Love, Like Ghosts: A Bay City Paranormal Investigations Story

cracked, loud as a gunshot in the quiet. A girl with two pencils pinning her hair up glared at him over the tops of her glasses from a nearby table. He gave her his best cold stare until she colored and dropped her gaze to the book open on the table in front of her.
Turning his attention back to his laptop, Adrian studied the neat rows of faded black and white pictures without seeing them. He wasn’t certain what to do now. Sure, it was good to know that Cassius apparently hadn’t been a student here. But it left Adrian very neatly at a dead end. If Cassius hadn’t been a UNC student, who was he? And if Adrian couldn’t follow the one lead he had in Lyndon’s case, then where was he to go from here?
He shook his head. “I have no fucking idea.”
The two-pencil girl let out an annoyed huff. “Can you please keep it down over there? Some of us are trying to study.”
Several scathing retorts flashed through Adrian’s mind. He dismissed them as childish and ultimately beneath him. He gave the girl a tight smile. “I was just leaving.”
“Good.” She bent over her book again.
Closing his laptop, Adrian slid it into his bag and stood, his bag over his shoulder. A swift twist of his thought sent the girl’s pencils clattering to the floor. She dove after them with a squeak. He grinned as he walked to the stairs.
Outside, the unseasonable warmth of the afternoon had begun to fade into the hard cold of a normal January evening. Adrian squinted against the setting sun and considered what to do now. Searching the yearbook hadn’t taken as long as he’d been afraid it might. He still had over an hour before he was supposed to meet Greg.
You could go to the castle , his inner voice whispered. Talk to Lyndon. You haven’t talked to him since before Christmas. Maybe you can learn something new from him by now. Besides, don’t you miss him?
Adrian almost laughed out loud. Miss him? A ghost?
The idea was ridiculous.
But it’s true.
Adrian frowned at a crack in the sidewalk at his feet. Could it be true? Could he really have gotten so attached to Groome Castle’s resident spirit that he actually missed talking to him? Even after he’d started a relationship with Greg?
He thought about it. And realized he did.
This time, Adrian didn’t try to hold back his laughter, in spite of the strange looks it earned him from the people passing by. Somewhere along the way, he’d developed a friendship with a man who’d been dead for over one hundred years. It was either laugh at himself or go crazy, and he’d balanced on the precipice of mental breakdown enough for one lifetime.
At least his early desire to be Lyndon’s lover had vanished when he started seeing Greg. He didn’t think he could handle being at the center of a romantic triangle in which one party wasn’t even alive.
Stuffing his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, Adrian started across campus toward the road to Groome Castle. He needed to hurry. He would likely require several minutes of quiet meditation before he could connect with Lyndon, and it was imperative that he arrive at the dining hall before Greg tonight.
So he won’t find out what you’re doing. So you can keep the truth from him.
Adrian picked up his pace and kept his head down to hide the guilt in his eyes.
    Lyndon had nothing new to say, or to show. Just the same images, over and over and over again, as tantalizing and frustrating as ever. By now, Adrian had memorized the way Cassius’s eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, the gilded quality of the light on the bed in the tower room, the blinding surge of anger and finality that always accompanied the embroidered collar.
    Adrian had come to believe the collar related somehow to Lyndon’s death. Had his murderer worn it? Had that collar been the last thing Lyndon had seen before he died? The need to know burned in Adrian like nothing else ever had. But that bit of cloth with its blue flowers and the smear of dirt on the corner seemed to exist in a vacuum. If any other memories survived Lyndon’s death, he wasn’t sharing them. Not yet, anyway. Not until Adrian could find a way to open up the deepest parts of himself enough to let Lyndon in.
    If only he could figure out how in the hell to do that.
Discouraged, Adrian trudged down the steps from the tower room, through the main hall and across the foyer. He would’ve liked to stay and try for a little longer, but he was out of time. Greg expected him at the dining