Young Writers Society

Gabriel laughed a little at that.

It wasn't a loud laugh. It was more of a chuckle than anything else. It was quick, ironic laugh. Quinn knew that Gabriel knew how that sounded. Quinn hadn't reacted well to him acting like that back when they first met, and she hadn't been stuck in briars right before it.

"It does, actually," Gabriel said. "Ghosts have rules. Everything has rules. You just don't know them all yet."

He gestured behind him with a jerk of his head. He didn't want to put down the leather jacket just yet.

"That kind of ghost is a partial," he said. "Partials get the name for only being partially here. They focus on something from when they were alive. If not that, they focus on their deaths. The more brutal and sudden the death, the more likely the ghost is to be violent. Seeing that our friend over there has a broken neck and was trying to follow us down even when they physically couldn't, I don't think they were all that friendly."

"Right. Okay." Ky said with this energy:


Still, being with a cocky idiot seemed better than being alone... probably... for now, anyhow. And, well, she got the distinct impression that he was going to let his man-pride stop him from running away when it was clearly time to run away. Which was fine with her. It meant she got an extra headstart. Possibly multiple headstarts, if Quinn was also stupid, or Pratik's man-pride was also deadset on self-destruction.

There were two options here.

Gabriel could have admitted—and shown—that he was even less human than the ghost that they had left behind. That might have gotten Ky to believe him.

But it might have also terrified her, and the last thing Gabriel wanted was for her to run away from him. So he settled with doing the second option: just shrugging off the exchange and making a mental note to readdress his supernatural experience later.

(If he had known that Ky was considering that Quinn was stupid, he would have admittedly gone with the first option. Unfortunately, he didn't.)

"...what killed them?" Quinn quietly, suddenly said.

Gabriel thought for a moment.

"It's hard to tell," he said. "It could have been an accident. It could have been murder. I can't say for sure without any kind of background information."

Aleth would be delighted about this when she reported back to him.

Both the fact that she'd gotten so thoroughly, humiliatingly spooked. And the fact that she was stuck with lunatics.

He got what he wanted: she was never going to be mouthy to him ever again. If she survived this hell. If.

Quinn gave a tiny nod. She trusted Gabriel's opinion, even when he didn't have much of one. She also knew that figuring out a ghost's cause of death was the best way to help them pass on unless a reaper was present. They didn't have a reaper, so the only thing they could do was research and hope for the best.

...Of course, they hadn't been able to do a lot of research.

Quinn quietly sighed and looked down at the ground. She had tried researching this path as much as possible before, but so many tragedies happened on it that it was impossible to remember them all. And if that ghost had been reported missing instead of dead, then it would be even harder.

Sensing her disappointment, Gabriel lowered one hand and gave her a pat on the shoulder, quickly followed by a thumbs up. Moving his hand made the leather jacket become more than a little lopsided, and Quinn grinned a little at how silly she knew they looked right now.

Ky looked helplessly back at Pratik, wondering if he was any saner, or if she was going to have to be with three lunatics this entire time.

Pratik, however, was sort of a mix of all three of them. On one hand, he was only mildly spooked. He'd come on this trail because he was bored, and, well, he wasn't bored anymore. So that was nice. On the other hand, he didn't have nearly the cocky boldness that Gabriel did. For once in his entire life.

Well, okay. Pratik did have a habit of being cocky. But he was justified in it. He always assessed situations and made sure he could handle them, then he chose to act obnoxiously over-confident. But he always had things under control. And he wasn't certain he had this under control -- and he doubly doubted that Gabriel did.

If he didn't know how to assess a threat, it was precious rare that anyone else did. He was always wary to accept instruction from anyone, and he certainly wasn't going to place his faith in this random stranger. That's how you ended up dead. And he wasn't particularly interested in dying tonight.

"Let's put distance between us and find a place to hunker down for the night," he said.

"Okay," Gabriel said. He didn't think they needed to get all that much farther from the ghost, but he could tell that Pratik and Ky were spooked by it. It was easier just going with this than arguing right now.

It was still raining, so Gabriel kept holding the leather jacket up above his and Quinn's heads as he scanned the forest. There was no real path at this point. They just needed to pick a direction to go in.

"Let's keep walking this way," Gabriel suggested, gesturing ahead of them with a nod of his head.

Quinn, who didn't really have a preference, nodded as well.

Pratik glanced at the way Gabriel gestured, then up at the path, then back at him and nodded. Thankfully he wanted to go the direction Pratik would have picked, so there didn’t need to be a fight. He strode forward in that direction.

Ky looked between them. She didn’t have any idea which was was the right way, but she sure as heck wasn’t going to be by herself after that, so she trotted after Pratik, slightly closer than polite.

They were both drenched at this point. Ky’s hair was saturated with water and plastered to her head, making her look like a miserable drowned rat. She was also shivering slightly, but thankfully it was subtle enough not to be visible. For now. She was sure that would change sooner or later, and she didn’t know what she’d do once it did. She didn’t have dry clothes to change into. And she didn’t have an excuse for why she didn’t.

As they walked, Quinn glanced at Gabriel.

She knew she was supposed to keep her magic secret. Almost everyone did. The few that were more open about their magic didn't share it with people who were essentially strangers. But they had all just faced a ghost, and Pratik and Ky were both soaked right now. If Quinn used one of the spells she had been practicing, she could help dry their clothes and deflect the rain way.

Gabriel was oblivious to her moral dilemma. He just kept his eyes on the trees ahead of them, likely looking for another ghost or supernatural being.

"...Have you ever seen ghosts before?" Quinn asked Ky and Pratik, trying to test the waters.

Ky looked at her irritably. "Of course I have."

She most definitely had not. The evidence of her being muddy and soaked clear through was painfully apparent all over her from her panicked attempt of fleeing. But if everyone else was going to lie then she would, too.

Pratik looked at her skeptically, deciding against calling her bluff, even though it was obvious. He glanced back at Quinn. "Have you?"

Quinn thought for a moment, glanced at Gabriel, and then nodded. She hadn't seen as much as Gabriel had, but she also hadn't been interacting with the supernatural as long as he had been.

"I've seen some," Quinn said, and it would be obvious to anyone listening that her words were genuine. She looked to Pratik, waiting to see what his answer to the question would be.

Pratik nodded. Unlike Ky, Quinn didn't seem to be lying. Which was good for him. He could be responsible for this many people, but it'd be easier to keep them all safe if at least two of them had somewhat of an idea of how to protect themselves.

He didn't plan to volunteer any information whatsoever about himself, though, so he simply asked, "Think we'll see any more soon?"

Quinn bit her lip.

"I'm not sure," she said. "They show up when it's dark, but I'm don't know if there's any other ones in this part of the woods."

Pratik nodded. "Well, we can build a fire and keep watch. It'll be fine."