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Not much changed when Agatha became a ghost. It didn’t take long before she figured out how to shift her form: corporeal when she wants to hold Señor Scratchy and incorporeal when she wants to waft through walls. She’d wafted through the walls of the Kaplan home again a few hours ago and is now sitting on Billy’s desk and watching him sleep.
It’s ridiculous. Billy has parents down the hall. He doesn’t need Agatha here to watch over him. Rio promised she wouldn’t come back for him, and for every awful thing Rio and Agatha have done to each other, Agatha doesn’t doubt Rio’s promise. So, why can’t Agatha stop coming here every night? Why does her chest feel tight with fear as she watches Billy sleep?
She fiddles with the locket around her neck. The memory of waking up next to her child’s body – a body already beginning to grow stiff in death – is so vivid in Agatha’s mind. His skin had been too cold under her fingers. Her Nicky gone. Only a body remaining.
Agatha always leaves before Billy’s alarm goes off in the morning. He doesn’t need to know that she has been here every night, doesn’t need to know that watching him sleep is the only thing that calms the image in her mind of Rio in Billy’s bedroom, Rio taking another child away in the dark of the night while his parents sleep.
Billy looks so young when he sleeps, curled up on his side, hugging his pillow to his chest. For all the power he holds, he’s still just a kid, two years younger than Agatha had been when her mother tied her to a stake.
Billy needs someone to guide him, that’s all. He needs someone to teach him about his power. That’s the only reason she appears in his car after he’s done with school every day, why she goes with him to try to find Tommy, talks to him about magic, listens to his stories about his boyfriend and his plans to go look at colleges over winter break. Billy jokes that he’s sure some of the old colleges must be haunted and Agatha can come along and make friends with the other ghosts.
Agatha doesn’t know what she’s doing here. She’s been alone for centuries. She never had a coven. After Rio, Agatha never let herself fall in love again. It’s been centuries since she’d watched someone sleep and thought it would break her if she lost them.
Billy is not hers. He has an overabundance of parents already. He doesn’t need to know that sometimes Agatha stares at him and worries his breathing has stopped. He doesn’t need to know that some nights she sits on his bed next to him just to watch the rise and fall of his chest. She’d done that with Nicky the first few years, struggled to sleep for fear he would stop breathing. By the time he did, she’d learned to sleep despite the fear, convinced herself that if she kept a hand on him that he wouldn’t leave her while she slept.
Billy whimpers in his sleep, and Agatha moves next to the bed to check on him. If it’s a sex dream she is out of here. But Billy’s face is screwed up in pain, and Agatha has to stop herself from rubbing his back the same way she did for Nicky when he had nightmares and she tried to soothe him back to sleep without waking him. Billy is not her child. Her son is dead. Her son has been dead for two hundred and sixty-seven years.
“Billy.” Agatha reaches out, can’t stop herself from trying to draw him out of his dream. She takes physical form again and rubs the boy’s shoulder.
Billy sits up, gasping for breath and looking around frantically. “Agatha?” Of course he’s confused. It’s three in the morning and there’s a ghost waking him from a nightmare. She scrambles to try to think of an explanation for why she’s in his bedroom in the middle of the night, but before she can say anything, tears are rolling down Billy’s cheeks. “I killed them.”
It’s not the first time he’s insisted that he is to blame for Alice, Lilia, and Sharon’s deaths. But it’s the first time Agatha has seen Billy begin to sob so hard that he is gasping and choking. “Breathe,” she tells him. “Just breathe.”
He’s sixteen years old. He should be sneaking out to meet his boyfriend. He should get to be a child. “Do you want me to make loud ghost sounds to wake your parents?” Agatha asks.
“No,” Billy says between sobs. “No. They won’t understand. Agatha.” Her name is a plea.
She knows why he hasn’t told his parents. It isn’t because of the magic. They lived next to Wanda’s spell. They would understand their child having magic. No, that isn’t it. “It isn’t your fault, Billy. You did what was necessary to survive.”
“Their son is dead, and I stole his body.” He’s sobbing, gasping out the words as his body shakes. “I killed Alice and Lilia and – ”
Agatha pulls Billy into her arms. He’s not her child, but he is a child in pain. “You didn’t kill them.”
“I did.”
“Listen to me. You couldn’t control it. You are good.”
“Promise you won’t leave until I learn to control my magic.” Billy’s words are muffled against Agatha’s shoulder. As a ghost, Agatha doesn’t need to breathe any longer, but she breathes now with Billy, steady, even breaths for him. She forgot what it felt like to hold someone when they cried. Billy clutches the back of Agatha’s shirt, the fabric bunched in his fists as his tries to calm his tears.
“It’s ok, Billy. It’s ok.” It’s not. “We carry on, hm?”
She carried on all those years ago. Forced herself to carry on after she buried her child. Billy doesn’t move from Agatha’s embrace, but his sobs stop and she feels his smile against her shoulder as he asks, “Coven two?”
“Yes, Billy.” Agatha’s chest aches, heavy with the weight of a child who needs her in her arms again after so long. “Coven two.”