Chapter 44

“Let them have their New Year’s Eve, Smarty,” he said.

“We’ll always have Halloween.” I kissed him some more.

We’d counted down the minutes from October 30 to October 31 to make our first kiss coincide with the anniversary of the day we met eleven years earlier.

“I live 364 days just for this one,” I said.

“Someday, we’ll have forever,” he promised me. “If you want that.”

“I want that more than anything.”

“Someday, then,” he said.

* * * *

The memory was one of the briefest yet, as my cohorts and I somehow traveled once more through the ether of the odd and mysterious island to land in a new destination. Was it the one we sought?

“Are we there yet?” I tried a joke no one laughed at.

Shaking off the chills and pins and needles that were now an expected side effect of ghostly travel, I tried to take in my surroundings. “It’s a house.”

“Your sense of observation is quite keen.”

“Ditto your use of sarcasm, Liu,” I told her.