Desperation

If he could have felt anything, Liam would have felt cold.

He lunged forward to catch Reagan, but his hand went right through, and he cursed his incorporeal body. Helpless, he watched Reagan flop limply to the ground, spilling blood into the dirt and cloth. Liam froze.

This can’t be happening.

He stared. Waited.

Reagan didn’t move.

“Reagan, wake up,” he said. Instinctively, he reached for Reagan’s shoulder to shake him awake, but he never made contact. Cursing himself again, he said, “You promised you wouldn’t get hurt. Wake up!”

But it didn’t work.

He moved over to Reagan’s satchel, trying to remember what was inside of it, what could be of use. Having spent the past decade with Reagan, he knew all the spells he used, all their components. He knew the herbs for the healing spell, but his mind went blank when trying to remember if Reagan had any left.

None of that mattered if Reagan remained motionless on the ground, a pool of blood spilling out from his mouth and nose.

Liam hovered with his ear close to Reagan’s face, listening for the slight wheeze of his breaths. They were shallow.

I can’t let him die, he thought. I have to do something.

So, he did the only thing he could think of.

“Elisa!” Liam yelled, bursting through the wall of the boarding house. In the small lobby sat a woman he didn’t recognize. He rushed past her and through the next wall into an empty dining hall, then through three occupied bedrooms before finding Elisa.

She was seated on her bed, brushing her hair when he burst through the wall to her right. “Elisa!” he shouted again, louder than he needed to in such a small space.

She startled, dropping her hairbrush on the floor. “Liam?” she asked, looking around. Her gaze passed right over him as though she could no longer see him.

I’m at the end of my tether, he thought, gritting his teeth. “Reagan’s in trouble,” he said, forgetting about the fake name.

“I can barely hear you,” Elisa said, standing. She looked around the room and eventually squinted in Liam’s direction. Reaching for him, she said, “You’re so faint… Why can’t I see or hear you properly?”

“I’m too far from Reagan,” he said, almost shouting. “He’s badly hurt. Please, you have to help him.” His voice wavered, coming as close to tears as he could without the ability to cry. I can’t lose him.

“Okay,” Elisa said. She grabbed a small pouch off her night table and shoved it in the pocket of her dress before slipping into her shoes. “Lead the way. You’ll have to keep talking to me. I can hear you better than I can see you.”

“Meet me outside,” Liam said, and took a shortcut through the walls.

Outside, the oil lamps were being lit one by one by a lamplighter with a long pole. He took no notice of Liam.

As the ghost waited for Elisa, he bounced from foot to foot as he’d seen Reagan do many times. It didn’t help.

To Liam’s immense relief, Elisa ran out of the wood double doors a few seconds later. “We have to go to the apothecary,” Liam shouted beside her. “He’s bleeding a lot. Hurry.”

With Liam shouting directions every few seconds, Elisa sprinted down one street after another and arrived at the apothecary. She reached for the door handles but they didn’t budge. She pushed. Pulled. Twisted.

Nothing.

“They’re closed,” she said softly.

Liam’s mind went blank. He searched for something to say, some other solution. There had to be one.

“I’m going to need an escort to the next town over,” Elisa said. Before Liam could process what she meant, she slammed her elbow into the glass section of the door, shattered the window, and, covering her hand with her sleeve, reached through it and unlocked the door from inside. “What do we need?” she asked.

“Yarrow, Sage, and Mugwort,” Liam yelled. He was screaming at this point, and still he saw how Elisa strained to hear him. She had to stand perfectly still, and even then, he found himself repeating the answer three times before she could parrot it back correctly.

It took precious time to find the herbs. The labels on the drawers were nearly illegible, and neither Elisa nor Liam entertained the idea of lighting a lamp for fear of being caught in their crime.

“Get a mortar and pestle too,” Liam said. “They have to be ground into a paste.”

She complied and, as they were leaving the store, she reached for the pouch in her pocket and tossed a handful of coins toward the counter on her way out, never stopping to check that they’d reached their destination.

“It’s better than nothing,” she said as though anticipating Liam’s gaze on her.

Without taking the time to slow down and survey their surroundings before exiting the store, Elisa ran out the door only a meter away from a townsperson heading home after a late night at the pub.

The man stopped, swaying drunkenly in the path. It took him a few precious seconds to realize what had happened and yell, “Stop! Thief!”

By that time, Elisa was close to a dark alleyway, so she ducked in. It spat her out into a smaller street that ran behind the shops, and she took off sprinting. The hard soles of her leather shoes pounded the cobblestones.

She sprinted down one dark street after another, avoiding the areas the lamplighter had already passed through and listening for any voices chasing her down, all the while straining to hear Liam’s instructions.

Three streets down from the apothecary, she was forced to slow to catch her breath. Panting, she cast a terrified look over her shoulder, but nobody had found her yet. In the distance, however, more and more voices tumbled over each other, shouting about a purple-haired thief on the run.

Liam flew up to survey the town, noting the proximity of the gathering townspeople, and made a mental map of the fastest path to the barrier, then dropped down and said, “There’s a shortcut to your left.” He led Elisa down a twisted path through different alleyways, away from the shouting and the burglarized apothecary.

They were outside the barrier when Elisa said, breathless, “I can see you again, a little. You’re faint but… This has never happened before.”

She’ll see the truth soon enough anyways, Liam thought, trying to assuage his own guilt.

“That’s because we’re a little different,” he said, leading Elisa into the forest at a slower pace. “Grind the herbs while you walk. We don’t have much time.” With her perception of him improving, he risked flying up to get a better view of the path ahead, praying the worst of the monsters were hibernating somewhere off their path.

Elisa pulled the mortar and pestle out of one pocket and the loose herbs out of the other. “I’d guessed as much from Reagan or Alois or whichever being able to see and hear you, but nobody else,” she said, concentrating on the herbs. “There’ve been a dozen other ghosts hanging around you both since I first saw you, but you never acknowledged any of them.”

That’s a chilling thought, Liam thought wryly. “Reagan’s the reason I’m still here. I’m tied to him.” Before he could divulge more, he spotted the edge of the clearing where he’d left Reagan. Please be alive. “We’re almost there. Please, don’t panic over what you see. I promise, we’ll explain when he’s awake.”

She nodded, and to his relief, held up her promise, even as they crossed into the clearing, where Reagan lay beside the now blackened sheet. The previously green mixture had turned an ugly, festering black.

Elisa clapped a hand over her mouth and nose, leading Liam to believe the clearing smelled awful, too. She took one look at the sheet then focused her attention on Reagan.

Liam didn’t dare look too closely at him for fear that Reagan had stopped breathing in the time it took for him to find Elisa. It wasn’t until Elisa picked up his wrist and said, “I feel a pulse, but it’s faint,” that Liam came closer.

“I don’t see a wound,” she said. Her voice shook almost as much as her hands as she searched Reagan’s upper body for an injury. “What do we do?”

“I-I don’t know,” Liam said. The helplessness came rushing back to steal his thoughts. He drew a blank until Elisa looked at him. “Normally he’d smear it on the wound itself…” Before performing that healing spell. “But he just started coughing up blood, then he collapsed.”

Elisa hesitated, then said with as much confidence as she could muster, “Then, we’ll just make him drink it.”