Clarke Leith parked in the back of Coop’s, and my stomach flipped when he cut the engine. We hadn’t even gotten out of the truck yet, and this was already one of the stupidest things I’d ever done—definitely the stupidest thing I’d ever done without my sister. “Ready?” he asked. No. I actually was not ready to break into a lawyer’s office. I thought about Wilder’s face as Leith opened his passenger door for me back at my house. His look was one of relief, and it made me uneasy. I wasn’t fond of feeling like I’d been pushed into doing something—at least partially—by a ghost. I felt like I’d taken a stick of dynamite to my rules—the things that k ept me safe and grounded among the spirit realm but also as s eparated from it as I could be. I could almost feel the line I’d drawn getting blurry—like there was darkness cre eping into the edges of my vision. And I’d let it happen for Leith. The ride over here was quiet. Well, I was quiet. But Leith chitchatted enough for the both of us. Normally, I enjoy a little chitchat. I’m good at it too. I just didn’t want to talk to Leith. I also didn’t want to think about how his truck smelled like cloves and leather. I didn’t want to think about how those adolescent butterflies fluttered their way out of dormancy every time he shifted gears or turned the steering wheel with one hand. And most of all, I definitely didn’t want to think about how my stupid childhood crush still seemed powerful enough to get me to break my very logical rules. “Let’s get this over with,” I groused. I went to open my door, and Leith said, “I’ll get it for you,” as he hopped out of the truck. But I opened my own goddamn door. When my feet hit the gravelly dirt of the parking lot, Leith smiled and shook his head. “Same old Clarke,” he said. I rolled my eyes. Leith seemed hell-bent on reminding me tonight how long we had known each other, mostly because it was the quickest way to guilt me into this ridiculous mission, I think. But still, it irked me. Because he only knew the teenage Clarke. And she would have been absolutely thrilled with this evening’s turn of events: sneaking in the shadows with Leith Wilkes, partners in crime. Even if she would have pretended otherwise. But that wasn’t me anymore. And being around Leith reminded me how teenage Clarke would probably be so disappointed in me. And for more reasons than this. I spent most of my youth being told that I was going to do big things and go big places. And yet, here I was—doing normal things in an abnormal place. I got the keys for Coop’s out of my coat pocket. There were eleven keys on the ring, but I only knew what two of them were used for: the front door and the back door. Even though we were barely approaching seven p. m., it felt like the middle of the night. The only sounds were our feet on the gravel and the jingling of Brady’s keys as I found the right one. It was too cold for crickets or birds or wolves, and that made me very aware that it was just Leith and me out here. So for the first time in my life, I was itching to get inside a building where I knew some ghostly inhabitants roamed. Then, at least, I wouldn’t be all alone with Leith Wilkes and his perfect hair and his stupid earring.
