He placed a hand on the top of one of the gravestones and cleared his throat. In the light of the moon, he almost appeared to be a creature of the night—as if the darkness had birthed him—a vampire, maybe? His skin was so white, as to appear porcelain, and the darkness of his hair contrasted starkly. It took me a second or so to realize he was absolutely beautiful.

  “Who are you?” I asked, finally finding my voice.

  “Someone you will meet in time.”

  “When?”

  “That is unimportant at this current moment.”

  “Why do you keep invading my dreams?”

  He chuckled and the sound was deep, robust. But there wasn’t a lot of humor in it. And as soon as the laugh escaped him, it disappeared into the stillness of the night. “Because I’m doing my best to keep you out of trouble, Holly, but it appears trouble is constantly on your tail.”

  “I don’t have a tail,” I responded and then suddenly doubting whether that was so, I turned around and, glancing down, found a furry red fox tail sticking out from the back of my dress. It had a little white spot on the very tip.

  “Concentrate, Holly,” the man said, pulling my attention back to him. “It is difficult enough to attempt to traverse the inanity of your dreams—I could use your focus… please.”

  There was something about this man, but I couldn’t quite figure out what that something was. On the one hand, he seemed stodgy, foul-tempered and rude, but on the other hand, he kept saying he was trying to help me. But, help me do what?

  “Why do you keep calling me ‘Holly’?”

  “Because it’s your name.” He cleared his throat again and didn’t appear to be in a very casual talkative mood. “We need to take care of this situation post haste… Holly.”

  “I don’t know what situation you’re talking about.”

  “You’ve released the shadow and you were not meant to release the shadow.”

  “What shadow?” I asked, suddenly nervous. “Wait… the shadow from the mirror?”

  “Quite right,” he answered, nodding in a clipped sort of way.

  “What does that mean? What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Well, quite simply, you must recapture it.”

  “But, I don’t even know what it is!”

  “Then that sounds like quite the perfect place to begin, does it not?”

  And with that, he simply disappeared.

  ***

  I woke to the sound of my phone ringing.

  Sitting up, I blinked a few times.

  It was still dark outside so I glanced at the time and realized it was one-thirty in the morning. Grabbing for my phone in the darkness, I checked the caller ID and found it was Wanda calling. My heart about dropped down to my toes as I wondered if there was an emergency with Finn.

  “Hello?”

  “Finally, you answer!”

  “Wanda, is everything okay?”

  “You tell me!”

  “Huh?”

  “What is going on with you?” She took a breath. “That wasn’t funny and you about gave us all a heart attack!”

  “Um,” I frowned even more deeply. “What are you talking about?”

  There was silence on the other end, and I could hear Wanda gulping audibly. “After you went home to drop off the mirror, did you… come back over here?”

  “No,” I started, frowning at her question because it made no sense to me. “I went to bed. Why?”

  She inhaled deeply and then exhaled just as deeply. “Son of a witch.”

  “What’s going on, Wanda? Is Finn okay?”

  “Yeah, Finn’s fine,” she answered. “And, just so you know, Marty should be getting to your house any second.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I told him to go check on you to make sure everything was okay. I would have asked Lorcan, but I’d already sent him to actually try and hunt you down before I realized you weren’t actually you.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?”

  But, Wanda was clearly caught up in her own thoughts. “Ugh, this is even worse than when I thought you’d just momentarily lost your mind.”

  “I’m starting to wonder if that isn’t still the case.”

  “Poppy, someone who looked exactly like you showed up around one am and started screaming outside my back door at the top of her lungs.”

  It took me a second to respond because I wasn’t sure I was hearing her right. “What?” It was the only word I could think to say.

  “I don’t know how else to say it so I’ll say it again, but slower this time: someone who looked exactly like you showed up at the back of my house and started screaming while running back and forth from one side of the house to the other.”

