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.

The countdown reached zero a heartbeat before the sky exploded in bursts of blue, yellow, and pink. Next to Quinn, Valerie pulled a tipsy Rhiannon into a messy New Year's kiss that involved more laughing than actual kissing; Tristan lifted Holly Greenbrook straight off her feet and spun her in a dizzying circle.

Quinn felt like they had slipped out of time, out of place. They registered the noises around them, the cheers and New Year's wishes, the fireworks and church bells, but it was as if they came from another room, muffled and far away.

The one thing that pierced through the fog was the girl. She was still standing in the exact same spot, her dark eyes fixed on the crowd. Quinn finally realized what it was that made her look so unnatural; while everyone else was in motion, smiling up at the fireworks and hugging their loved ones, the girl was completely still. She didn't blink, didn't shift on her feet. The wind that whispered in everyone else's hair didn't seem to touch her.

Quinn was walking before they'd even made the conscious decision to move. They heard a voice calling after them—Valerie, probably, or maybe Holly—but they didn't stop. They didn't know where they were going, either. All they knew was that they had to get out of there, away from the noise and the press of bodies and the eerie stillness of the girl with the angry eyes.

In the end, they unconsciously found themself heading in the direction of the dorms. There were two ways to get there: one that wound around several blocks and one that cut straight through them but led across the cemetery.

Quinn chose the longer way.

The farther they walked, the more the noises from the party faded into the distance, until they could hear their own shallow breathing again, the sound of their shoes against the slick cobblestones. Ahead of them, the college campus came into view, its old brick buildings overgrown with ivy. They could've simply gone back to their room and tried to sleep—instead, they walked straight past the dorms and down the path that led into the woods.

It was a route they could have walked with their eyes closed by now. Their feet found their way automatically: down the narrow trail, past the first clearing, then taking a left, deeper into the underbrush. Finally, the lake came into view.

The first time Quinn had stumbled upon it had been in October. Back then, they had spent entire nights walking aimlessly through the woods to stop themself from thinking about the magick they possessed, that terrifying new side of them that had been dragged to the surface without their doing or consent.

It was kind of ironic that, in trying to run away from it, their magick had led them straight to the biggest body of water in their area.

The lake was wide enough that it was difficult to see the other side. The Murmuring River ended here; it was a wild, vicious thing that one could hear roaring from miles away. Here, it was subdued, meeting the lake like a lover returning home, its desperation fading into quiet contentment as the two melted into one.

Drawing their jacket tighter around themself, Quinn sat down at a safe distance from the water. The sight of its surface—swimming with stars, the silver sickle of the moon bathing among them—was one of the most beautiful things Quinn could imagine. Still, no matter how loud it called for them, they had never gone inside. Just because they accepted the fact that they possessed water magick didn't mean they felt like embracing it.

Usually, Quinn experienced at least some semblance of safety when they came here, but that night not even the soothing sight of the water calmed them. They jumped at every snap and rustle in the underbrush, terrified that at any moment the girl might materialize out of thin air and fix them with her furious gaze.

No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't get the look on her face out of their head, the heat in her stare, the violent set of her jaw. Where had she come from? What had she done at the party? And why had she been so angry?

There was another obvious question that Quinn tried to push away. It was one of those thoughts that felt like sinking, and they already spent too much time drowning in their own head. Still, it looped in their brain over and over: Why had Quinn seen her?

Wrapping their arms tighter around themself, they pressed their head between their knees, their own shaky breathing loud in their ears. Dimly, they remembered the grounding technique their mom had taught them years ago. Look around and name five things you can see. Quinn raised their gaze. The lake. The trees. The moon. The—

Their heart gave a violent kick when their phone suddenly vibrated in their coat pocket. Quinn dug it out with trembling hands to find their mom's caller ID flashing across the screen. They debated ignoring it, but guilt already commanded their hand as it held the phone up to their ear.

"Hi," Quinn rasped.

"Hi, Quinn! Happy new year!" their father's voice crackled through the speaker, shouting to drown out the cheers and music roaring in the background.

"Happy new year," Quinn numbly echoed.

"What are you up to? Are you enjoying the party?"

"Are you outside?" Quinn's mom threw in. "It sounds so quiet!"

"Oh... yeah, I left for a bit. A friend wanted to have a smoke." The lies rolled off Quinn's tongue with sickening ease. "It's a good party though. The entire town is there."

"I would love to see that," their mom wistfully said. "You'll have to let us come visit you soon! I can't believe you've been there an entire semester already and we've never even seen your dorm."

Quinn stared blindly ahead at the lake. A second round of fireworks had started, the colors showering from the sky rendering the water a technicolored mirror. "Yeah. Maybe."

There was an expectant silence, as if they were waiting for Quinn to add something. When nothing else came, their father said, "You should come home sometime, kid. We miss your face."

Quinn gripped a little tighter onto their phone. The last time they'd seen their parents had been the day they'd left for college. They only lived two hours away; Quinn could have visited them every weekend if they'd wanted to. It was what they had promised before they'd gotten into the car with a few pieces of luggage and the future looking bold and bright in the distance.

But the Quinn that had hugged their parents goodbye wasn't the Quinn that sat alone by a lake on New Year's. This Quinn had commanded a river and breathed the scent of dark magick, had spoken to the deceased and seen their best friend possessed.

Death clung to them like a cloak they could never take off. They wouldn't bring it to their parents' doorstep.

"Quinn?" their father questioned as the silence dragged on, a hint of worry creeping into his voice.

"Sorry, yeah. I have to get back to the party now." Quinn swallowed hard around the lump in their throat. "I miss you guys too."

They hung up before either of their parents could respond. As they pocketed their phone again, their fingers brushed against the crumpled note they had carelessly put there earlier.

In the pale moonlight, they could faintly make out their hasty handwriting, looping letters that looked like they were trying to flee the paper. They traced the sentence with their fingertips once, twice, before they leaned forward and cast it into the lake.

They didn't say a manifestation spell, but this time they did wish, desperately and with all their heart, as they watched the ink bleed from the paper and the paper succumb to the water:

Please let me go back to normal.