The point was that the only unhealthy spirit in this house was the spirit of dampness and mold. And this spirit could be vanquished rather more simply than the undead variety—

Something flashed in the darkness. Alva dropped her notebook and froze.

There was nothing there. She took a deep breath and dropped her shoulders. There was only the dim light around her, the slight sounds of an old house settling. Nothing to be afraid of. She shook her head at herself—

There. Again.

She stood absolutely rigid, the distance between her and the door suddenly enormous, the distance between her and the darkness impossibly short. It had been a metallic flash, like light brushing over bright golden hair—

Her throat closed and for several moments her mind was completely, stunningly empty, the sound of her heart rushing hot in her ears. Something was watching her, waiting for her to make a mistake, something—

“He’s dead,” she whispered.

Alain wasn’t standing in an old rotting house waiting for her. He was dead, dead and buried, six feet of earth weighting him down in his final resting place. She forced one foot in front of the other, cold nausea trickling into her stomach. It was only a bit of sunshine, reflecting off something shiny … never mind that there wasn’t any sunshine, never mind that everything in the house sat under a blanket of dust.…

She closed a trembling hand over a nearby hammer. What if he’d followed her? What if his hatred could extend beyond the grave, across continents, over an ocean?

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” she told herself, creeping slowly into the darkness, feeling it closing thickly behind her. She wasn’t going to run out of her own house because she was afraid of something that didn’t even exist, even if her spine was frozen in terror and the shaking from her hand had traveled into her whole body. Fear wasn’t her way of life anymore.

The only sounds were her breathing and the tap of her footsteps as they fell hesitantly in the black. Her eyes strained to see—there was nothing there, nothing, ah! There it was again, only a few feet ahead—

Barely breathing, she took two firm steps forward, raising the hammer, and brought it crashing down—

And stopped two inches from shattering her reflection.

The mirror was splotchy and black with age, covered with a sheet that had half fallen off, leaving the top right corner exposed. Caught in that corner’s reflection was Alva’s own hat, a silly confection covered in gold velvet.