  “That wasn’t me. I went straight to bed as soon as I got home.” I breathed in deeply as I remembered my dream from last night and how the man in the black suit had said I’d failed and released the shadow-the shadow I wasn’t meant to release-. Could this shadow be the same thing that had…

  “Hello?” Wanda said.

  “I’m still here, just… in shock.” I took a deep breath. “I have no idea what’s going on, but…”

  Someone who looked exactly like you…

  “How much did this woman look like me?”

  “Enough that Astrid, Libby, Darla and even Finn thought it was you. And I did too—at first anyway.”

  Oh, God—Finn. My heart about plummeted to my toes. “Is Finn okay?”

  “Well, he wasn’t. He was nearly inconsolable because we were all convinced it was you out there acting like you were bat shit crazy—well, at first, anyway. But, the more you carried on like a crazy person, the more I started to doubt if it really was you.” She took a deep breath. “I mean, you may be a lot of things but out of your mind isn’t one of them.”

  “Is Finn okay, Wanda?” I asked, wanting her to get to the important part.

  “He is now. He’s asleep. But, it took a while to get him there. He kept wanting to go outside and ask you what the matter was, but I wouldn’t let him because I had a feeling ‘you’ might actually have been a doppelganger or something equally bad.” She took another breath. “That’s when I called Marty to go check on you.”

  “Do you think it was a doppelganger?”

  “I have no idea, but it makes the most sense. I mean, what else would show up as your stunt double?”

  “But doppelgangers are beyond rare.”

  “That’s true,” she said, and I could tell she was chewing her lower lip like she did when she was deep in thought. “The last time there was mention of a doppelganger on the loose was in 1929, when a bunch of them took control of the stock market and caused the start of the Great Depression. I haven’t heard about any doppelgangers since.”

  “Then,” I started.

  “That’s not to say one hasn’t found its way into Haven Hollow.”

  “But why take the likeness of me?” I asked, thinking the whole thing sounded too weird. Doppelgangers were demons who usually took the shapes of high-ranking people and officials in order to cause the most amount of damage and chaos to society. There would be no reason one would want to usurp the life of a single mom in Haven Hollow.

  “I don’t think it was a doppelganger,” Wanda said. “But as to just what it was? I’m fresh out of ideas.”

  Well, I had an idea. “Do you remember that weird looking black shadow thing we saw after I broke the mirror?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you think that has anything to do with… this?”

  “Why would it?” She inhaled deeply again. “For all we know, the shadow could just have been the residue of the pioneer ghost.”

  I’d considered that, but it didn’t sound right. “Wasn’t the pioneer woman’s spirit that little white misty thing that floated up into the clouds? I’m talking about the other thing we saw—at least, I think you saw it.”

  “I saw it.”

  “Then you remember it was different—it didn’t disappear into the air.”

  “Right, it aimed straight for the graveyard.”

  “Yes.” I paused as I tried to collect myself, but my heart was pounding against my chest and I actually felt light headed.

  I heard the sound of tires crunching the gravel in my driveway and figured Marty must have just arrived. Headlights blazed up into my room like searchlights. “Marty just got here,” I said as I threw the covers off and started for the hallway.

  There was still more I needed to tell Wanda, so taking a deep breath, I then told her about the dream I’d had with the man in the black suit and how he’d told me I’d released the shadow from the mirror.

  “That doesn’t have to mean anything, Poppy,” Wanda commented. “You can’t trust dreams—half the time they’re just the result of eating too much before you went to bed.”

  “I didn’t eat anything before I went to bed.” There was a knock on the door then. “Anyway, I need to get going. Can I call you in the morning?”

  “Sure,” Wanda answered as we said our goodbyes.

  I turned to face the door and when I pulled it open, I found Roy standing on my porch and looking at me with a concerned expression.

  “How did you get here so fast?” he asked as he shook his head. “And you aren’t even wearing the same outfit.”

  Uh-oh.

  “I… I can explain,” I started.

