Chapter-3 The Muse

"El! Jamie! Get in here, quickly!"

Mrs. Higgins, the matron of St. Jude’s, a woman whose heart is as sturdy as the stone walls of her orphanage, is standing in the doorway of the main office. Her face is unnervingly pale, her hand trembling as she clutches a small stack of envelopes from the donation box.

We follow her inside, the air in the office smelling of old paper and floor wax. Sarah is already there, leaning over a mahogany desk, her eyes wide enough to show the whites.

"Look at this," Sarah whispers, her voice cracking. She points to a slip of paper resting on the blotter. "I thought it was a prank. I thought someone was mocking us."

I lean in, my breath catching in my throat. It’s a check. A standard, unassuming slip of paper that carries the weight of a thousand miracles. The amount is written in a precise, elegant hand: $1,000,000.

My heart doesn't skip a beat… it stops. For a small, struggling orphanage in the heart of Edinburgh, this isn't just a donation; it’s a total transformation. It’s a new wing, a decade of heat, a future for every child on that lawn.

"Who sent it?" Jamie asks, his voice low with suspicion. He’s a man of the earth; he doesn't believe in manna falling from the sky.

"There’s no name on the front," Mrs. Higgins says, her voice shaking. "Just a signature."

My eyes fly to the bottom right corner. A single, sweeping letter starts the scrawl.

B.

The room goes cold. The radiator's hiss sounds like a snake in the grass. B. Bianchi. The name screams in my head, a silent siren. The room begins to spin, the edges of my vision blurring into the dark red of an Italian villa. My mind flashes to Massimo, his obsidian eyes, the way he archived his possessions, the way he bought silence with silver.

He found me. He’s here. He’s buying my world again.

"El? You’ve gone white as a sheet," Jamie says, his hand reaching for my shoulder.

I don't feel his warmth. I reach out, my fingers trembling, and flip the check over. My eyes scan the back, desperate for a dismissal of my own terror.

Payable to St. Jude’s. From the estate of Loren Baltimore.

The air rushes back into my lungs so sharply it hurts. Loren Baltimore. A local philanthropist. A name I’ve seen on plaques in the Royal Mile. Not a Bianchi. Not a Romanovski. Just a dead man with a living conscience.

"It’s... it's a miracle," I whisper, leaning my hip against the desk to keep my knees from buckling.

"A million dollars," Sarah laughs, a jagged, joyous sound. "We’re saved, El. We’re actually saved."

I force a smile, but the dread doesn't fully dissipate; it just settles into my marrow.

Fear is a bad neighbor, Mairi had said. It doesn't just knock; it moves in and rearranges the furniture. And right now, every piece of furniture in my head is being overturned, looking for a ghost I’m not sure I ever truly escaped.

I try to tune back into the sound of the wind, the rustle of the oak trees, anything to drown out the phantom voice of a man who dealt in millions like they were pocket change. I must have been gone for a while, lost in the white space of the check, because the world has tilted into twilight while I wasn't looking.

"Let me drive you, El," Jamie insists as we stand by his rusted hatchback an hour later. The sky has turned a bruised, moody purple, the fog beginning to roll in from the Firth of Forth. "The fog is getting thick, and you look like you’re walking on glass."

"I need the air, Jamie," I say, pulling my cardigan tight. "Truly. My head is spinning. I just need to walk it off."

"You’re stubborn," he sighs, his mossy green eyes searching mine. He looks like he wants to say more, to ask about the way I flinched at the letter B, but he just nods. "Text me when you’re inside. Lock the door, okay?"

"I always do."

I turn away, my boots clicking rhythmically against the cobblestones. Edinburgh at night is a different city. The beauty turns gothic, the shadows in the closes deepening into ink. I walk quickly, my breath hitching in the cold air.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

I stop.

The sound of my own footsteps echoes off the stone walls, but there’s a half-beat delay. A shadow within a shadow. I turn around, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The street is empty. Only the streetlamps flickering in the mist, casting long, distorted shapes on the ground.

I am not Krystina. I am Elena. No one is following me.

I start walking again, faster this time. My lungs burn. The silence of the city feels predatory. I take a shortcut through a narrow alley, the stone walls closing in.

Clack-clack-clack.

Someone is there. I can feel the heat of a gaze on the back of my neck. It’s the same feeling I had in the garden, the feeling of a predator measuring the distance to its prey.

I break into a run. My lungs are screaming, the cold air tearing at my throat. I burst out of the alley onto a main road, my eyes blurred with tears of pure, unadulterated panic.

"Watch out!"

I collide with a solid wall of wool and muscle. The impact sends me reeling, my hands flying up to catch myself. A pair of strong arms steady me, the grip firm and unfamiliar.

"Easy there, lass! Where’s the fire?"

I look up, gasping for air. It’s an older man, a local, his face etched with confusion and mild concern. He’s holding a bag of groceries, a loaf of bread peeking out. He is not a monster. He is not a ghost.

"I... I'm so sorry," I sob, my voice ragged. "I wasn't looking. I'm sorry."

"Aye, it’s the mist," he says kindly, releasing my arms. "Plays tricks on the eyes. Get yourself home, now. It's no night for a girl to be sprinting."

I nod frantically and scramble away, not stopping until I reach the heavy oak door of my tenement. I fumble with the keys, my hands shaking so hard I drop them once, twice, the metal clanging against the stone like a death knell.

Finally, I am inside. I bolt the door. I slide the chain. I lean my back against the wood, sliding down until I’m sitting on the floor, my face buried in my hands.

The apartment is silent, but it isn't "quiet." It’s filled with the ghosts I thought I’d left at the border. I crawl into my bed, not even botherng to take off my coat. I curl into a ball, the sunflowers from the shop abandoned on the kitchen counter, their bright heads drooping in the dark.

I cry until my throat is raw. I cry for the child Judas killed. I cry for the mother I miss. I cry for the man who ruined me and the man who saved me.

Survive first. Be the ghost.

But as I drift into a fitful, shallow sleep, the last thing I see isn't the gray mist of Edinburgh. It’s a pair of steel-gray eyes, watching me from the dark, waiting for the moment I finally stop running.

Because the truth about ghosts is that they don't just haunt houses. They haunt the people who tried to outrun them.