I could feel him behind me as I unlocked the door, knew he was too close as I went through it. He was probably desperate to get inside from the cold. “Okay,” I said once I shut the door behind me. I could only really see Leith’s outline in the darkness of Coop’s back hallway. Immediately, I felt the supernatural energy buzz around me. Just like at Toades. Even though I was more aware of exactly what—or who—I was feeling than the average person, the hair on the back of my neck still stood up, and I immediately had the feeling I was being watched. “What’s your master plan?” “We find the door that leads next door, and then we find one more door that apparently leads to a hallway that basically acts like a frontage road for the buildings on the north side.” “How do you know that hallway exists?” “I found the building plans in the library.” “Really?” Sweetwater Peak didn’t have an archival system, so I guess the library would be the only place Leith could find this information, but I was frankly shocked he had been that organized. “Did Betty Jean help?” Betty Jean was the town’s only living librarian. There were a few dead ones that still lingered. They gave great fiction recommendations. “Yeah, why?” “Because when Ron realizes these documents are missing, and he goes to the Sheriff’s D epartment—” “—the one-man Sheriff’s D epartment,” Leith interrupted. “There’s someone out there who will know that you were looking at plans of the building right before they disappeared.” Even though I didn’t expect anyone in Sweetwater Peak to readily comply with law enforcement —like ever—I still didn’t like that someone out there could tie Leith to the building. “You’re catastrophizing, Clarke. And I was going to take pictures of the documents anyway.” Leith shrugged. “Easy. Then this definitely won’t even qualify as a crime. Especially because we have keys.” I huffed. Normally, I’d be into his level of pr eparedness and how quick he came up with a solution. Okay, maybe I was. A little. It was time to move this operation along. The sooner this was over, the sooner I could redraw my boundaries with permanent marker—with Leith and the entire spirit realm. “How do we get next door?” Leith asked, looking around Coop’s. Everything in the building was connected, but in true Sweetwater Peak fashion, it was connected in the most complicated and inefficient way possible. Coop’s was connected through the second floor—not the first. “The door that leads to the building next door is on the residential level of the building, which is why you didn’t see it on the plans.” There were two doors at the end of the hallway that housed the entrances to Collins’s and Brady’s respective sides of their apartment. I knew where every other door in the building led exc ept for those two, so I figured they led next door. “That makes sense.” Leith nodded. “All right, let’s go.” My head was already buzzing, so I knew that the gaggle of ghosts that inhabited Coop’s was nearby before I noticed a gossamer figure to my left as we walked toward the stairs on the far side of the shop. I didn’t look too closely, but it felt like the cowboy with the neckerchief. Even though I didn’t pay attention to the ghosts at Coop’s, I’d been here enough to know the regulars. The cowboy was a reminder that, once upon a time, Coop’s housed a saddle shop. As we climbed the stairs, another one appeared at the top—a young woman whose jaw would probably hurt if she was still alive, given how enthusiastically she was chewing her gum. “What are you doing here?” she asked, or at least, that’s what I thought she asked since I was reading her lips and trying to fight through the static. My eyes narrowed on her as I did my best to focus and hear what she was saying. “Where’s the other one?” she added. Of course, Collins would be familiar with all the ghosts in Coop’s.
I obviously couldn’t respond to the ghost’s question with Leith on my heels, so I ignored her as best I could—eyes forward, jaw clenched. She refused to move out of the way when I got to the top of the stairs, and even though I tried to sidest ep her, the left side of my body ended up going through hers. It felt ice-cold, and I fought an obvious shiver. Collins and I called that a signature. It was our broad way of understanding how ghosts interacted with the natural world. Of course, we could see and hear that they were there, but for everyone else, ghosts appeared as their signature: temperature drops, weird noises, unnatural breezes, and sometimes moving objects. “Damn,” Leith said—right as he walked through a ghost, unbeknownst to him. “Is the heater not working up here? It’s cold as shit.” “It’s warmer down the hall,” I said. And it was—once you got past the ghost. “Drafty old building.” Leith and I passed the doors that led to each side of Brady’s monster-of-Frankenstein apartment. It used to be two s