"Absolutely not."

Quinn wasn't sure how they'd expected Vincent to react when they told him about their conversation with Joy and Jun, but it wasn't like this. He was sitting in the windowsill in their usual classroom, his arms folded across his chest. The look on his face wasn't relief, or even surprise—instead, he looked like Quinn had just told him they hated his suspenders and not Hey, I found out your soul is going to disappear in a few months max, so I'm going to save it.

"What?"

"I don't want you to do that," he said. His voice was as quiet as ever, but his tone was firm, the usual still blue of his eyes troubled. "I know how much you hate your magick. That it scares you. I don't want you to feel that way because of me."

"I don't feel that way because of you." Quinn gave a light kick to the wall next to where Vincent was sitting. "And, anyway, it's a stupid feeling. My abilities aren't just going to go away if I ignore them for long enough. I have to start somewhere, don't I?"

"This feels like a pretty big first step," Vincent pointed out, clearly not convinced. "Are you sure you don't want to wait and start with something that's not—"

"I can't wait," Quinn interrupted him. "Vincent, that's the whole point. We don't have time. You could vanish any second and it would be my fault because I spent the last few weeks doing everything but help you."

Vincent scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked even more tired today, his voice faint, his outline blurry. How did this not frighten him? How could he feel like this and still insist on coddling Quinn? "It wouldn't be your fault. None of this is." He broke off, glancing over at the clock. "Also, speaking of time—shouldn't you get going?"

Quinn wanted to call him out on his cheap distraction, but he was right: it was almost eight p.m., the time that they had agreed to meet Luis that day. "Fine. But this isn't the last time we talk about this."

Vincent gave a noncommittal shrug.

Shaking their head at him, Quinn grabbed their coat from the windowsill. While they buttoned it, they asked, "Are you coming with me?"

Vincent blinked. "To Luis's?"

"Yeah. He told me to bring my, and I quote, ghost friends," Quinn said, unable to bite back a smile.

"He said that?" Vincent incredulously asked.

"Uh-huh. This whole thing is like Christmas for him. I'm sure he'd love to know he met a real life spirit."

Vincent considered it for a few moments, his head tilted. Finally, his curiosity won and he slid off the windowsill, falling into step next to Quinn.

Outside the art building, it was so dark it might as well have been midnight. Together, the two of them left the campus behind and wound their way through the dimly lit alleyways. In the yellow glow of the flickering streetlights, Quinn's breath formed white clouds; meanwhile, Vincent was much like the translucent fog itself, his face barely visible in the shadows, the light never touching him.

Soon, the storefront of Ortíz and Son came into view. Drenched in moonlight, it looked even more imposing—even more haunted.

Well. At least that part would be true in a moment.

Clutching the strap of their messenger bag, Quinn neared the front door, glancing over their shoulder once to make sure Vincent was still behind them. He was studying the building with obvious distrust. "Are you sure this is safe? This place gives me the heebie-jeebies."

"I'm sure," Quinn said while typing out a quick message to the number Luis had given them the day before.

"It's just... strange that this guy is so into this, don't you think?" Vincent continued, uneasily shifting from one foot to the other. "Most people are scared of ghosts and don't give them a formal invite to their house."

"Vincent, you saw him," Quinn said, barely holding back a laugh. "Did he strike you as particularly dangerous?"

"He could be! The whole point of serial killers is that you wouldn't be able to tell by looking at them!" Vincent ran a hand through his hair, clearly distressed. "Quinn, I can't even protect you if something happens, my stupid ghost hands would go straight through him—"

Before Quinn could reassure him that Luis was, in fact, not a violent axe murderer, the doorknob turned. There was an ominous creaking noise as the door slowly swung open—had it sounded like that last time Quinn had been here?—before, finally, Luis poked his head through the crack and beamed at them.

"You made it! Come in, come in," he said, stepping aside to let Quinn inside. As they passed him, he squinted a little at the sidewalk outside. "Did you come alone?"

"No. Uh... Vincent is here, too."

Luis instinctively turned to where Vincent was standing. "The not-great-grandfather from the 1930s, huh? I'm Luis. Pleasure to meet you."

Quinn was kind of glad Luis couldn't see Vincent—he was staring at Luis like he had grown a second head, his expression somewhere between bewildered and afraid. The serial killer theory was still not ruled out, then.

When he—predictably—didn't get a response, Luis closed the door. With it shut, the inside of the showroom fell deadly silent, all the light gone now that the glow of the streetlights didn't reach it. "Come on, I'll show you my room," Luis said.

While Quinn staggered after him, doing their best not to bump into every single coffin on their way, Vincent whispered, "It's not too late to run. Seriously, maybe we should just leave—"

"Shut up," Quinn whispered back, followed by a banging sound as they ran into yet another casket.

