Evelyn woke to find the motel room full of flies.
Hundreds of them.
Buzzing. Crawling. Coating the window like a breathing curtain of black.
Elias stood motionless near the bathroom, jaw clenched.
"I didn't do this," she said calmly, though part of her wasn't sure.
"You were talking in your sleep," he said.
"I always do."
"No," he said. "This time it was in Latin."
They left the motel by noon, didn't speak for miles.
Evelyn stared out the passenger window, her hand pressed to her chest where something new had started to stir. A thrum beneath her ribs. A rhythm not unlike Lenore's laugh—low, sultry, full of secrets.
"What does it feel like?" Elias finally asked.
She glanced at him.
"To carry her?"
Elias nodded.
She smiled faintly. "Like wearing my own shadow for the first time."
He swallowed hard. "Do you still feel like… you?"
"I feel more like me than ever before."
They stopped at a diner on the edge of nowhere.
Evelyn barely touched her food.
Instead, she stared at the waitress.
The woman had bruises around her wrists and a silence in her eyes that Evelyn recognized—too well.
When the waitress left their table, Evelyn stood up and followed her to the restroom.
Lenore's voice coiled in her head like smoke.
"She's hiding something. Let me help you see."
"No," Evelyn whispered. "I don't want to see—I want to help."
But her hands were already glowing faintly at the fingertips.
Inside the restroom, Evelyn found the waitress crying.
"You okay?" Evelyn asked softly.
The woman flinched. "Fine. Just… tired."
Evelyn reached for her wrist without thinking.
And when she touched it—visions flooded her.
A man with whiskey breath. A slammed door. The sound of breaking porcelain. A scream smothered by a fist.
Evelyn gasped.
But the waitress didn't react.
She just blinked.
"…What did you do?" she whispered.
"I remembered for you," Evelyn said, voice low.
The woman's bruises began to fade beneath her skin like fog burning off in sunlight.
"You'll be okay now."
And Evelyn turned and walked away.
Back in the car, Elias stared at her hands.
"They're glowing," he whispered.
"Sometimes power needs to be used," she replied. "Even if it came from the dead."
"That's not power," he snapped. "That's possession."
Evelyn leaned in close, her voice like velvet against a blade.
"No, Elias. Possession is when someone takes. I'm choosing this."
That night they stayed in a roadside cabin.
One bed. One lamp. One storm rolling in overhead.
Elias sat at the edge of the bed, back turned, shoulders tense.
"Why are you so afraid of what I'm becoming?" Evelyn asked.
"Because I remember how she started," he said.
Evelyn crawled behind him, wrapped her arms around his chest.
"And how did she end?"
He didn't answer.
So she whispered:
"She ended with you. Loving her. Burying her. And now loving me. Still her. Still not. Does it matter anymore?"
He turned.
His hands trembled, but his mouth didn't lie.
"I don't know."
She climbed into his lap, straddled him.
"You will."
They made love like confession and collapse.
Like bruises blooming into roses.
Evelyn wasn't Lenore.
But Lenore watched through her eyes.
And Elias didn't turn away.
He kissed her like he was daring the ghost to answer.
And when Evelyn came apart beneath him, she didn't scream his name.
She screamed her own.
Evelyn.
Not Lenore.
Not ghost.
Not vessel.
Just Evelyn.
Afterward, Elias lay beside her, eyes wide open.
"She's still in there," he said.
"Yes."
"And you're not trying to push her out anymore."
"No."
He turned to face her.
"And you think that's okay?"
Evelyn kissed him once, gently.
"No," she whispered.
"I think it's necessary."
[End of Chapter 17]