Marcus came to visit us a few times, sometimes he would bring his wife Emily, but this time he was alone.

I was in the kitchen preparing lunch, Eloim was on the floor and we had put on his ears a pair of wireless headphones connected to my phone, where I’d but on some music.

It had been our best technique to allow us to have conversation with each other without him listening in, while still keeping an eye on him.

Xander and Marcus were at the table talking.

“You know, there is this guy at the station who swears by this medium. He helped find a lost kid three years back, and we found him miraculously alive, banged up, but alive. I’ve never given much credence to this, but now—,” Marcus said. “I don’t know. Maybe this dude can help.”

Xander nodded.

“I’m gonna try anything that I can.” He raked his finger through his hair. “The most frustrating thing is the lack of facts and standardised answers to any questions. There is no uni for ghosts.”

“Actually,” I said. “I think parapsychology is an actual study field available in some universities.”

The man turned to me pensively.

“Is it even legit?” Marcus asked.

“I have no idea.” My google fu was good, but the internet only took you so far. I had scoured forums, websites of every ghost hunters in the western hemisphere and the deepest darkest part of Reddit for answers, but again, just like Xander said, there was a limited amount of information that would be the same from one source to the other, and it was really hard to cipher through what was possible facts—or as close to facts as we could get—and what was superstitions, urban legends, and creepy pastas.

We wanted results, not entertainment.

We were not in the mood for scary stories right now.

We did note a few things that tended to trigger events. One was Xander and I getting a little too intimate near Eloim. Nothing overly sexual per se, but more than a peck in passing. Eloim calling me Mommy was another. We considered toning everything down, but we decided not to. We would not be told what to do with our lives by someone already dead—we wouldn’t tolerate this from anyone alive, so the dead had no more say over this.

But we were also aware that if the dead are capable of emotions, then what we were doing was possibly hurting her, which was leading to those lashing outs. But it’s not like we could exactly explain ourselves now could we? We didn’t even know if she was aware of her situation.

Maybe this was something a medium could help us with.

Another trigger was anytime I came in between her and Eloim.

I was acutely aware of how terrified of her Eloim was and I tried to protect him from her as much as possible, but from her perspective, it could look a lot more different. This blondie younger slut coming in and stealing both her man and son, and pushing her away.

Which was possibly why she was lashing out at me so much.

Not once I’ve seen any injuries come to Eloim and Xander, but me, I was free meat.

I often found scratches on my body when I woke up. A lot on my arms and back, most were just red lines that faded within the day, but others took a day or two to resorb. Nothing drew blood, but it was annoying as heck. I wanted to be upset, but I decided to treat this as a mosquito invasion, biting me at night and annoying the Hell out of me, and nothing more. I wouldn’t let these petty attacks get to me.

But the thought of this becoming something more always stayed in the back of my head as I’d experienced first hand in Xander’s parental home’s staircases. I would see Final Destination-like scenarios go through my mind, and I would always be extremely careful around everything, and never linger wherever something could fall on my head, or push me; anything pointy and sharp taken care of carefully.

“You know, Mila,” Said Marcus. “Your spooky little house is turning into a thing of beauty.”

I beamed at him. “It is, isn’t it?”

“I’m surprised in how well you’re dealing with everything.”

My smiled faltered. “I’m not stronger than anyone else. I think I’ve entered the ‘survive now, panic later’ zone. We all do what we can, but that’s keeping in mind that there will be an end to this. But what the internet has told me is that it’s not always how it ends. And that terrifies me.”

“We’ll find a way,” said Xander. “Enola’s maternal grandparents were Jewish, do you think a rabbi would be more effective than a priest?” he asked Marcus.

“What do I know, mate? I’m not a ghost expert. Get a rabbi, and a priest, and a Buddhist monk, in here if you can. Cover all your options and if it leads to nothing, then at least it’ll be a good start for a joke.”

Xander gave him an indulgent smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He was calculating options, probably even turning it into a pie chart to evaluate what it meant and what were the alternative, and how much everything would cost. At the end of this, he would probably be able to write the book on budgeting of ghost removal.

The thought made me smile.

I’ve always had a thing for intelligence, but I somehow managed to find it in a great packaging.

I looked at Xander talking options with Marcus about what would come next, and realised I had totally fallen for him.

I’m not sure when this happened exactly, but it was now a fact, as solid as the walls, and the ground beneath our feet. It wasn’t just a crush, I really wanted to marry this man.

He saw me looking at him and gave me smile. It was a good one. I was began to think I was not the only one thinking this way.