There was a quiet chuckle; then, a warm hand grabbed onto theirs, the touch so confident it didn't even occur to them to pull away. With Luis tugging them along, they made it to the end of the room with their shins still intact, though their heartbeat was stumbling more than ever.

"I don't understand how you can be so casual about all of this," Quinn said into the thick silence.

"I grew up next to the cemetery with a father who's a coffin maker and a mother who would tell me La Llorona would get me if I stayed out past my curfew," Luis chuckled. "The spirit world and I are best friends." A moment later, he guided Quinn's hand to the railing. "Here are the stairs."

Clinging onto the banister, Quinn slowly made their way up the steps, Vincent ahead of them (presumably to make sure Quinn wasn't walking into a murder dungeon) and Luis at their back. Over the soft creaking of the wood, they asked, "Are your parents not home?"

"My dad's at my uncle's place to watch some kind of sports game, and my mom's still at work," Luis explained. "She's a paramedic, so her shifts are kind of all over the place."

Quinn almost had to chuckle at that. It was an odd combination: one parent dedicated to saving lives while the other made a living with death.

Reaching the third floor, Luis tugged them along to the door at the very end of it, allowing Quinn to step in first. His room was not what Quinn had expected. It was small, lit only by a few tiny lamps. There was a tidy desk, a neat bed, an armchair that faced the window. The walls were painted a warm maroon and mostly bare—no posters, no paintings, only a few family photos in simple black frames and a small Mexican flag. The only thing that felt like Luis were the two bookshelves that took up one of the walls, packed from top to bottom with tattered paperbacks in both English and Spanish, spines cracked and little post-it notes sticking out from the pages.

While Vincent drifted around the room, taking in what little there was to see, Luis shut the door behind them. In a few big strides, he crossed the room towards the scented candle on his bedside table—Dracula's Lair, naturally—and held it up with a flourish. "If you're here... snuff out this candle."

Vincent shot Quinn a disbelieving glance before he, with a long-suffering eye roll, leaned forward to blow on it. It took him a few seconds, but eventually the flame flickered and then went out with a quiet sizzle, leaving the wick smoldering gently and Luis beaming like he'd just won the lottery.

"Did you not believe me?" Quinn laughed.

"I did! I just always saw this in movies and thought it seemed cool. And it was," Luis said before bending down next to his bed to pull a duffel bag out from underneath it.

"I have this thing I've always wanted to try," he explained as he rummaged through its contents. "I bought it two years ago, and I've only used it once or twice without anything ever happening, but... I think it's worth a shot. A-ha!" Triumphantly, he pulled out a small black electronic device barely bigger than Quinn's phone.

Intrigued, they sank down next to him on the floor to get a closer look. "What is it?"

"It's called a spirit box. It's... don't laugh, but it's supposed to allow ghosts... spirits? To communicate with you. It basically skips through a bunch of radio channels at rapid speed, so if there are longer words or sentences, it's likely someone's communicating back. Maybe Vincent can use their frequency to... talk to me." By the end of it, Luis looked almost embarrassed, his cheeks flushed a bright shade of red. "I don't know. It's probably stupid."

"No," Quinn quickly said. "I think it's a really good idea. Trying it can't hurt. Right?" They directed the last question at Vincent.

He studied the device for a few seconds before he gave a shrug and sat down in front of Quinn. The three were now huddled together in a tight circle, the spirit box lying in the middle.

"He's open to trying," Quinn told Luis.

Immediately, his face lit up. "Okay. This might be a bit loud, so—"

The rest of his sentence got drowned out as the spirit box came to life, sputtering a deafening sequence of garbled radio snippets. Quinn fought the instinct to cover their ears and nodded at Vincent instead.

From the look on his face, it was clear that he didn't think this was going to work. Still, he gamely leaned closer to the spirit box and said, "Uhm... hello? This is Vincent."

"I hear him!" Luis exclaimed, his face lighting up in a way that suggested that maybe he hadn't quite believed this was going to work either. "Holy shit, dude, hi!"

A giddy kind of happiness bubbled up in their chest as Quinn watched Vincent staring at the spirit box. The look on his face reminded Quinn of the first time they'd acknowledged Vincent—the disbelieving surprise that someone had not only noticed him but wanted to talk.

"Hello," he finally murmured. His voice came out of the spirit box sounding a little distorted but still like him—soft and timid, with the trace of an accent that sounded just a little bit old-fashioned. "Thank you for not being a serial killer."

"Thanks for talking to me. I can't believe—I can't believe you're here. I wish I could see you, but just hearing you is... man, this is crazy."

