How we get there is something I haven’t figured out yet.

  “We’re going,” I say, because there’s no other possible answer.

  “And how are ‘we’ getting there?” Wrath asks, tone pointed.

  That’s… a little more complicated. Hollow Hills is small enough that I can ride my bike anywhere I need to go and not be too out of breath by the time I get there. But Hollowmouth Mall is just a bit outside of town. It’s not actually in Hollowmouth, a town hours from here. If it’s not actually in Hollowmouth, I’m not sure how it got the name. It’s in a small incorporated area near what some townsfolk hilariously call the Deadlands.

  It’s not like I can just call someone and ask them to give me a ride. I mean, I could, but then I would actually have to ride in their car and that feels way too personal. Nico tried to give me a ride to school once and I nearly had a panic attack at the idea. I basically ran screaming back into the house. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but I probably looked like a spazz.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I preempt Wrath, pointing at him with my finger.

  The demon has the indecency to look wounded. “You don’t know what I was going to say.”

  “If you weren’t going to say something about Nico and his Jeep, then I won’t have to buy your stuffed animal a shirt that says Heaven Sent.”

  Wrath gasps in outrage. “How dare you.”

  “What were you going to say?” I press.

  He presses his lips together but doesn’t finish the thought.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Now what do you think about this,” I pass him the flyer.

  “‘Sea you there?’ It’s a little embarrassing, that you have a stalker who can’t spell. That probably means he’s an athlete, right? Didn’t you make some of them mad with that whole zombie thing?”

  “I wasn’t responsible for ‘that zombi e thing’ and you know it.” I consider. “But no, I don’t think anyone really remembers what happened. Winter and Nico do, but even Isaac got mind-wiped.”

  Wrath shrugs. “Humans are weird. I mean, not Isaac. He’s the most human human you know. It makes sense he got his brain frappuccino’d.”

  “Why would you think I have a stalker, though?”

  “You got a bloody message from them like a serial killer RSVP. And how many people actually know of your undying love for the old bat?”

  “Hey!”

  “He’s pretending to be a vampire. That’s a classic pun!”

  Wrath’s question doesn’t help me find answers, though. “I talk about him at school sometimes. There’s a lot of people who might know how I feel about him. And of course his own fans.”

  “The Ghouls,” Wrath says darkly.

  “Even them,” I agree. They’re some of his super-fans, and they take their place as his favorite fans very seriously. “It could be one of them.” In fact, they act like little old ladies but they’re more like vicious sharks.

  Grandpa Ghastly is a former local cable TV show host from my childhood who just entered the tail end of his career as I was learning about my love for horror movies. His thirty-plus year career started as a shock jock before he found his Grandpa Ghastly shtick and paired up with Maulie, a startlingly goth but perky blonde who always dressed in the most elaborate costumes. Ghastly and Maulie were the voices I listened to when I would fall asleep every Saturday night, staying up late to watch every horror movie they presented.

  He is the closest thing that Hollow Hills has to a local celebrity. There isn’t a haunted house party, a Hollow Roast coffee kiosk opening, or a City Hall deconsecration, where he isn’t a special guest of honor. The cable access company left him on air for probably a decade longer than it should, but when they finally closed up the studio he started a BooTube channel called Ghastly and Maulie. They gained even more notoriety streaming old episodes of their show and commenting on them. I’ve been subscribed since the first time I heard about it. I’m usually the first comment every time.

  “Come to think of it, Ghastly hasn’t posted a new video in the longest time.” I switch over to BooTube and go to my subscriptions page. “His last video was nine months ago.”

  I hadn’t realized it had been so long. It’s always been common for Ghastly (or more specifically Maulie filming Ghastly) to share his activities around Hollow Hills with his fans through the channel.

  Wrath makes a hmm sound. “Maybe he has writer’s block?”

  I consider that, eventually nodding. “I’m sure he’ll talk about it during the meet and greet today. It’s so cool that he’s doing this. It didn’t sound like there was a ticket cost or anything. That’s really unusual.”

  “He’s going to Hollowmouth Mall. It’s not like the foot traffic is going to be enough to buy him coffee and a croissant. He’ll have to choose.” Wrath’s expression turns to mourning, as though having to choose between coffee or a baked good would be like asking him if he wanted to dissect an angel horizontally or vertically.

  Grandpa Ghastly is a hero to me, and I don’t like that kind of insinuation. He really did have grandpa energy back in the day, and for someone without one of those, thinking back to those Saturday nights feels like a happy memory. He was warm and cheerful, even when he said somewhat creepy things to the camera, he did it cheerfully. There was a shtick like he was a mad scientist, Molly was his assistant, and we the viewers were the trapped victims in his basement dungeon.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Once BooTube came out, someone started uploading all his old episodes, and that kept me going for the longest time. Early Grandpa Ghastly was more like radio shock jocks than I preferred, with a lot of crass swearing and objectifying women. It was only after he replaced the latest Ax-Girlfriend (so-called because he said he took an ax to them) with Maulie that things changed. The straight guy crassness eased up and then vanished entirely, and he became the Grandpa Ghastly that I was first introduced to.

  That’s when the doorbell rings for a second time. I share a look with Wrath. He disappears in a puff of brimstone. “It’s…” The disembodied voice hesitates, a moment of silence that’s unusual for him. “It’s not Nico.”

  Now curious about the visitor, I head for the front hallway and see Winter looking at me calmly through the side window. “This is a surprise,” I say, throwing open the door.

  Winter is one of the new friends I made in Recycling and the Living Dead, the elective where all the zombies on campus originated from. Well, the TA for Recycling and the Living Dead, but it’s mostly the same thing. We all got added to the same group project, and it turns out dealing with zombies is a great way to break the ice and make new friends.

