Chapter 61 The Ghost Cracks

• The bottle’s half-gone by the time the sun even thinks about dragging its mouth over the horizon — nothing but a thin gray smear through the cracked window board she didn’t bother to patch.
• Ellerei sits cross-legged on the floor, boots scuffed under her thighs, shoulder braced to the cold concrete wall where her breath keeps misting out in soft, tight shivers.
• She’s not drunk enough to sleep. Not drunk enough to blur the edges of old things that crawl back when the hush is too thin.