Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

This is ridiculous. As of yesterday, I am seventeen years old. I've been hunting these things for the last five years and there have been no problems up until now. So why am I so freaked out?

Damn you, Cas Lowood. You're meant to be dead. When I find you, I am going to kill you and make sure you stay that way.

"Anna? Are you okay?" Thomas, quite literally the boy next door and resident psychic, is looking at me strangely. I've half a mind to tell him where to go. I wanted nothing to do with anyone in the town of Thunder Bay- but with Thomas, I didn't get a choice. He knocked on my door at four in the morning, complaining at me to stop thinking so loud, it was giving him a headache. I haven't been able to get rid of him since.

Okay, maybe I'm not being fair. He's been nothing but nice to me, and it wasn't like I was asleep anyway. I tend to avoid sleep unless it's absolutely necessary. It's the one place she can still taunt me. And she always has that- that monster with her. I don't... it's not that I can't handle it. I just prefer not to have to handle it in the first place.

Besides, it helps to have someone who knows a few things about Cas in the Attic tagging along.

"Yeah, I'm fine." No, I'm not. I'm terrified of the ghost of a boy my age.

"Liar," says Thomas simply. "You need to make your thoughts a lot quieter than that if you want to keep me out." I curse under my breath in Finnish. How much did he hear? "Oh, not much, just that you were really stressing out about this whole deal."

"I'm not afraid," I tell him, forcing my mind to become a blank slate. I decide to focus on other things, like the red dress I'm wearing. Red's meant to attract ghosts like a red rag to a bull. But the dead come because it's the colour of blood. Blood. I could be covered in blood in a few hours. But no one would notice, because it would just blend in with the dress. I'd be dressed in it. Anna Dressed in Blood. I sound like a ghost already. Maybe my mind is preparing me for what's to come.

"You don't have to do this, you know," he tells me gently. "Cas is... you know how many people he's killed? Twenty over the last six years. Anyone who sets foot in that house."

"That," I tell him, gripping the athame tighter in the pocket I had to sew on myself this afternoon, "is exactly why I have to do this." Then I pick up the pace as we turn the corner, so that Thomas has to jog to keep up.