Lena woke to music.
Soft, lilting piano notes drifted through the air — old, melancholic, and very nonexistent since she didn't own a piano. The tune was sweet and sad at once, like heartbreak humming to itself.
She groaned into her pillow. "Nope. Not today, ghost Spotify. I'm off the haunting plan."
The music didn't stop. If anything, it grew closer.
She sat up. The air shimmered faintly — a flicker of cold in the sunlight spilling through the window. Dust motes danced like glitter. The sound came from the sitting room downstairs.
"Fine," she muttered, grabbing her hoodie and a candle. "If I die, I hope it trends."
The sitting room looked the same as last night — except for the grand piano that now stood in the corner.
She froze.
"Okay, this wasn't here. I'd remember the six-foot instrument of doom."
A figure sat at the piano bench, half-transparent, dressed in a black waistcoat with a rose pinned to the lapel. He looked exactly as she remembered him from the mirror — sharp cheekbones, charming smirk, and the faint shimmer of a man who no longer paid taxes.
Julian Mortimer turned, his fingers still gliding across phantom keys.
"Ah, you're awake. I was beginning to think you'd sleep through your own haunting."
Lena blinked. "You redecorated my house."
"Technically, it was my house first."
"Technically, you're dead."
"Semantics."
He rose from the bench — elegant, infuriatingly confident. His boots didn't quite touch the carpet. The candlelight passed through him like water. And yet, he smiled as though the room belonged entirely to him.
"Do you like music, Miss Mortimer?"
"I like silence," she said. "It doesn't talk back."
"And yet you've been talking to yourself all week."
She frowned. "Okay, Freud, what do you want?"
"Company. Conversation. Someone who can see me." His voice softened. "It's been a century since anyone has."
Lena hesitated. "That's… really sad."
"It's also dreadfully boring. So." He offered an exaggerated bow. "Shall we call this our first date?"
"Date?" she sputtered. "You're a ghost."
"A minor obstacle. I'm still charming."
"You're transparent."
"Emotionally, yes. Physically, I'm working on it."
She stared at him, halfway between disbelief and laughter. "You're impossible."
"You say that like it's an insult."
They talked for hours — well, she talked and he mostly teased. He'd died in 1893, on the eve of his wedding to a woman named Eleanor Graves. The name hit Lena like a slow-moving memory — Graves. Eli's family.
"Her brother didn't approve," Julian said. "Nor did the house."
"The house?"
"Mortimer Manor doesn't like endings. Or beginnings. It feeds on what lingers between them — regret, longing, laughter that hides the scream."
"That's comforting."
"Isn't it? I did warn you, Lena. Every laugh here leaves a mark."
She frowned. "What kind of mark?"
He smiled sadly. "You'll find out when you look in the mirror next."
That night, Lena dreamed of laughter.
Hundreds of people filled her living room, ghostly silhouettes in old-fashioned clothes. They sat in rows, applauding, roaring, laughing — and she stood under a single spotlight with a microphone in hand.
Her voice echoed through the room:
"So, what's the deal with dying before the honeymoon?"
The crowd howled. Somewhere in the back row, Julian grinned. Eli stood beside him, frowning.
Then the laughter changed — became shrill, distorted, hungry. Faces twisted. The sound grew claws and teeth.
Lena screamed—
—and woke up to find the mirror above her bed glowing faintly gold.
Words scrawled across it in looping handwriting:
They liked your set.
She spent the morning pretending nothing was weird — grocery run, failed attempt at finding decent cell service, ignoring how the house hummed when she laughed under her breath.
When she returned, a black hearse was parked in her driveway. Eli Graves was standing by it, sleeves rolled up, hands stained with engine grease.
"Car trouble?" she asked, setting her groceries down on the porch.
He looked up, expression unreadable. "Delivery. I was… returning a client's remains."
Lena stared. "You make house calls?"
"Sometimes the dead prefer familiar places."
"That's not creepy at all."
He studied her face, his tone softening. "You look pale."
"Haunted house aesthetic."
"No," he said. "Something's different. You've seen him, haven't you?"
Her pulse jumped. "Who?"
"Julian Mortimer."
The way he said the name — like a curse he'd been waiting to use — made her skin prickle.
"What do you know about him?"
Eli's jaw tightened. "Enough to tell you he's dangerous."
"He's a ghost, Eli. What's he gonna do, talk me to death?"
"Ghosts don't kill the body," he said quietly. "They kill the will. They make you want to stay."
She swallowed. "You sound like you've seen it happen."
"I have."
That night, Lena locked every door, shut every light, and tried not to think about either man — the living one with eyes like storms or the dead one who played her favorite songs before she'd even told him what they were.
But the mirror glowed again.
You shouldn't listen to him, Julian wrote in elegant script.
He buries more than corpses.
Lena whispered, "What are you trying to tell me?"
The reflection shimmered, and Julian appeared again — but this time, more solid, as if he were slowly crossing the threshold between worlds.
"I'm trying to tell you the truth," he said softly. "He wants to silence you. They all do. But you, my dear Lena — you make the dead laugh. You bring us back."
"That's not— that's not what I want."
"It's what you are."
He reached for her hand.
His fingers brushed her skin — cold as marble, but real. The shock made her gasp. Her pulse fluttered, heart betraying her terror with curiosity.
"See?" he whispered. "Not so impossible after all."
Her phone buzzed violently — Eli's name flashing across the screen. The sudden sound shattered the moment; Julian's form flickered, then dissolved into mist.
The call went to voicemail, and the house fell silent again.
Lena looked down. On her palm, where his ghostly fingers had touched her, was a faint burn shaped like a rose.
At dawn, she stood outside with her coffee, staring across the road at the funeral home. The light was on again, even though the sun had risen.
She thought of Julian's words. He buries more than corpses.
She thought of Eli's warning. Ghosts don't kill the body. They kill the will.
Then she laughed — just once, small and nervous.
The house behind her laughed back.