30. Bat
thirty
Bat
“CHARLIE!”
Again, I tried to kick that goddamn weapon, and again, nothing. Sheer panic shredded my concentration, made me wispy, made me useless.
Focus. Fucking focus.
I threw everything I had into my foot and kicked at the gun. My boot connected with a satisfying crunch.
The PolterPulse flew across the basement, smashing against the far wall.
Yet Charlie’s body was limp.
Too limp.
“Charlie.”
His limbs jerked once, then stilled. Fingers uncurled against the stone. Head lolling to one side.
“Charlie!”
My voice broke.
A soft glow emanated from his chest—pale gold threading upward like smoke. It coalesced beside his body. Took shape.
Charlie stood there. My lovely Charlie. Whole. Confused. He looked down at himself—at his body sprawled on the stone—and his face crumpled.
“No.” I shook my head, backing away. “No, no, no!”
My gaze slid to my door. The door waiting for me. Could Charlie see it? Carved from light itself, edges shimmering like heat haze. I could feel it—ancient and patient and finite. Waiting.
Charlie’s ghost looked at me. His eyes held a terrible calm. “It’s okay, Bat.”
“It’s not fucking okay!” I lunged toward his body, dropped to my knees. “You’re not—you can’t—”
“You need to go through your door.”
My head snapped up. “What?”
He gestured in the direction I’d glanced at. “This could be your only chance to leave.”
“Are you insane?” I stared between him and his body. “I’m not leaving you here alone! I’m not having you go through what I just went through—years and years and years of this fucking manor, but this time, completely and utterly alone?!”
“Bat—”
“This isn’t right!” I screamed, words tearing out of me. “You were meant to live. You were meant to go make beautiful music. For both of us.”
Charlie smiled. Sad and small. “Plans change.”
“No!”
I threw myself at his dead body, pressed my palms against his chest. Started compressions. One. Two. Three.
Nothing.
My hands sank through his ribcage. I roared and tried again, pouring every scrap of energy I had left into making myself solid. My palms connected. I shoved down hard.
But I was too weak. Too scattered. The compressions weren’t deep enough—weren’t doing anything.
“No!”
“Bat, stop.” Charlie’s ghost drifted closer. “It’s okay—”
“It’s not okay! You don’t die! This isn’t how this ends!”
I scanned the basement wildly. Evelyn huddled against the wall, shaking. Father Ashworth and Harrison’s bodies lay crumpled and broken nearby.
Brad.
My gaze snapped to him. Those ridiculous muscles. Those strong fucking arms.
The idea struck like lightning.
I’d possessed him before. Twice. I could do it again. One last time.
I didn’t know if I was strong enough. Didn’t care. I would try even if it shredded me to pieces, worse than what Cornelius had done.
I stumbled to Brad’s corpse, dropped beside it. Still warm—the limbs would still work, surely?
“What… what are you doing?” Charlie’s ghost asked.
I looked up at him. “I promised I’d always save you.”
Then I dove.
Different this time. Emptier. No consciousness to shove aside—just vacant meat and cooling blood. I poured myself into muscles and tendons, nerves and bone. Brad’s body jerked. Convulsed.
Sat up.
Charlie’s ghost vanished from view.
I lurched toward Charlie’s body, Brad’s legs unsteady beneath me. Dropped to my knees and positioned my hands over his sternum.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Brad’s arms were strong. Powerful. The compressions went deep.
Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
I tilted Charlie’s head back, pinched his nose. Sealed my mouth over his and breathed.
His chest rose.
Again. Compressions. Thirty of them. Two breaths.
Again.
Nothing lasts forever, that’s what they all say
Again.
But I’d trade my soul to make you stay
Again.
In this moment, suspended in time
Where your heart beats in rhythm with mine
My throat closed. Hot tears streamed down my face.
Forever’s just a word until you find
Someone worth leaving the whole world behind
Charlie gasped.
His back arched. Eyes flew open—gorgeous blue drowning in confusion and pain.
“Brad?” he croaked.
I sobbed. Couldn’t form words. Just kept my hands on his chest, feeling the flutter of his heartbeat beneath my palms.
“Brad… You’re alive,” Charlie whispered. Blood trickled from his nose.
I opened my mouth. Brad’s voice came out—deep and wrong. “It’s me. It’s Bat.”
Recognition sparked. “Bat?” His hand lifted, trembling, to touch Brad’s hair. His fingers tangled in the short strands. “You saved me.”
“Always,” I promised. I leaned down and kissed his forehead, tasting salt and copper.
A shriek cut through the basement.
Evelyn pointed at something behind us, her face chalk-white.
That fucking PolterPulse. More sparks shot from its cracked casing, leaping to a pile of ancient cloth. The fabric caught instantly. Flames crawled across it, hungry and bright.