  Roy frowned. “I hope so because I’m at a loss as to how you were just outside my house, screaming about something and as soon as I came out, you just took off.”

  I took a deep breath. “That wasn’t me, Roy.”

  “Then who the hell was it?” he demanded, crossing his huge arms against his chest. I suddenly had a very visceral and clear memory of those arms wrapped around me, pulling me into the heat of his body.

  Push the memories out of your head, Poppy, I told myself. They do you no good now.

  “It sure looked like you.”

  “You better come inside,” I said as I opened the door a little wider. “It’s going to take a while to explain, and I need to talk to you about the fire that broke out at the restaurant, too.” Not to mention it was arctic outside.

  “Okay,” he answered as he stepped inside. At that exact moment, the sound of crunching tires and the brightness of two beaming headlights lit up the house. Marty.

  “Who in the hell is visiting you at this hour?” Roy asked.

  “Marty,” I answered on a sigh. “For the same reason you are.”

  Marty parked behind Roy’s truck and, killing the engine, stepped out of the hearse. Then he took the stairs two at a time and paused on the porch once he saw Roy standing next to me—inside the house.

  “What are—” Marty started, but I instantly interrupted him.

  “Roy just got here and I’m pretty sure he came over for the same reason you did—because you saw me and I was doing something… I shouldn’t have been doing.”

  Marty nodded and explained that after Wanda had called him to tell him to check on me, on the way to my house, he’d seen me walking on the side of the road and when he’d pulled over to ask what I was doing, I’d taken off running in the opposite direction and disappeared into the forest.

  “So what in the hell is going on?” Roy asked as he looked from Marty to me.

  I invited them both in, started a pot of coffee and, once they were seated at the kitchen table, began explaining everything that had happened from the moment we’d released the ghost from Katie’s mirror. I’d had to back up a bit and also explain to Roy how I’d cursed myself in the first place.

  “And that fire that randomly happened in the kitchen at the Half-Moon,” I continued. “That was owing to the curse.” I stood up once the coffee was ready and, taking down three mugs from the cupboard, poured it. Then I returned to the table, stopping at the fridge to get the Coffee-Mate. “And, of course, I’m happy to pay whatever it costs to repair the damage.”

  “Poppy, you know I’m not going to charge you for a freak fire,” Roy said, frowning at me.

  “Well, it was my fault.”

  “You don’t know that,” he argued.

  “I kind of do,” I answered.

  There were a few seconds of silence as everyone tasted their coffee and both men, no doubt, wondered why the other was here. I had a feeling things were about to get very uncomfortable.

  “I appreciate you coming here to make sure Poppy was okay,” Marty said as he put his coffee down and faced Roy. He gave Roy a well-meaning smile, to which Roy immediately narrowed his eyes.

  “Of course I was going to check on her,” he said, shaking his head. “And why would you appreciate it? You sound like you’re her dad or something.”

  Marty chuckled, but there wasn’t anything funny in the sound. “I’m not her dad; I’m her boyfriend.”

  And I felt my stomach drop all the way down to my toes as I watched Roy turn from Marty to me. And Roy’s whole expression changed—it was like he suddenly went from irritated to crestfallen, deceived, backstabbed.

  “Your boyfriend?” he repeated as he glared at me. But it wasn’t anger in his eyes. Well, it was anger, but beneath the anger was something more—hurt.

  I was suddenly irritated with Marty. We’d never agreed on the term ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’. Hadn’t we said we were going to take things slow, day by day? Or maybe I was just in denial. That might have been so, but either way—Marty didn’t need to tell Roy that we were together the way he just had. He could have used a little more tact or, really, he could have allowed me to handle it. Instead, it was like he’d just pissed on my leg to claim his territory. Or maybe I was just projecting.

  This is your fault, I told myself. Because you never told Roy you had feelings for Marty and that the two of you were… something.

  “Poppy?” Roy prodded me.

