safety and protection into it.

Either way, I thought that working through the ghost issue would make us closer. Bridge that gap that’s been building between us since Reece left. But they told me to figure it out, and I—well. I reached for the exorcism when I probably shouldn’t have.

But in my defense, it’s actually very creepy to share space with a ghost. They don’t really knock when they want to come in—right now, the ghost and I can’t communicate at all, which means he spends his sentient hours staring at me from the corner like I kicked his puppy.

Reece is good at making them go away, solving their problems and cutting their ties to the mortal world before sending them peacefully into the afterlife. Fixing the mess before well-mannered ghosts degrade into angry husks. I am patently not, and that’s what’s getting me into trouble. And yes, maybe I did go straight for an exorcism on purpose—because if I failed, I knew that Reece would have no choice but to help me. Selfish? Possibly.

I just . . . I really miss them. This might be a shitty bonding experience, but it’s better than nothing.

“Ready to do this, Dree?” Reece asks me.

I press my lips together, glaring at the ghost so he doesn’t get any ideas. Reece is the only one who calls me Dree (and the only one who is allowed)—a shortening for Andrea, which annoys me. Everyone else calls me Drew, because my best friend, another Andrea, took Andie first.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I grumble.

The ghost cocks an eyebrow. He doesn’t look pleased, either, but that might have something to do with the failed exorcism that happened last time I saw him.

Yeah, I doubt he’s forgiven me for that yet.

“Look,” I say, trying to soften my voice a bit. “I’m sorry about . . . the whole holy water thing. I am just trying to help you move on, okay?”

He frowns, unconvinced.

“Just do it,” Reece mutters on the line.

I stick out a hand. If he comes forward, touches me, then I can bring him back into corporeality. Meld my spirit to his, even temporarily. And I’ll be able to hear him properly, to know what he wants.

Reece is really good at it. They can listen to a ghost, figure out what they want, and get them moving on in record speed. It would never take my sibling three weeks to deal with a ghost.

But I hate the squidginess of it, the vulnerability. Reece taught me how to do this when I was ten, and I’ve only done it a couple of times since then.

When you open yourself to a ghost, you always take a bit of them, too—and I hate knowing those deaths, feeling the shattered fractals of their memories, and not being able to put them down. Not being able to forget them, when the ghosts do move on.

Sure, they don’t become husks, the angry remnants of a soul left behind. But I keep the other half of memories no one else will ever share: the sweet bite of an apple in springtime eighty years ago, and the first kiss with someone’s wife, and the feeling of dirt in my hand as someone buried their mother, and the taste of blood in my mouth as someone wrecked a car. It’s all there, still mine, even though they were never really my memories to begin with.

He regards the hand, then looks up at me. I know his name—when I moved in, small town that this is, everyone was stepping over themselves to tell me about the dead kid who lived here before—but I don’t want to think it now, when he could be in my brain soon.

“It will help,” I say. “I’ll stop trying to get rid of you.”

He tilts his head, a question there. He stopped trying to talk to me after the first week, when it was clear I couldn’t hear.

That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped talking at him. Small things—announcing my presence when I come in, or reminding him that I can’t hear him, or apologizing for failing at exorcisms.

“And if she can’t,” Reece says, “I might be able to.”

He looks doubtful, but he shifts forward. Gets off the bed. He doesn’t need to walk, one foot in front of the other, but he does. He could just float, or appear wherever he needs to go, but I learned early on that he’s not very good at being a ghost.

“I won’t hurt you,” I say.

He rolls his eyes. Takes my hand. I take a deep breath, reaching for not just his hand, but the shadow of his soul still here on this mortal plane.

It’s like surfacing from underwater, bringing him back into being. Like tasting every second of his seventeen years, two months, twenty-two days, eight hours, seventeen minutes, and eight seconds on my tongue, all those vague reminders of who he is hitting all at once—and I can’t hold back his name anymore.

“You can’t hurt me,” the ghost of Liam Orville says. “I’m already dead.”

WELCOME TO THE AFTERLIFE, PLAYER ONEPLEASE ENTER YOUR NAME

Liam Orville

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

. . . death?

HA! TOO LATE FOR THAT!

What is this, actually?

GAME LOADING . . .

Should I understand what's happening right now?

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF, Liam Orville?

I don't know

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF, Liam Orville?

I don't know!

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF, Liam Orville?

Ceasing. Stopping. Ending. I don't know, seriously.

SURVEY SAYS: THAT’S A LIE!

