The apartment still smelled like Mark's coffee. French roast, two sugars, no cream. I'd thrown out the half-empty bag weeks ago, but the scent had soaked into the walls. It hit me the moment I unlocked the door, making my chest tight.
I dropped my keys on the small table by the entrance. They landed with a sharp clink next to Mark's spare reading glasses—the ones he'd forgotten to take to work that last morning. I'd been meaning to put them away for months. Along with his leather jacket hanging by the door. His favorite mug in the sink. The stack of legal journals on the coffee table.
Instead, I walked past all of it to our bedroom.
The wedding photo on the nightstand smiled back at me. Mark's arm around my waist, both of us laughing at something his best man had said right before the shot. I could still remember the joke—something about Mark being whipped. We'd rolled our eyes, but Mark had kissed my temple and whispered, "Damn right I am."
I picked up the frame and sat on the edge of our bed. His side was still perfectly made. I hadn't slept there since the funeral.
"Okay," I said to the empty room. "Let's try this again."
I closed my eyes and reached out with my senses, the way I'd done every night for three months. Searching for that familiar warmth, the gentle presence that used to wrap around me like a blanket when I was scared or sad.
Nothing.
The silence in my head was absolute. It had been that way since the night he died—like someone had flipped a switch and cut the connection between us. Other mediums sometimes lost touch with specific spirits, but it usually took years. Mark and I had been married for five years. Our connection should have been unbreakable.
"I know you're out there somewhere." My voice cracked. "I felt you last night. You called my name."
Still nothing.
I pressed the photo against my chest and let myself remember that night. October 15th, 11:42 PM. I'd been waiting up for Mark to come home from a client dinner. He'd texted around ten to say he was leaving the restaurant, should be home in twenty minutes.
But twenty minutes had turned into an hour. Then two.
I'd fallen asleep on the couch, some mindless reality show playing on the TV. The knock on the door had woken me at 1:30 AM. Two police officers with grim faces and careful voices.
"Mrs. Black? I'm Officer Martinez. This is Officer Kim. We need to talk to you about your husband."
The rest was a blur of medical terms and condolences. Drunk driver. T-bone collision at the intersection right below our building. Mark had died instantly, they said. He wouldn't have felt any pain.
The other driver—Damian Grey—had walked away with a concussion and a guilty plea.
I'd wanted to hate him. It should have been easy. But when I'd seen him at the sentencing hearing, all I'd felt was hollow. He looked broken, lost. Like he couldn't understand how he'd ended up there either.
"Vehicular manslaughter," the judge had said. "Eighteen months, suspended sentence, community service, mandatory counseling."
Eighteen months for my husband's life. But it wasn't the sentence that had haunted me—it was the look in Damian Grey's eyes when he'd turned to find me in the courtroom. Like he was trying to tell me something. Like he was sorry in a way that went deeper than words.
I shook my head and put the photo back on the nightstand. Thinking about Damian Grey wouldn't bring Mark back. Nothing would.
But that note this morning—HE STILL LIVES—had shaken something loose. For the first time in three months, I'd felt Mark's presence. Not the gentle, loving spirit I'd expected, but something desperate and angry.
What if he was trying to tell me something about the accident? What if there was more to it than a drunk driver running a red light?
I walked back to the living room, to the cardboard box I'd shoved under the coffee table. Mark's work files. His law firm had sent them over two weeks after the funeral, along with his personal effects from his office. I hadn't been able to look through them yet. Too many memories.
But if Mark was trying to reach me, maybe the answers were in here.
I pulled the box out and opened it. The smell of his cologne drifted up—something expensive his mother had bought him for Christmas. My eyes stung, but I pushed through it.
Legal briefs. Client contracts. A half-eaten granola bar in a desk drawer. His favorite pen, the one with the cap he always chewed when he was thinking.
At the bottom, I found a manila folder marked "Weber Financial - CONFIDENTIAL" in Mark's careful handwriting.
Weber. As in Richard Weber, Mark's business partner. They'd known each other since law school, started their firm together eight years ago. Richard had given a beautiful eulogy at the funeral, talking about Mark's integrity and dedication to justice.
I opened the folder.
The first page was a timeline of suspicious transactions. Hundreds of thousands of dollars moving through shell companies, offshore accounts, clients who didn't seem to exist. Mark had highlighted discrepancies in red ink, adding question marks in the margins.
"Jesus, Mark," I whispered. "What did you find?"
The next page was worse. A list of names—people who had invested money with Weber Financial and then disappeared. Not physically, but financially. Their accounts had been closed, their contact information scrubbed from the system. Like they'd never existed.
Mark's notes were getting more frantic as I flipped through the pages. His usually neat handwriting became hasty, urgent. Words underlined twice, question marks turning to exclamation points.
And then, on the last page, I found it.
Three words written in Mark's hand, the ink pressed so hard it had torn through the paper:
D.G. DANGEROUS
My blood went cold.
D.G. Damian Grey.
Below the warning, Mark had scribbled a phone number and an address. Damian's address. I recognized it from the police report.
But how had Mark gotten that information? And why had he written "dangerous" next to it?
I stared at the page until the letters blurred. Damian Grey had killed my husband in a drunk driving accident. That was the story everyone believed. That was the story I'd believed.
But what if it wasn't an accident?
What if Mark had been investigating Damian before he died? What if he'd discovered something that got him killed?
My hands were shaking as I pulled out my phone and googled Damian Grey's address. The apartment building was only six blocks away. Close enough to walk. Close enough that Mark could have been watching him, following him.
Close enough that Damian could have known about it.
I thought about that look in Damian's eyes at the sentencing hearing. The way he'd seemed to recognize me, even though we'd never met. The way he'd opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, then thought better of it.
What if it hadn't been guilt I'd seen in his face?
What if it had been fear?
The note from this morning burned in my memory. HE STILL LIVES. Maybe it hadn't been about Mark. Maybe someone was warning me that Damian Grey was still alive, still dangerous.
Or maybe Mark had somehow reached out from whatever place his spirit was trapped, trying to warn me that his killer was still out there.
I grabbed my jacket and keys. If Damian Grey was dangerous, I needed to know why. If he'd killed Mark on purpose, I needed proof.
And if Mark's spirit was somehow connected to all of this, I was going to find him.
Even if it meant confronting the man who'd destroyed my life.
The apartment door slammed behind me, echoing in the empty hallway. But as I walked toward the elevator, I could have sworn I heard Mark's voice whispering my name.
This time, I wasn't going to ignore it.