  “Marty and I,” I started, and then felt like swallowing my tongue. “We aren’t quite… a couple yet,” I said, gulping audibly.

  “We aren’t?” Marty asked, frowning at me.

  I frowned right back at him. “We are—”

  “Are you both in a relationship or not?” Roy demanded.

  I swallowed harder. “We are… dating, yes, but taking things slow.”

  He nodded and put his mug on the table so hard, coffee spilled out of the top. Then he glanced down at it and, turning around to get a paper towel, did exactly that. He cleaned up the mess, then looked at me and his expression was a mix between anger and sadness.

  “You could have told me, Poppy,” he said in a low tone. “You could have spared me this.”

  “I’m sorry,” I answered, feeling like I wanted to cry. I hated causing anyone pain and I cared about Roy. I always would. This was so not how I’d wanted this conversation to happen. “This whole thing with Marty… it just happened recently and I wanted to tell you. I really did.”

  “Yet, you didn’t.”

  “I just… wasn’t sure how to tell you.” He didn’t appear convinced, so I continued, “and then all this stuff with the curse happened and I haven’t had a second of peace, Roy.” I took another deep breath and suddenly wished Lorcan was right and that nothing in front of me was real—not Roy, not Marty, not the guilt I was feeling.

  “I, uh, I’m going to get going,” Roy said as he stood up and started for the door. I immediately followed him through the entryway and when he opened the front door and was about to walk out, I grabbed him by the arm.

  “Roy, wait,” I said.

  He turned around to face me. “Why? You’re with Marty now, just like I always knew you would be. I just don’t understand why you couldn’t spare me this embarrassment by telling me the truth.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head as tears burned my eyes. “I know this won’t help, but whatever it’s worth, I didn’t want to hurt you, Roy. That was the last thing I ever wanted to do.”

  “Well, you managed to anyway,” he answered as he turned around and started down the steps. Luckily, I had a U shaped driveway so Marty wouldn’t have to move his hearse in order to let Roy out.

  The frigid January air circled around my body as I watched Roy fire up the truck, but I didn’t even care. It was like my feet were rooted in concrete and I couldn’t move—could only watch him as he drove away from the house, his headlights highlighting the line of Aspen trees leading up the driveway.

  Once the truck was gone from view, I closed the door and started for the kitchen. Marty was standing in the hallway, looking at me with a sad expression on his face.

  “I’m sorry if I didn’t handle that the right way,” he said.

  “I was the one who didn’t handle it the right way,” I answered, shaking my head as the tears started to come in earnest. I wiped them away with the back of my hand. “I should have told Roy about us as soon as I knew we were something more than friends.”

  Chapter Eight

  Over the next two hours, people either called or texted Wanda and me with reports of ‘Poppy sightings’ all over Haven Hollow. And, in these reports, I was doing all sorts of strange things—from screaming like I had at Wanda’s, to dancing through the graveyard, to jumping out to scare cars on the highway.

  Then Lorcan had spotted me near his house, dancing and singing in the moonlight. When he’d walked outside (no doubt to lecture me on the fragility of the matrix), I’d simply disappeared right in front of him. So that had led us to believe that whoever or whatever this person or entity was, it wasn’t corporeal. But it also wasn’t a ghost—at least, not in the usual sense. As far as I could tell, I was still very much alive.

  Of course, I wondered if this strange phenomenon had something to do with the pioneer ghost from Katie’s mirror. But, really, there was nothing even remotely similar between this new entity and the ghost that had been, until recently, trapped in the mirror.

  After realizing something was very rotten in the state of Denmark (or Haven Hollow, as the case may be), with the help of Lorcan, Marty and Wanda, we’d put out a warning to all Haven Hollow’s supernatural residents. That warning was along the lines that if they saw me doing something I shouldn’t have been doing, that it wasn’t actually me, and if anyone was able to capture my doppelganger (for lack of a better word), we’d be grateful.