"Hold on," Quinn said, opening their bag to pull out their sketchbook. "I drew him. He's... here."

Luis slowly accepted the drawing of Vincent, his mouth dropping open. "This is what he looks like?"

"More or less, yeah."

Luis whistled quietly through his teeth, lifting his head to grin at where he assumed Vincent sat. "Damn, Casper. You clean up nice."

Quinn wasn't sure if they were imagining it or if Vincent's cheeks truly gained a bit more color. "Thank you."

Something about the way he was still leaning down to talk straight into the spirit box was strangely adorable. Everything about the two of them, reeling with happiness at being able to talk to each other, was strangely adorable. Quinn couldn't stop smiling as they glanced between them.

"For how long have you two known each other?" Luis inquired.

"About two weeks now," Quinn said. "Before then, I couldn't really... see ghosts."

Luis's eyebrows flew up. "No shit. So your magick grew gradually?"

"I guess." Quinn paused. "I know you want to know all about it, but, to be honest, I don't know too much about it except that all witches draw their magick from one specific element and that mine is water."

"So, how does it work? Do you have to say spells? Cast symbols? Oh my god, do you have a wand?"

"No," they snorted. "Most of the time the water knows what I want. All I have to do is speak my will out loud and it does what I say."

Quinn could see the exact second an idea formed in Luis's head. Before they could stop him, he was already reaching for the cup on his bedside table. There weren't more than two sips of water left in it—still, Quinn cringed when he turned it upside down and spilled it onto the hardwood floor of his room. Grinning, he said, "Show me."

"No," they immediately said.

"Come on, please? Otherwise, I'll have to get up and get a towel from the first floor and it'll be this whole thing—"

"You spilled it on purpose!" Quinn protested.

"Please?"

"Still no."

"Please?"

Quinn had a distinct feeling he was making his eyes big on purpose. They also had a distinct feeling it was working. "Luis—"

"Please please please please please please please plea—"

"Okay, fine!" Quinn reached over to cover his mouth. "I'll do it. But only this once."

Luis nodded, immediately going quiet.

Directing their gaze at the puddle on the floor, Quinn took a deep breath. It wasn't even a lot of water. And it was different than the one in the lake. It wasn't demanding or forceful, wasn't vicious like the river. It was just. A. Water. Spill.

"Rise," Quinn whispered.

And the water did. One drop after another, it rose from the floor and into the air, floating there as it waited for Quinn's next command. Next to them, Luis gasped softly; even Vincent had leaned closer, flickering slightly with excitement as he watched the drops dancing in mid-air.

Somehow, their reactions quenched what little fear there had been in Quinn. Instead, a new feeling was trickling into their chest, warm and syrupy-sweet: pride.

"Get him," they said, a heartbeat before the water shot forward and splashed straight into Luis's face, eliciting a barely concealed laugh from Vincent.

Luis looked far too excited as he wiped the water off with his sleeve. "Holy shit. That was amazing!"

"Thank you, thank you." Quinn gave a small bow.

"Does your entire family have water magick?"

"I don't know," they said, sobering a little. "The w—the magickal gene skipped a generation. My mom doesn't have any abilities, and my grandma... Well, she lives in China, and I've only spoken to her, like, twice in my life. She apparently didn't find it necessary to tell me about any of this then, so... I don't know."

Luis was silent for a long moment, his eyes never leaving Quinn's face. Finally, he asked, "You don't like the word witch, do you?"

They shifted a little, crossing, then uncrossing their legs. Luis was doing the thing again—the one where he saw them, clearer, maybe, than they could even see themself. It should have been terrifying; instead, it made them feel strangely warm. "No," they admitted. "It sounds... female. I don't know."

"You know you don't have to use the word for yourself if you don't like it, right? You can also use... I don't know, wizard."

"Or magician," Vincent threw in.

"Oh, I like that!" Luis said. "Very Harry Houdini."

Biting back a smile, Quinn shook their head. "I'll figure it out. That's not why we're here though."

"Right. Ghost time," Luis said, looking back at Vincent. "Quinn mentioned you don't know how you died?"

Even though Luis couldn't see it, Vincent gave a nod. "Yeah."

"What's the last thing you can remember?" Luis curiously asked.

Quinn sat up a little straighter, studying Vincent's face as he mulled over the question. There was a small furrow between his brows, his eyes going distant as he hesitantly said, "It's... blurry. It was sometime after Christmas, I think, and my mom had already been dead for a few years." He paused, his hands absentmindedly toying with his pocket watch. "I remember working at the grocery store. With Mom gone and my father drunk more often than not, I pretty much ran it. It wasn't going well. Chain shops had already started popping up everywhere during the twenties—all at once, everything was getting bigger, faster, cheaper. My dad warned my mom that our shop wasn't going to make it with all the new competition, but she wanted to hold onto it, and after she was gone, he was too deep in the bottle to care about selling it or looking for work somewhere else."

