Dying Is The Easy Part

Chapter One: December 31st

The first time Quinn saw a ghost was on New Year's.

It had started with the noises. They were quiet at first, inconspicuous enough for them to ignore: footsteps echoing down an empty hallway, shuffling noises in deserted alleyways, leaves rustling on the path ahead even though there was no one else in sight. They were odd, but nothing that couldn't be explained away by the wind or a trick of the mind.

They became difficult to shrug off when they turned into voices drifting from abandoned classrooms and laughter gliding right past Quinn when they were heading to their dorm room. In the beginning, they'd stopped in their tracks, had asked the others if they'd heard that, just now, it came from right over there.

No one ever did. And so, Quinn learned to stop asking, to keep their head down and their feet moving, even as the soft echoes turned into recognizable voices.

They weren't sure when they'd grown louder—sometime in December, maybe. The last fall had been a whirlwind: over the course of a few weeks, Quinn had not only found out that they had magickal abilities, which was terrifying in its own right, but also that they were a Messenger. When the witches of the Greenbrook family spoke about it, their voices grew reverent. There weren't many witches who possessed the unique talent to communicate directly with the spirit world—to them, it was a gift, a blessing bestowed onto Quinn by the earth.

But they weren't the ones who woke up to disembodied voices whispering in the dead of night. They didn't have to constantly blink against the dark shadows lurking in their periphery. And they weren't the ones who, right here in the middle of the New Year's party in the town square, felt their blood freezing in their veins as they stared in the face of an honest-to-God apparition.

Quinn knew from the moment their gaze fell onto the girl that there was something fundamentally wrong about her. She was standing a few feet away, leaning against a faulty streetlight that buzzed on and off every other second. In its harsh light, her pale face flashed in short intervals; here a glimpse at spiky red hair; there a flicker catching in the safety pins that seemed to hold together most of her short black skirt. Her eyes were fixed on a couple sneakily sharing a joint a few feet away, but even so, there was a heat in her gaze that made Quinn recoil.

"Hey," Valerie laughed, steadying Quinn when they unconsciously took a stumbling step backward. "Everything okay?"

Quinn forced themself to tear their eyes away from the girl and looked at their best friend instead. Valerie was studying their face in that way she often did, her expression somewhere between worried and amused. There was a flush high on her cheeks that almost matched the flaming red of her hair, probably thanks to the several glasses of champagne she'd had during their earlier dinner with the Greenbrooks.

"Yeah," Quinn numbly said, their voice so soft it was instantly drowned out by the racket around them. 

The dozens of people squeezed together in the town square had begun counting down, yelling in unison as the hands of the clock on the town hall inevitably inched towards twelve. Quinn didn't think they'd ever felt less excited about the new year. Earlier, sitting around the kitchen table with Valerie and the other witches, they had all written down their wishes for the upcoming months on little pieces of paper. Quinn had written Please let me go back to normal before a sudden feeling of white-hot shame had made them shove the crumpled piece of paper into their pocket before the others could see. On a second try, they had half-heartedly scrawled To pass my finals.

Later that night, the witches had tossed their wishes into the bonfire they'd built in the garden. Quinn had stood a little ways off, biting down on their tongue hard enough to fill their mouth with the persistent taste of copper. While the others had looked up at the smoke rising into the night sky, firm in the belief that it would carry their wishes into the universe, Quinn had stared down at the paper crumbling into ashes and wished they'd feel anything at all.