"Demon? You never told me that!" He gasped.
"Why would I? For you to panic on my ears?" She scoffed. "I'm fed off that kind, I don't even like to mention them, it gives me the bad kind of cold chills."
"Coming from someone who spends more time with us dead than the living, that's a lot," he scoffed and she side-glared at him. "What? It's true. How is university?"
Sigh, "Going."
"Is your sister causing trouble again?"
She clenched her jaw, "Ophelia is a complex girl, Eldric."
"Your sister is trouble, she's arrogant, and she doesn't give a shit about you, Mor. She thinks she's the only one suffering with your family's death, and she acts as if they were a bunch of inconsiderate fools, as if they were wrong for dying or whatever she believes happened. They left a fortune to you, and even then, she refuses to use the money and insists in doing shady stuff to get her own, which only gets her in trouble and you ends up paying to cover her mess up," he snapped annoyed.
"Like I said, she's complex. She's drowning in grief and doesn't know what to do with it, she doesn't accept help and prefers to ignore it than face it. But she doesn't know what I know, she doesn't believe in what I saw happening, and she also partially blames me for not believing that they are dead and keep sniffing around it. Their souls were taken away by some... thing, then their bodies vanished, but to those who can't see the things I can, like Lia, they are dead."
At final, she got to the sector of the graveyard that was entirely given for the fallen Ravenstone clan in the event that became later known as the Nightshade Massacre, a line up of 48 graves, for her parents, maternal and paternal grandparents, great-grandparents, grand-uncle and aunts, uncles and aunt-in-laws, aunts and uncle-in-laws, cousins, and a separate grave for the only member who passed before the massacre, her oldest brother Vernon.
Slowly and silently, Morringan began to leave one rose in each of the 47 graves, pausing on her brother's grave at last and leaving the last three roses on his, together with the branch that touched her shoulder on the way there, because it's a habit he had with her while he was alive.
He was 10 years older than her, and while Ophelia had always liked flowers, Morringan was peculiar since she was a child and when her brother asked what flower she wanted, she said she wanted the first branch that touch him on his way back. From the time she was 5 to when he passed when she was 7 years old, everyday he would bring her a random branch, even when he didn't bring flowers to Ophelia, he would still remember to get her the first branch that touched him.
On his absence, she began to do it, daily, and always bring it to him, even when she didn't bring flowers to the others.
Unlike with Eldric and the other spirits, she was never able to see, listen, or even feel her brother's spirit, which made her believe his soul had been reincarnated again. Even then, she kept bringing it to him, because she didn't know better. It wouldn't feel right if she didn't do that.
Swallowing the sadness that took over her, focusing solely on the rage boiling her soul, she stood up and turned to Eldric, who had a apologetic look in his eyes, knowing how much this weights on her back. "I'll come earlier tomorrow, okay? I need to go, I have to make dinner, Lia hasn't been eating well these days, so I'll try making a better dinner tonight."
"Mor,"
"I'll be okay," she said it, but they both knew that was a lie, "I'll keep looking, okay? I'll keep trying to find a solution, to get you out of here and to find what happened to my family. Even if they are dead, I won't rest until I find proof, an actual tangible proof, until I have their bodies to redo this damn burial or to cremate. While I don't, I have to take care of the only one I have tangibly left," she passed her hands through her hair. "I can't lose Ophelia, Eldric, she's all that I have now, even if she's difficult and does shady stuff, she's still my baby twin sister."
Sigh, "I know," he pressed his lips together, sad that she was leaving again, tired of being so alone in the graveyard. "Can you bring me a whiskey and that weird juice you brought me months ago?"
Her lips curled in a ghost of a smile and the dim light illuminated her olive skin as she nodded, "My special strawberry and passionfruit juice?"
He nodded, "Yes, that one."
"Alright, I come by after breakfast to give you the juice and at late noon for the whiskey," she cleaned her hands on her black jeans. "Keep watch for me, okay? If you see anything unusual, tell me."
"I will," he promised. "It's not like I have anything else to do, either way."
She felt guilty for that, "I'll find a way."
"I trust you, Mor, I know you will," he smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. They were both miserable, and they both know it, but can't do anything about it. "Go home, rest, I need you alive and healthy."
"See you tomorrow, Eldric," she winked.
"Don't flirt with me, when I can't do anything about that, lad," he pressed his hands on his chest dramatically, getting a rare giggle out of her.
"If you could, you would be in danger," she said back, stepping out of the graveyard, but he couldn't follow as the strong magic of the veil blocked him, imprisoning inside the graveyard.
"Ah, my heart," he cried.
"Silly ghost," she chuckled, hopping on her bike and adjusting her hair before putting her helmet back.
But before she could put it on, he swallowed and asked something that had been hammering in his head for a while, "Would you go out with me if I were alive, Morringan?"
She halted, both because he barely ever called her by her name, and because there was no mischievousness in his voice. When she met his eyes and found the sincerity in them, she felt like crying, "Blonde like that? Only if you buzzed your hair, it would definitely look sexy on you."
If he had blood pumping in his veins, he would have turned red right away, "So, you would?"
"Of course," she winked and put the helmet back on. "But only after grooming that wild hair of yours and buzzing it."
When he giggled, it was a genuine one, "I wish I had been born in your generation."
"We live for centuries, Eldric, I doubt you would need to be from my generation, you would just need to be hot and alive. You only lack a hair cut and a beating heart to get there," she chuckled, turning her bike on.
Before she could leave, he made a different request, "Can you draw me? With the haircut you mentioned and in modern attires?"
Her eyes darkened as she looked at him, "You never allowed me to draw you."
"Can you?" He asked, and if he had a beating heart, it would have been thundering by now.
Thundering like hers, "I can. See you, Ric."
Then she got on speed drive and left the graveyard, leaving him with a sad smile on that mirrored the same one that was adorning her face under the helmet.
He had been gathering courage to ask her that since she turned 18, but she had been thinking of him differently for way longer than that. But who would believe that she was in love with a ghost of a young guy who died many centuries before she was born. In love, as in obsessively in love since she was old enough to understand what love was, and tragically so, knowing she would never be able to be with the one she loved because he was dead, and she couldn't afford dying when her sister needed her alive.
It was the first time he asked her to draw him, she had asked him to do it countless times before but he refused, now he allowed it. Little did he know that she had still been drawing him from her memories since she was a little girl, little did he know he was her muse in art class, in all of the paintings she had made so far. Always him, because he was all that she thought about when she wasn't thinking of her sister, of her losses, of her family, or of how to get him out of that graveyard.
She never liked blondes, she had always appreciated black hair more than anything, but even then, Eldric messed with her feelings in a way others didn't. The only other guy who made her feel things, the only one alive for the matter, was someone she loathed, thus loving him was out of question. So, she kept on loving Eldric, even if it's a love doomed from the very beginning.
All because she was alive in a generation he wasn't, but even then, she was the only one he had contact to, she could still see him, talk to him, bond with him. Him and no other, not like that. She couldn't shake the feeling that there was a reason for that.
Though one would call it a coincidence, Morringan Ravenstone was never one to believe in coincidences.