eparate spaces, but now it was joined together by a very large kitchen. “Is it always this cre epy up here?” Leith asked. I realized I probably should’ve flipped the hallway light switch before we came up the stairs, but I didn’t know if the weird flickering and burnt-out bulbs would make it better or worse for Leith. Or for me, honestly. Collins was the one out of the two of us who embraced the supernatural and everything that came with it—even the scary shit. She probably wouldn’t even be scared if she came face-to-face with the devil himself—especially because she subscribes to the version of hell that’s in that Fall Out Boy visual album where Elton John is God and that one guy from Mötley Crüe is the devil. She was just better suited to the ghost stuff. My theory is that it was just Collins in the womb, and I was a mutation—a fluke, so her abilities accidentally got split in two. Which would explain why our abilities had little differences—that we could each do something the other couldn’t. And sure, I know that’s not scientifically possible, but neither is talking to ghosts. I guess the one thing about my abilities is that they’ve made me believe that anything is possible. It felt very... hopeful, most of the time. But as of late, that belief had become harder to cling to. “I don’t know which door it is,” I said. There were two side-by-side doors at the end of the hall. They were skinnier than the apartment doors. They weren’t numbered like those doors either. “We better start testing those keys, then,” Leith said. His voice startled me. He was too close—again. I fumbled with the key ring, trying not to think about the fact that Leith was practically breathing down my neck. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck, and not in the haunting sort of way. “Can you st ep back, please?” I said. “I’m working here.” “This is my robbery,” Leith responded. I could smell him too. Underneath the horsehair and grass, there was that clove scent again. “Technically, you said this wasn’t a robbery, and if it was, I think it would be our robbery,” I muttered. “Are you flirting with me, Clarke?” I dropped the keys, and Leith laughed. Spending time with him was truly my own personal hell. I st epped aside, folded my arms, and said, “You do it, then.” “Fine,” Leith said. “Want to pick up those keys?” I shook my head. “Asking me to bend over is absolutely not going to help in the ‘me being nice to you’ d epartment.” Leith’s eyes widened—shocked and amused. They blinked slowly a few times before he bent down and grabbed the keys himself. He started sticking the keys in the door one by one, or he would’ve if he didn’t unlock the
door on the second try. “Aha!” he exclaimed. “I’m good at this.” “It’s just luck of the draw,” I grumbled. “Then I guess I’m lucky.” Some guys really did have all the luck, and from where I stood, Leith was and always had been one of those guys. Everything just seemed... easy for him. The golden boy. He glided through life on charm and his last name. The door fell open with a long, loud creak that would’ve woken the dead if they weren’t already up and at ’em. My spine felt like an icicle, and I avoided turning around because I knew that there were at least three of them behind me. Sensing spirits around me is kind of like being in the woods in the dark—when you know that animals are around you, but you can’t quite see them. The difference is that if I focus on the sensation of being watched or seen, I can kind of just... tell how many things I’m being watched or seen by. Sometimes I’m wrong, but most of the time, I’m dead- on. I visualized pushing them away—trying to get rid of the buzzing their closeness brought with them. Leith turned back and flashed me one of those smiles that would turn my icicle spine into a puddle on the floor if he wasn’t so fucking irksome. I took a few st eps forward and looked through the doorway. It was no stairway to heaven, but it might’ve been the stairway to hell. I could see only about half the st eps before they were consumed by the darkness. “Do you have a lantern?” I asked. “What year is it, 1850? No, I don’t have a lantern.” Leith pulled his phone out of his pocket and turned the flashlight on. I almost opened my mouth to tell him that ghosts don’t like harsh, artificial light like that, and sometimes they react... poorly to it, but I stopped myself. Sure enough, I looked behind me and the girl with the chewing gum, a teenager in a Metallica T-shirt, and an older woman wearing an apron were all shielding their eyes from Leith’s phone flashlight. Ghosts could be very dramatic. Sorry, I mouthed—giving the Coop’s ghosts their first ever acknowledgment from me. But the last thing I needed was the three of them moving shit around or banging doors or bringing down the temperature enough to freeze Leith and me out of here. Leith started down