Smoke billowed.
The fire spread to wooden crates. Old furniture. A tapestry hanging on the wall.
“We need to get out of here!”
I scooped Charlie into Brad’s strong arms. Feather-light, fragile as glass. His head lolled against my shoulder.
Evelyn stared at her husband’s body, frozen. “But—”
“Walk or burn.” I charged toward the exit, praying she’d follow.
The basement door that Cornelius had resealed was back on the floor. I sprinted past it, past the shattered fuse box against the wall.
What would happen when the flames reached that?
Nothing good.
My feet—Brad’s feet—pounded up the stairs.
The kitchen doorway gaped ahead. I caught a glimpse of the table where Molly had served endless cups of phantom tea, the kettle she’d polished until it gleamed. Smoke already curled along the ceiling.
Down the corridor. Past portraits of people long dead. Grimthornes with their cold eyes and colder hearts.
Into the grand lobby.
The twins’ laughter echoed in my memory—high and sweet and terrible. I could almost see them there: Rosemary chasing Henry around the marble pillars, both shrieking with delight.
All gone now. All at peace.
The front door hung open. I barrelled through it into the garden.
Grey clouds pressed down on us. The storm had passed, leaving everything washed out and colourless. The oak tree where I’d first shown myself to Charlie stood sentinel, branches dripping.
I’d spent half my afterlife wandering these grounds. Thomas’s domain. I could almost smell the phantom flowers he tended, see him bent over rosebushes that no longer existed.
I ran faster. Brad’s body didn’t even strain, his powerful legs eating up the distance.
Evelyn’s footsteps pattered behind us.
We charged towards the black iron gate, not stopping until we’d put a good hundred metres between us and the manor.
I wasn’t even the slightest bit out of breath.
Evelyn stumbled past us, holding her phone high overhead. Searching for signal, her face streaked with dirt and tears.
“All the electricians,” she mumbled.
“What?”
“They all said—” She took a breath. “They all said the manor was a deathtrap. The wiring.”
A sharp crack split the air.
We all flinched.
Something inside the manor had given way. A support beam, maybe. Something surrendering to the flames.
Smoke poured from the chimneys—thick and black, nothing like the gentle wisps from a fireplace. It billowed from the upper windows. Glass shattered somewhere deep in the building’s guts. Orange light flickered behind the library windows.
Grimthorne Manor was burning.
Charlie nuzzled deeper into my chest. His breathing came shallow and quick.
“You can put me down now,” he mumbled.
“Nah. You’ve been beaten black and blue over the last week. I think you deserve a rest.”
I adjusted my grip, cradling him closer. My throat tightened. I wanted to hold him as long as possible. Every second a gift I’d never thought I’d have—solid arms, a beating heart, the weight of another person against me.
Because soon I’d have to let go. Soon I’d fade back into nothing, and Charlie would be alone, and—
Wait.
I frowned. Shifted Charlie’s weight.
A beating heart.
A bloody beating heart. Brad was… alive. Alive and well. Ish.
The other times I’d possessed Brad, I’d felt my energy draining like water through cupped hands.
But I’d been in Brad’s body for… what? Ages now.
And I felt fine.
Better than fine. Strong. Solid. No flickering at the edges of my consciousness, no sensation of being stretched too thin. Brad’s very much functional, pounding heartbeat thrummed steadily in my chest. His lungs expanded and contracted without effort. Blood pumped through his veins, warm and real.
I’d been running on nothing even before I dove into Brad’s corpse. Scattered and weak from Cornelius shredding me. I shouldn’t have been able to possess anything, let alone maintain it for this long.
But…
But I wasn’t maintaining anything, was I?
I wasn’t holding myself inside Brad’s body through sheer force of will. Wasn’t clinging desperately to meat and bone whilst my own spectral form screamed to return.
I just… was.
The realisation hit all at once.
Brad was gone. Cornelius had eaten his soul, left nothing but an empty shell. And I’d poured myself into that emptiness. Filled every crevice, every corner, every cell.
There was no Brad to push me out.
No consciousness waiting in the wings to reclaim its rightful place.
Just me.
I tried to do what I always did when possessing someone—let my awareness split. Pull back just enough to feel the edges of my true form, spectral and separate.
Nothing.
There was no sense of me and him as separate entities I was holding together through concentration.
Just… one. Unified.
I couldn’t leave, even if I wanted to.
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
Was I… alive?
Actually, properly, permanently alive?
A laugh bubbled up—high and borderline hysterical. I bit it back, but my shoulders shook.
“Bat… you need to go back,” Charlie rumbled against my chest. “Your door. You have to go find your door before it’s too late.”
Another laugh burst out. I couldn’t stop it. It sounded delightfully manic.