What is this? What am I doing?

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF, Liam Orville?

Being forgotten. Being left behind. By my family.Friends. By her. By everyone.

SUCCESS!LEVEL 2 LOADING . . .

CHAPTER 2

The first thing that comes to me is not his death—that happens more often than not, which is part of the reason I really, really didn’t want to do this—or his most treasured memory. For a half-second, I’m Liam, sitting back in a desk chair in this room, and I feel . . . well, alive, for one thing. And happy. I lean back in my chair, feet resting on the edge of the bed, and I feel that all-too-familiar scrape of the chair back on the wall as I turn to face you and—

He was in this room, back when it was his room. My gaze trips to that scuff on the wall, a black mark against the cream paint, and I can physically feel the routine of Liam leaning back in his desk chair. How he changed the topography of this room with his physicality: the scuff on the wall, yes, but also the sections of lighter paint, where pictures and posters hung on the wall, and the circle of a water spot on the windowsill where he must’ve once left a glass or watered a plant, warping the paint. Dead or not, Liam is in every bit of this room.

It’s probably why he’s still here. That, and his age when he died. It’s easier for younger ones to stick around—more vitality there. More tragedy. More meat to chew on that can convert easily to a restless spirit.

I cut the memory off as soon as I can, taking back control. It doesn’t stop the physical reaction; I’m breathing hard. My heart races in my chest. Gooseflesh pebbles over my arms, and I drop his hand.

It’s okay. I don’t need the contact now that I’ve let him in.

I set Reece up against the desk so they can see us (if they can see Liam at all, that is). Reece takes over, because if I had my way, I’d banish all ghosts without a conversation. Easier that way—less fraught.

It doesn’t leave space for camaraderie, either, or getting to know them, or having any affection for them whatsoever. All of that—all things involving ghosts, really—is firmly in Reece’s wheelhouse.

“Right,” Reece says, all business. It’s clear why they’re studying to become a lawyer—they’ve always been assertive, confident, good at laying down the law, with a brain that rivals Dad’s. For a second, I feel that odd, unfounded ache of jealousy. “Let’s figure out why you’re still here.”

Liam raises an eyebrow. “It’s my house.”

“Not anymore,” I mutter. Reece ignores me. My specialty in Reece’s usual investigations, unfortunately, has never been helping ghosts—I’ve always been best at antagonizing them.

“But you can’t stay here,” Reece says.

“I don’t see why not,” Liam answers. “Considering I was here first.”

“Yean, not how this works,” I say, earning another look from my sibling. But for all of the antagonizing I’m doing, Reece isn’t pushing it far enough.

Liam crosses his hands over his chest. “Well, I’m not leaving.”

I mirror his posture. Liam is taller than me by a few inches, but there’s no beating around the bush: That boy has not worked out a day in his life, and when I cross my arms, his gaze flicks to my biceps for the briefest moment. There’s that look again, the one he has when he appears and finds me doing pull-ups in the doorframe, and he looks like he has the worst luck in the world.

“You don’t get to call the shots anymore,” I say. “You’re dead.”

“Drew—” Reece starts. Reminding a ghost of their own inexistence is usually a bad call, because it can piss them off, and a pissed-off ghost can lead to a few things: poltergeist-like behavior, flickering lights, and broken vases and windows. They only bring so much energy with them into this liminal area; let’s face it, they’re already a dying ember. So causing Liam to feel anything too powerful could speed up his degradation into a husk, and a husk is unfortunately a much bigger problem than a ghost.

And, yeah, that bad energy? It gives off a kind of call, and sometimes whatever comes seeking that bad energy is a whole lot worse than the ghost we started out with.

“I’m well aware,” Liam says sharply. I draw a breath, feeling the crackling of energy in the air—but nothing breaks. Nothing shatters. And besides a few lengthening shadows, nothing else comes.

I make an effort to calm myself as Reece says, “Look. I know the situation is not ideal. But hanging around here is not going to fix anything, nor is it going to make you feel better. How about you think about what could possibly be keeping you here, and what would help you move on, and we can reconvene? Drew has done this before. She’s good at helping spirits move on.”

He eyes me dubiously. Perhaps I shouldn’t blame him for that. I try to make my expression plaintive, open.

Reece is also lying. Liam doesn’t need to know that.

“I’ll think about it,” Liam says finally. “But in the meantime, can we come to an agreement on one thing?”

“Yeah?” Reece says.

