Adja spent the rest of the day wondering if she had made the worst mistake of her life. She had given five hundred euros of devices to a guy she hardly knew. She was frozen in front of the screen of her laptop, empty-headed. I should go back... I should go back now!

To keep her sanity, she visited websites explaining how to use the spirit box to the best of its possibilities. She had never obtained any result with this device supposed to capture words and noises from the afterlife, in the middle of an extremely irritating 'tchtchtchtch'. Adja had given up, leaving he spirit box at the bottom of her bag. Making her viewers deaf and giving herself migraines during the editing was not part of her favorite hobbies.

As she was almost leaving to the Maison Dormeaux, the bedside telephone rang. The reception told her that a young man in a concerning psychological state wanted to come up here.

'If you do not know this man, we're calling the police.'

'Is he brown-haired? With glasses?'

'Yes, and a hiking bag.'

'Let him come.'

Adja hang up and started shaking. Oh no... Did he come back by foot? I hope he kept all my stuff... She felt like a kid who was going to be scowled by her parents. When Léon entered the room and dropped all of Adja's devices, she let out a sigh of relief.

'Is everything still working?' she asked, grabbing the spirit box.

'I... I...' he stuttered. 'I saw... I heard things...'

Adja let him rest for a few minutes. She wanted to bury him deeper, to press him and make him feel guilty, but he was a human being – cunning and unbearable, but a human being anyway. After he regained some composure, Léon stuck the memory card in Adja's computer and showed her three hours of recording.

'Let's watch it,' he said. 'After what you'll see, I packed and left, and walked, walked... I couldn't take it anymore, I was freezing, but I didn't want to stay there... You know, Sylvana, she really hates me...'

Adja was not surprised by this revelation. She watched the video, very focused. Léon had first used the K-II – after checking online on his phone how to turn it on – to check if it still worked without Adja. His stress was noticeable on the footage, and his panic when he asked dozens of questions to Sylvana. All the answers tied in.

'At this moment,' he commented, twisting his hands, 'I thought you were right, maybe, but I decided to use the Ouija board anyway. And then...'

'In the video, Léon explained that he didn't believe in Ouija. Why? Wasn't he aware hat Sylvana could hear him? The planchette moved before he even put his finger on it. The footage didn't lie: the Ouija had been activated without being touched.

'Sylvana made a superhuman effort to prove her existence to you,' Adja murmured, impressed. 'Did she disappear, afterwards? She was exhausted after opening the lock and stopping the camera. Moving objects in the actual real world is hard for ghosts.'

'She didn't go away,' Léon answered.

'In that case, I think she wanted to show you what she was capable of.'

Adja felt a little jealous of Sylvana's stubbornness, her efforts to be noticed by Léon, before remembering she was doing it for her. I'm the only reason she's going so far! I will have to apologize and thank her!

In the rest of the footage, Léon used the Ouija with a finger on the planchette, more and more anguished. Sylvana spelled words one after the other, scary words like REVENGE, DEATH, HELL, GOAWAY and GETOUTNOW. Léon had never managed to turn the spirit box on, and his hands shook too much to find out how to do it online. He had grabbed all the devices and had ran away.

'So,' Adja concluded, 'I think it'll be enough for today. Did you tell her goodbye with the Ouija board, at least? I didn't see that.'

'No, I was too scared,' he admitted sheepishly.

'You're lucky she's nice!' she scolded him. You always have to say goodbye to a spirit before the end of a seance, otherwise it can follow you and haunt you! Fortunately, she doesn't care and doesn't want to stay with you.'

'I didn't even think about it, it seemed so... weird. I don't want to be seen like that on the internet.'

'Are you kidding me?'

Adja crossed her arms and glared at him.

'I was nice enough to bring you to the house, where you played your little blackmailing game, whereas I could have spent the day helping Sylvana find peace! I gave you my most expensive material, I trusted you, all of this to please you, and now you want to walk away? I will copy this video and put it on my channel without any editing. But I have a second possibility, if it scares you so much: I will upload what we filmed this morning, and you will record yourself confirming that everything was real.'

She saw Léon hesitate. There are no questions to ask! Who wants to publish a video of himself crying and moaning for three hours? But suddenly, too quickly for her to stop him, Léon tore the memory card out of the laptop and tucked it in his pocket.

'Or, we don't put any of these videos online, and you let me investigate with you.'

'Uh?' Adja exclaimed, in complete disbelief. Do you think I'm an idiot? You spend hours shaking in that house, Sylvana hates you and doesn't want to talk to me when you're here, and you want to go back? Is it a joke?'

She closed her computer without a thud and pointed at Léon with a menacing finger.

'You will go home by the next train and recount every horror you'll want about me. Me? I don't care, I'll post everything I have... your blackmail included! Because yeah, I filmed that too, you bloody idiot! Get out of my room and fly away!'

Adja couldn't remember if she had recorded him blackmailing her, but she could only pray that Léon would believe it. She was going to open the door for him in a theatrical manner when he took something out of his pocket.

'Do you know what this is?'

Adja stayed silent, in a daze. Léon held a golden ring, slightly old.

'It was in the grass, in front of the house. You want to know what it is, eh?'

'Sylvana's ring?' she guessed, her throat painfully dry.

'Exactly. Do you want to give it back to her?'

'How do you know it doesn't belong to a tourist from 1982? Why Sylvana?'

'Do you want to take the risk?'

What an absolute ass.