Whoever it was, he had paused to wipe the front of his brow with his shirt. He heard Mira’s rustling and stopped, flashed in her direction, but Mira hid her head between her arms and crouched into a ball to keep from being seen. When she looked up again, she saw the back of the man as he searched the brush, hunting.

“Celine? You out here?” someone whispered, their voice low but scratchy. “I know you’re there. I saw you. I’m going to find you sooner or later so come on out. Celine?”

A fox pattered through the woods. As it moved it made a series of barking noises followed by a howl. The man stopped. He followed the sound, jerking his body in one direction and then another. Soon enough, he turned around and she saw that the man was Phillip.

“Mira, what are you doing down there? Come on, get up.”

She hadn’t seen the gun at first, but as soon as he’d faced her she saw it in his hand. Mira stood up slowly. She was cautious of her movements, not wanting to startle him. He had the expression of a wild animal trapped in terror, and the cagey behavior of a man being hunted. His eyes, wide and bloodshot, twitched as he kept shifting his attention from her to the woods.

“I heard you calling for Celine,” Mira sputtered out, a reflexive response in the moment. Phillip’s eyes darted at her before turning to another sound he heard in the woods. He twitched again, his hands shaking as he held the gun.

“I saw her. Or, I thought I did. She had on her dress. She looked beautiful. All dressed in white. Glowing almost. I don’t understand. I had to make sure.”

“Phillip, Celine is dead.”

“No, she’s not. I saw her. Who did I see if it wasn’t her? She’s tormenting me. That’s what this is. She said she changed her mind about the wedding, didn’t want to marry me after all. She said she was leaving me. Said she wasn’t happy. Wasn’t happy.” He sputtered out the word, refusing to hide his contempt. “After all I’d done for her. I’d given her everything she wanted and she still wasn’t happy.”

“You’re the one who killed her,” Mira whispered, backing away in the shock of the realization. She would have screamed it if she could. Called him the monster that he was. Because of his money, Phillip had fashioned himself to believe he was a man unlike the rest, but he was just the same as them, ready to taste the blood of any who dared to believe they were better than him.