“No more exorcisms.”

I sigh. My sibling sighs louder. I know, after we hang up, they’ll text me with a big, well-deserved I told you so.

There’s no point just telling Reece they should’ve helped me in the first place. They want me to fight my own battles, which I know is a part of growing up. Unfortunately, for most kids, “fighting your own battles” doesn’t mean “putting up with your own ghosts.”

“Yeah,” I say. “We can try this without any more exorcisms.”

Liam nods. “Then I’ll think about it,” he says, “and I’ll let you know.”

It’s shockingly reasonable—reasonable enough for Reece to agree, and for Liam to disappear. When he’s gone, they give me a long, level look.

“I thought you said you’d handle it,” Reece says.

I roll my eyes, flopping back on to my ghost-free bed. “I said I’d try. But I told you at the beginning—I want nothing to do with it. Ghosts aren’t my thing.”

“You can’t just decide if they’re your thing or not, Dree. Ghosts are a fact of life—and you are one of very few people who can make a difference.”

I roll my eyes. It’s an argument we’ve had so many times that it’s worn-in, like the steps of a dance I don’t even need to think about anymore.

“If you would’ve just helped in the first place—”

“What did you want me to do? Drive ten hours? Not happening. Not when I know you know what to do.”

“I don’t!” I insist.

“Bullshit,” Reece says. When I glance over at the phone, they’re not even looking at me anymore.

“But I don’t want to,” I say.

“Yeah, and I’m sure Liam Orville doesn’t want to be dead,” they snap. It’s a diversion from the dance, a stumble. They sigh and set their pen down, then rub their eyes.

“Okay,” Reece says. “Let’s talk through it, then. What do you need to do?”

I’m quiet for a long time, staring up at the ceiling. Maybe because I know that Reece is right, and it’s my job to help Liam move on, even if it’s the last thing I want to do. Maybe I’m waiting for the sound of the front door, for Bee or Dad to come home (though the likelihood of either coming home at 3 :00 p.m. is slim to none) so I can hang up the phone with an excuse; Reece would never talk to me about ghosts if they were home.

“Dree,” Reece prompts, soft and weary.

“Start from the end,” I say. “Find out how he died. If there’s trauma left, or unfinished business. If I can wrap that up, it will be easy.”

And if not? Well.

“And his family?” Reece asks.

I sigh. “Tell no one what I’m doing. If I tell anyone about the ghost, that will only make it worse. Right?”

“Exposure to grief speeds up degradation,” Reece says, like they’re reciting from a textbook. “No friends. No family.”

“Right.”

“Great,” Reece says. There’s a long, weighted pause between us, like they’re waiting for me to say something else. I just keep staring at the ceiling, watching the revolutions of the fan. Finally, “It’s just, there’s not much I can do from here, you know. I’m far—”

“I’ve got it,” I say, probably a bit too sternly. “Thanks for the help.” Before Reece can protest further, I hang up the call, then toss my phone across the room, onto the pile of not-dirty-enough-for-laundry-not-clean-enough-for-drawers pile in the corner.

The fan keeps spinning. My thoughts won’t quiet. And above all, more than anything: I don’t want to do this. I want nothing to do with ghosts, or Liam, or this whole help-him-move-on business. The sooner I can make him disappear, the better.

*   *   *

DAD and Bee are both home by six, and Bee orders pizza for dinner. “We’ve got to find new takeout,” she laments, sorting through the flyers and junk mail that keep clogging up our mailbox. When the pizza comes, Dad tips the driver with a wrinkled twenty and the three of us sit on the couch in the living room, eating straight from the boxes. We still don’t have a perfect routine for this house yet, partially because the kitchen table is still covered in boxes we’re all ignoring, and partially because, before we moved out here, there were four of us and not three and none of us really know how to correct a routine in Reece’s absence. There’s a large gap between Dad and me on the couch even now, the sagging cushion where they used to sit, a space held for Reece even as they’re hundreds of miles away.

“How was school?” Dad asks, wiping grease off his hands on a paper towel. This is the first time we’re trying this pizza place, and I can see him frowning every time he dips back into the box. He hates grease on pizza, but Bee loves it, and it will be a thrilling adventure to see if this place makes it onto the auto-buy shortlist for future evenings: Will Dad’s love of Bee outweigh his pizza preferences? It remains to be seen.

“Fine,” I say. “I went to talk to the track coach. There’s no track in the fall, and it’s too late to join the cross-country team, but there’s a club that does conditioning runs after school some days. I think I’ll join that or something.”

