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walk
into
her. He walked straight
through
her.
    As if she wasn’t even there.
    Livius shot Maddox a glare sharp enough to cut. “Get that stupefied look off your face, you fool. Let’s finish this and leave.”
    The girl watched them as they passed. Maddox couldn’t take his eyes off her.
    “You can see me,” she said. “They can’t, but you can!”
    Maddox forced his attention away from her, focusing instead on his footsteps. His heart began to pound harder.
    “Please, look at me.” The girl kept pace with him. She had long, honey-golden hair worn in a braid and blue eyes the color of the sea at dusk. She looked afraid and confused . . . but incredibly determined.
    He would not be fooled by her beauty. It seemed as if Lord Gillis was correct after all. His villa
was
haunted.
    Be gone, dark spirit
, he thought fiercely.
Leave me in peace.
    “I don’t know what’s going on, but something bad happened to me.” She tried to touch him, but her hand passed right through him like a wisp of smoke. He tensed up but felt nothing, whichsurprised him. The spirits he typically encountered left him chilled to the bone, shivering.
    She stared down at her hand with horror. “Oh my God, what’s going on?”
    Maddox kept his lips pressed together, tempted to give her another glance, but stopping himself just in time.
    “I
know
you can see me,” she said, her voice quavering a little but remaining strong otherwise. “Don’t try to pretend you can’t!”
    He blinked rapidly, dismayed that Livius and Gillis had stopped and were now blocking the entryway, preventing his escape from the spirit girl. They now stood face-to-face as Livius took a pouch of coins from the lord. The two clasped hands.
    “Look at me, will you?” the girl cried. “Please!”
    Her fearful tone pulled at him, and he finally met her gaze.
    A whisper of relief moved through her eyes. “My name is Becca Hatcher. I don’t know what’s happened to me, where I am, or how I got here, but I know one thing. You’re going to help me get back home.”

Chapter 4
    CRYSTAL
    I t was all a blur.
    She called 9-1-1. The ambulance arrived quickly, its lights flashing and siren blaring. She forced herself to hit the right buttons to call her mother and left a hysterical, rambling message. Then there was the ride to the hospital and the doctor asking her what happened. . . .
    It was a question Crys wasn’t sure she knew how to properly answer.
    “A b-book,” she stammered. “She was looking at a book at the store. It—it did
this
to her.”
    “Are you saying that something she read upset her?” the doctor asked. “What book was it?”
    “I don’t know. She—she just . . . I don’t know what it was! You have to help her!”
    “We’ll do everything we can,” the doctor assured her. “She’s stable at the moment. It’s possible she’ll snap out of this catatonic state all on her own.”
    Catatonic state.
It sounded so clinical.
    Her mother arrived within the hour and gave her a tight hug. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered into Crys’s hair.
    Then she disappeared into Becca’s room. It was a while before the doctor left, and Crys brushed past him to go inside. Her mother sat in the chair next to the bed.
    Becca’s eyes were still open, and she stared straight ahead. Every now and then she blinked.
    “Becca?” Crys ventured.
    “I don’t think she can hear you,” her mother replied softly. “It’s getting late. You should go home.”
    Crys ignored her. She went to Becca’s side and gently took her hand, cringing at the sight of the IV inserted into a vein and covered with tape.
    “You told the doctor there was a book,” her mother began.
    “There was. There . . . there
is
.”
    “I know. I went to the shop before I came here and put it somewhere safe.” She sighed and rubbed her temples. “You shouldn’t have opened that package, Crys. It wasn’t addressed to you.”
    Her mother’s calm demeanor infuriated her. “No