the stairs first. “God, it’s like The Conjuring in here,” he said. “Maybe we should’ve done this in the light of day.” “Scaredy-cat,” I said—even though I wasn’t a big fan of this cre epy staircase either. But there was nothing a little bravado couldn’t fix. In situations like this, I found it best to channel Collins. Fake it till you make it and all that shit. When we got to the bottom, there was another door. Leith went to work on testing if any of the keys unlocked it, and I stood a couple of st eps away. Unlike him, I understood personal space. Suddenly, a whoosh of air knocked me forward, and I lost my balance. I let out a yelp, which caused Leith to turn around right before I landed face- first in his chest. Then, as if this series of events couldn’t get any worse, the door opened with a rasp, and we both went down. One of Leith’s arms wrapped around my waist before we hit the floor with a resounding thud. I didn’t even realize that I instinctively put my hand behind his head until my knuckles scraped the hardwood floor. Leith groaned. “Shit,” he said. “You okay?” “Sorry,” I r eplied. “I lost my balance somehow.” There was a haunting giggle behind me, and I had a feeling that “somehow” was a “someone.” My money was on Chewing Gum, probably punishment for Leith’s flashlight. I felt his arm tighten on my waist, and then all I could hear was
my heartbeat in my ears. Leith gently grabbed the hand that I’d put behind his head and brought it to his sight line. I could feel that my knuckles were scraped up, but I couldn’t really see anything in the dark. I was very aware, however, of every point of contact between our bodies. “I don’t think I can see this without accidentally shining the phone flashlight right in your face,” Leith said—referring to my hand. “No need,” I said, pulling it away. I needed to snap out of it, so I rolled off Leith and quickly got to my feet. He lay on the floor a little bit longer. “You good?” “Yeah,” he said. He wiped a hand down his face. “Just got the wind knocked out of me a little bit.” “Sorry,” I said again, still a little breathless. “Stop apologizing, Clarke,” Leith said. “Those stairs are older than both of us and are, like, four inches wide. I’m surprised I didn’t go down first.” Leith took a de ep breath and reached his arm toward me. “Help me up?” I grabbed his hand and pulled. It took more strength than I expected to get him on his feet and upright. “Okay,” I said, looking around, following where Leith was shining his phone light. We had made it to the bait and fly shop next door to Toades, but it was only open in the summer, so it looked rightly abandoned. “Where to?” “Door on the other side goes to the hallway.” I looked at the other side of the wall and saw the door Leith was talking about slightly ajar. “At this point, these people are literally asking to be robbed,” I mumbled. Leith laughed lightly, and the hardwood floor groaned under our feet as we walked through the door and were met with another long hallway. “Surprised that cre epy nun isn’t standing at the end of it,” Leith commented. “Maybe we cool it with the horror movie references while we’re in an old, dark, croaking building, yeah?” I spent years of watching horror movies out of one eye with my sister. “Who’s the scaredy-cat now?” Leith smiled. I ignored him. “Which door is Ron’s?” I asked. “The one at the very end,” Leith said. When Leith reached the door, he put his hand on the knob and took a de ep breath before trying to turn it. I watched his face fall. “Locked,” he said. “Were you expecting all of them to be open?” “Kind of, actually,” he said. “Should’ve bought that lockpicking kit off Kendi in the bar parking lot last week.” Kendi sold a lot of useless shit out of the trunk of his car. He was also Sweetwater Peak’s best bowler—went to a national championship and everything. A man of many talents and trades. “And you started off so pr epared.” I rolled my eyes. “Guess we better head back.” What a bummer. Leith dragged his hand down his face. “Don’t you have, like, one of those hairpins or something?” “I think that only works in the movies and on Pretty Little Liars,” I said. “You’re supposed to be my Spencer Hastings in this situation.” “How do you—” “Lainey.” Leith smiled. Lainey was Leith’s cousin. She was sixteen and had lived with Leith’s family since she was little as far as I knew. “I would think that that show was before her time.” “PLL transcends generations, apparently.” I felt the temperature drop again, which seemed to be the most popular signature for the ghosts in this building. It was way better than smells and moving objects—those were harder to explain away. Leith k ept shaking the doorknob. I looked behind me, and what do you know, my new archnemesis, Chewing Gum, had appeared again. She winked at me and then disappeared through the wall. Was she about to...?