I don’t tell them that, actually, it’s not too late to join the cross-country team, and really, I have no intention to join track in the spring when it does pick up. When we moved here, I made a secret promise to myself to just be a person, to letting those things go. I can’t really handle another year of Dad hoping I do well enough to get a scholarship to somewhere that overlooks academics—and I don’t really want to deal with the rigid system of enforced practice and needing to be places.

I’ll cool my heels for a year. There’s no reason to get too involved with anything. And this club seems casual and non-competitive, and it’ll maybe scratch some itch for socialization if I can work up the nerve to talk to anyone.

“Oh, that sounds great,” Bee says, smiling in that easy, comforting way she does. She reaches for another slice of pizza, completely ignorant to the way Dad sighs as he reaches for another paper towel. “Oh, hey—your room.”

I nearly choke on my pizza, certain for a second that she found the Bible and holy water I stashed in the bottom drawer of my desk. My parents don’t actually know anything about what Reece and I can do—we discovered early on that ghosts fit into the List of Things We Should Not Tell Dad.

“What about it?”

“Do you want to paint or anything?”

The relief is sweet, and I take a bite of pizza to cover my hiccup. But then I’m thinking of that scuff on the wall, that streak of black. It was one of the first things I noticed, when I went inside the first time. There’s something about it—I saw it, nearly a month ago, and I crossed the room to touch it, and I was hit with this overwhelming wall of sadness. Then I turned around and saw him. The boy. The ghost.

“Maybe,” I say, but I don’t think I can cover that little scuff, one of the last reminders that Liam Orville once lived in this house.

Damn—one dead kid in my bedroom, and I’m losing my edge.

“I could do a mural, if you want,” Bee says. She reaches for another slice of pizza. The pepperoni has curled up at the edges, making little bowls for the grease.

“Ah, that would be cool,” I say, and she smiles—but we both know I’m too indecisive for that. She offered to do a mural in my last room, too: It was one of the first things she offered when she moved in, when I was six and Reece was seven and a half. Reece took her up on it immediately, requesting a jungle. Their room quickly became a home for rich green leaves and stalking tigers and brightly colored birds, half-hidden in the painted foliage.

And mine? Well, that was almost nine years ago now, and I just never made up my mind.

After we’re done with our pizza, we settle into our usual routine: Dad goes into his office to handle anything that has come up for his cases that needs to be handled urgently. Bee turns on whatever reality show she’s in the middle of with the volume up loud—usually someone is getting married to someone they’ve never met, or engaged to someone they’ve never seen, or working on a yacht—and she and I head into the kitchen to tackle one of the table boxes.

Alone in the kitchen, she says, “The Stats test?”

I sigh, setting down the box of videos I just opened—I don’t know why we brought them with us. We don’t have anything to play them on anymore. If it were up to me, I’d just donate them all.

“Yeah. It was not great.”

“How not great are we talking?”

I wince. “D+?”

“Ah.”

I step away from the boxes and the table and glance over at Bee. “I’m trying,” I tell her. “I’ll figure it out. I’ll fix it. Can you just . . . not tell Dad?”

Bee chews on her lip. “For now,” she agrees. She leans back against the counter and opens her arms, and even though I’m taller than she is now, I walk into the circle of her arms and bury my head in her shoulder. Her arms wrap around me, carving out a safe haven that smells like vanilla and flour and sugar and the lemon-scented cleaner she uses at Bakerbee. Her curls tickle my nose.

Bee isn’t my mom. Our mom left when we were little kids. We saw her a couple of times, but I barely remember her—the memories come more in flashes and glimpses of things she might’ve said and done. In TV shows and movies, it always is such a big thing: the mother who isn’t there, the absence she’s left behind, the unfillable ache. But Dad has always been so good that it’s not like I felt the absence, or maybe I just never knew differently, and then he started bringing Bee around, and it was like our little family made even more sense.

For me, at least. I know Reece loves Bee, but I can’t be certain they feel the same. It does help, though, that Dad put us through lots and lots of therapy.

“It’s an adjustment,” she murmurs, her hands stroking down my back. “You’ve done so well, and given up so much—your dad and I are both proud of you and grateful for the person you are. You’ll figure it out, and we’re here to help.”

“I know,” I say, but that’s not really how it works for me. It’s not like I’ll just suddenly “figure out” Stats or Gov or English. I can’t just “figure out” school. It’s a necessity, and knowing Dad, so is college, even though I can’t imagine putting myself through even more learning after this whole hell of high school is over.