Next to Quinn, Luis shifted slightly, unconsciously leaning closer to the spirit box.

"After Black Tuesday hit, most people simply couldn't afford to buy from us anymore. We were barely getting by. I had to work full-time, and we were relying heavily on the savings mom had set aside for me—what would've been my college fund." Vincent gulped. "So... yeah. I remember working. I remember walking Rosie—my little sister—to school every day. I remember that it was snowing, the first real snowfall of the year, and that Rosie and I had to go looking for my father outside one evening to make sure he didn't freeze to death in a ditch somewhere. But I couldn't say what exactly happened which day—it's all a blur. Not... not just now. It was a blur back then, too."

"I'm sorry," Luis said, his tone so sincere even Quinn felt the weight of his words. "It sounds like a horrible way to live."

"What were you going to study?" Quinn tentatively asked.

Vincent smiled one of his lopsided smiles, his fingers still fidgeting. "I... it sounds stupid, but I wanted to study to become a writer."

"That's not stupid at all," Quinn said.

"My father didn't agree," Vincent murmured before shaking his head. "Anyway. That's all I know. I've tried to remember how it happened, but there's just... nothing there."

"I have an idea." Luis fished his phone out of his pocket. "Maybe we can trigger your memories with some visual stimuli." He turned his phone around to present Vincent the screen. It showed a photo of a lake, stormy and steel-grey. "Drowning?"

Vincent considered it for a moment. "Nothing."

Luis typed something else and pulled up a picture of a burning building. "Fire?"

"I don't think so."

And so they continued. Vincent and Quinn googled photos of all the possible ways one could die a tragic death—from getting stabbed to being run over by a car—and Vincent shook his head at each one.

They were on a cartoon picture of a bottle of poison when the door suddenly burst open and a man stuck his head inside. He had Luis's strong brows and jaw, but his curly hair was shot through with grey and instead of Luis's easy smile, there was a frown on his face. "Hello," he said, nodding at Quinn. To Luis, he said, "I didn't know you were having a guest over. What did we say about keeping the door open?"

Quinn looked at Luis expecting to find him grinning and ready to quip a smart reply—instead, he had suddenly gone very still, his expression shuttered. "Sorry," he said in a tight voice. "Forgot."

Mr. Ortíz gave a small huff. "Well, now you remember. Also, for God's sake, turn off that noise. Your mom is coming back any moment, and she'll want to sleep."

"She isn't here yet though, is she?" Luis said without looking at his father. "I'm sure she can let me know herself if it bothers her."

Quinn kept their eyes glued to the floor as a few seconds of strained silence passed. Finally, Mr. Ortíz turned around and left, leaving the door ajar behind him.

Luis barely waited until he was gone before he got up and firmly shut it. "Sorry." Even as he sank down next to Quinn again, the set of his shoulders was still tense. "Where were we?"

Quinn was about to reply, but the words got stuck in their throat when their gaze fell on Vincent. He was sitting with his hands clenched together in his lap, a look of helpless panic on his face as his body jerked and wavered. His words, when he spoke, were so quiet the spirit box didn't pick them up. "It's... happening... again. I... think I have... to leave."

"Vincent," Quinn said, panic bubbling in their chest as they watched him grow fainter. "Vincent, no. Look at me, you're here—"

He was gone before they even managed to finish the sentence. Without his presence, the room suddenly felt oppressively warm. The spirit box chattered on, deafening, a chain of meaningless fragments now that Vincent was no longer there to use it.

"What's wrong?" Luis asked. "Is he..."

"He's gone," Quinn whispered, shakily getting to their feet. "It happens sometimes. He's growing weaker, so it's hard for him to be corporeal. He's going to disappear completely if I don't—fuck, what if he doesn't come back? What if that was the last time I saw him?"

Luis was gazing up at them with wide eyes, clearly at a loss. Quinn couldn't blame him. What could you do when the ghost you'd just been chatting with suddenly vanished, maybe possibly forever?

"Hey," he finally said, though his voice sounded less than certain, "I'm sure he'll be back before we—"

He was cut off by a sudden drop in temperature. Quinn blinked, and there Vincent was, sitting in the same spot where he'd just been, except now he looked even paler and his hands were trembling slightly as he pressed them against the floor in a desperate attempt to ground himself.

"I'm getting help," was the first thing Quinn told him, their voice watery, "And I'm learning how to use my magick to get you out of here."

This time, Vincent's only reply was a tired nod.