The soft click on the other side of the door told me that, yes, in fact she was. I had to hold in my reaction. Of course she’d be happy to push me down the stairs and unlock doors, because ghosts can’t get convicted of manslaughter and breaking and entering. “Was that...” Leith’s voice trailed off, and then he tried the door again. It opened. “Holy shit.” Before I knew it, both of Leith’s arms were around my waist, and my feet were off the ground. “Clarke Cartwright, you are my good luck charm!” A shocked laugh bubbled out of me as Leith spun us in a quick circle. I was breathless when he set me down, but I did my best to recover quickly. Leith was beaming, and I willed my stomach to stop its backflip. It felt like it just did an epic face-plant instead. The effect he had on me was just the aftershocks of a teenage crush—no need to let it take over. Leith pushed the door all the way open. “After you,” he said, gesturing for me to go through the doorway. Ron’s office was a disaster. There were papers strewn about his desk, and a seemingly infinite number of filing cabinets—all in varying states of openness. Leith let out a low whistle. “Divide and conquer?” “That seems like the best option,” I said. “We’re just looking for anything regarding your dad’s estate, right?” “Yeah,” Leith said. “And any last will and testament stuff. I’m hoping there’s a paper file with everything in it somewhere.” I looked around again. “Fingers crossed,” I murmured. The state of this place meant we were going to have our work cut out for us. I hoped he wasn’t about to try it with the chitchat again. “So, how was your week?” Leith asked. I was really really missing my boxed wine and internet doomscrolling right about now. “This will go faster if we’re not talking,” I said—snapped, maybe. A little. “I’m not great with silence,” Leith admitted. I couldn’t pinpoint the emotion in his voice. “Sorry.” “No, I’m sorry.” I hated that I couldn’t seem to regulate my emotions in his presence. I thought I had gotten better at this. “I’m just... kind of on edge lately,” I admitted. That was the understatement of the century. I was so close to the edge that I didn’t even care if I fell off it into oblivion. Maybe I’d feel better there. “Why?” “A lot going on at Toades,” I said as I k ept making my way through papers. “And Sadie flew south for the winter permanently. She’s doing, like, this permanent cosmetics training thing in Arizona.” Sadie was an aesthetician—the only one in Sweetwater Peak, so she was de eply missed by her clientele of older women. She had her cosmetology license, too— mostly did perms, and promised to come back a few times a year. “And Collins didn’t last very long here, did she?” I shook my head. “No, but she’ll be back soon too.” That’s what she said, at least. You couldn’t always take my sister at her word, though. She tended to go wherever the wind took her, but now she had Brady, and I was hopeful the wind would blow her back to Sweetwater Peak. Back home. “So, her and the upholsterer, huh?” “Her and the upholsterer.” I nodded. An unexpected but well-matched pair. I genuinely thought that Collins and Brady were good for each other. After that, Leith shifted gears to Pearl and then told me about how he got Bill. I don’t know how long this went on, but after a while he shouted, “I found something!” “Shhhhh,” I said quickly. “Come over here,” Leith said—this time at a lower volume. “Wilkes comma Wilder!” I made my way over to where Leith was—careful not to knock any of Ron’s stacks over. “Do you have your phone?” he asked. He was holding a thick file folder. I opened up my flashlight this time to get a better look—
careful not to flash it around the room at any guest Leith and I might have. “God, this thing is huge.” He opened the file and started snapping away with his phone. “I’ll read all of it later,” he said—more to himself than to me, I think. After ten to fifteen pages, I didn’t see anything, but I heard someone— maybe Chewing Gum. I couldn’t see her, but I tried to focus on her energy. “Incoming,” she said quietly. Incoming? Right then, a noise came from the front door—a key entering a lock. “Fuck,” I said, panicked. Leith was looking at the door like a deer caught in headlights. We didn’t have time to run. The door was opening. I grabbed the file folder from him, shoved the papers back in, and did the first thing I could think of, which was admittedly, stupid, but not nearly as stupid as the next thing. I lifted Leith’s shirt, pressed the file folder against his stomach, and slid the bottom of it into the waistband of his jeans—securing it. Then, right as the lights turned on, I threw my arms around his neck and pulled his mouth to mine.