There were a lot of reasons why we moved, and all of them are boring. Dad has worked for a big firm in Pittsburgh for years, pretty much since he and Bee have been married, which meant an almost two-hour commute for him. But in the spring, a bakery space here in Pine Hollow opened up, and it only made sense for Bee to take it, for us to relocate. Now, Bakerbee is just five minutes down the road, and Dad’s job is a thirty-minute drive, even with traffic, and Reece was already going to Boston anyway.

The only variable was me and my senior year—and it’s not like moving would make me less close with Andie. Plus, pretty much every school around here has a track team. It was an obvious decision on my part to push for the move.

Bee pulls back, kisses my forehead. “I’m proud of you, you know,” she says.

I snort. “Why?”

“For existing,” she says, “or something sappy like that.”

I poke her hard in the ribs, and she laughs, and then we go back to the box. We hide the video tapes in the basement. (One would think the basement is the creepiest and most haunted place in the house, but I have never seen Liam down here, so the weirdest thing is the “Pittsburgh toilet” (a freestanding toilet in the basement, just there, by itself, which I have been assured is a regional staple. Jury’s out.)

When we’re done, I go upstairs and do my pull-ups and crunches and push-ups and squats. Liam doesn’t appear to judge me or speak to me, which is fine. For one night, I can pretend to be normal.

It’s the last night the illusion can last for a long, long time.

CHAPTER 3

There’s a line of cars when we pull up in the morning, but Dad is already running late, and I don’t want to keep him. I get out before he turns into the school drive so he can turn around on the road and avoid the traffic.

It’s early September in Pennsylvania, and honestly, those autumnal candles have nothing on this: The air is just starting to turn crisp, cool humidity from a late-night rainstorm lingering on the breeze. The woods behind the school are a tapestry of greens and oranges and golds.

Unlike the forest, Pine Hollow High School is nothing to look at. It’s gray and pretty much windowless unless you’re in the exterior classrooms, which I can and will use as an excuse for my inability to focus in class.

The bell for homeroom is in ten minutes, so the courtyard is packed. School has only been going for two weeks, so I don’t really know that many people—I keep my head down and weave through, making a beeline for the cafeteria, where there are fewer people and it’s easier to fade into the background.

It’s odd, changing a routine I’ve had for most of my life. Before we moved, back at Fairhope Creek, I would get to school early and meet Andie in the gym. Coach Bruna wouldn’t mind if we used the fitness room until the bell for first period rang, so we would get a workout in before class and still have time to rinse off before school. I don’t know any of the coaches here well enough, and I still don’t know my way around the gym, so there’s not much I can do in terms of escapism.

There’s the library, which is boring but offers the refuge of being boring, and Rin from down the street always retreats to the band room, but I don’t think either place is the kind of area where I’d normally hang out. I think, tentatively, that Rin is a friend, but we’re in that awkward stage of friendship where I’m never really sure if I can text them without a reason. It’s nothing like the easy friendships I left behind with Andie and our other group, with people I’ve known since I was in preschool. I never needed a reason to text them other than boredom—I knew them before texting was even a thing for me, after all.

I think about messaging Andie, but she says texting makes her miss me more. Instead, we pour our long-distance friendship into phone calls every Thursday and video calls over the weekend. Except, if I think about that, then I have to think about the fact that she skipped last Thursday’s call and the video call the weekend before that.

Is it lonely? Yes. But it’s one year, and . . . it’ll be fine. I’m sure. It has to be. Because it’s worth it to see Bee and Dad so much happier.

I like making them happy.

So I go to the corner of the cafeteria, away from the noise, and I pull out my notebook for some doodling. There’s a group in front of me, and I know a couple of them from my English class—

And then she walks in.

She walks in, and it’s like the whole cafeteria goes quiet (it does not, actually, but bear with me).

I’ve seen her a few times before, when I turned a corner while heading to the guidance office during sixth period last week, or waiting for Rin in the parking lot. But it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen her, and I don’t think it’ll matter how many times I keep seeing her. Every time I do, it takes my breath away.

She’s laughing, twisting her straight brown hair up on the back of her head before she secures it with a clip. She seems to glow from the inside, light shining through her olive skin and brown eyes—though if I got close, I think her eyes would be that type of brown that is so deep, rich, and shining, like Reece’s collection of agate from museum trips when we were kids.