  Winter is a dark skinned black woman in a goth aesthetic. However she elevates it to a level of fashion that others don’t appreciate as much as they should. She’s the best dressed on campus nearly every day but no one talks about it. I knew who she was on sight even though I’d never spoken to her before we started a class together.

  Today’s outfit is a pair of leather pants, a tight top (possibly a corset), mostly hidden by a velvet black jacket with elaborate designs in white running up the front. It takes a moment of looking to see some of the alchemical symbols hidden in the designs, and the more I look, the deeper the symbols seem to go.

  She gives me the widest smile, and her makeup is flawless. “I was going to head over to Hollowmouth Mall and I thought I remembered you saying Grandpa Ghastly was one of your old faves.”

  “See?” I say over my shoulder.

  “Fine, I guess,” Wrath replies sourly.

  Winter’s smile shifts to a smirk and she looks to the air above and behind me. “Good morning, best friend. Don’t worry, I won’t let him get into any trouble. And if you ask nicely, you can come along. I’ll even crack the window for you.”

  I eye Winter for a moment. The way she’s talking to Wrath… “He’s not a dog.” I say firmly.

  “I remain unconvinced,” she replies blandly. She heads for the living room, where most recently a haunted Dreadflix show possessed my television, showed a pair of zombies stalking Morecroft Manor, and then exploded and leaked out a body’s worth of blood onto the living room floor. Not exactly the Friday night of my dreams.

  “Why is she here?” Wrath asks through clenched fangs.

  “Why does anyone ever show up here?” I sigh. “To bring new headaches into the world.”

  A few moments later I follow Winter and sit across from her on one of the lounge chairs. “We never talked about what it means that you can see Wrath.”

  She makes an annoyed face and shrugs. “What does it mean? He’s your best friend. It’s not like I care what he is. Usually, my curse isn’t nearly this entertaining. Most people are actually garbage dressed in clearance-rack couture. Compared to a demon as hot as Wrath who’s got your back, it’s barely a competition. Garbage people lose every time.”

  She’s taken a seat facing away from the entrance hallway. At some point Wrath has materialized, and I can see his expression, and his posture, straighten when Winter calls him hot. Her explanation relaxes him, but not enough to join us. He stays in the doorway, still mostly obscured from view but peeking inside.

  I roll my eyes at the big baby. He’s had nearly twenty years of total anonymity suddenly stripped from him. But he’s used it to his advantage to torment me all the time. There’s something nice, though, about someone else being able to see and hear him.

  “So you’ve been able to hear him since the first day of class?”

  Winter rolls her eyes and laughs. “Obviously. But neither one of you looked like you wanted the attention, so I kept my mouth shut. Couldn’t keep my ears shut though, unfortunately.”

  If anything Wrath looks even more mortified than he did in all the moments before. He scuttles into the living room, not making eye contact, but sits in a back corner, noticeably behind where Winter is sitting. She’s really getting to him, and she’s not even doing all that much. “I don’t know if I can go,” I say suddenly, rethinking the entire afternoon. I don’t like that Wrath is this uncomfortable; putting him through this doesn’t feel good.

  “Oh,” Winter pouts. “I thought you’d be much more excited.”

  “I was. I just…”

  She nods knowingly. “I make your friend uncomfortable.”

  “I really don’t like her,” Wrath says bitterly.

  She turns around and looks at him directly. He flinches, realizing that she heard every word he just said. “That’s not very nice. I like you a lot. And I think you’d like me too if you gave me a chance.”

  I can see what’s going on here now that we’re out of the foyer. “Stop tormenting him,” I say to her sternly. “Wrath lives here and he’s my best friend. I’m always going to take his side over you.”

  That manages to make the demon puff up just a little, though I notice he still can’t meet Winter’s eyes. What is it about her that’s got him so worked up? I’ve never seen him react like this to any normal human. Uncle Doom, sure, but even Uncle Doom freaks himself out sometimes.

  Winter looks at me like I’ve hurt her feelings. “I’m not asking you to choose between us. But I also don’t want to pretend that Wrath here can talk about me behind my back. Besides, you talk to him all the time in class even when you think you’re being sneaky. Everyone already knows about your imaginary friend. It’s a campus-wide secret.”

  “Wait, what? People on campus think I talk to myself?”

  “They know you talk to yourself,” she corrects. “They just don’t know that you talk to a seven-foot-tall red-skinned demon who looks like a young Matt Bomer.”

  I glance at Wrath, squinting a bit. I don’t see it, if I’m being honest. Wrath, for his part, puffs up his chest quite dramatically. For the first time, he looks directly at Winter. “I always thought I looked like a young Sinatra, myself.”

  “I could see that,” she agrees.

  I roll my eyes. “Stop being so easy to flatter. She’s messing with you.”

  Wrath doesn’t look convinced at first, but a deeper look at Winter and he finally realizes the truth of my words. “I hate you.”

  “Just give me a chance, Wrath. I’m a good friend to have. Besides, I would love to paint your nails.”

  He crosses his arms in front of him, but at least he stays in the room. I’m somewhat surprised he doesn’t poof away in a cloud of brimstone. He glances down at the sharp nails of his hand, and I can see him wavering.

  “So anyway, I wanted to see how you were doing today, and then I got a flyer about the Grandpa Ghastly event, and remembered you saying you were a fan,” Winter says to me, crossing her legs. “And since I need to head out that way anyway, I thought you could come along.” She turns to Wrath. “Both of you, if you like.”

  Wrath certainly seems less against the idea than he was a few minutes ago. He looks at me, his expression wavering.

  “So,” she says, clapping her hands on her leather clad legs. “Shall we go? I brought the fastest hearse in Hollow Hills.”