I’m a little scared to post this, it’s the first time I’ve posted this kind of story. I wrote this story to make it a sort of novel. There are 11 chapters in total. I plan to post one every two weeks on Friday, hoping you like it. Happy reading.

Chapter 1 – An Unlikely Friendship

In London, Halloween had always carried a certain theatricality.

The rain never fell entirely by chance on that night. It seemed to wait until the streets were full of fake vampires, drunken witches, ghosts in trainers, and plastic monsters before deciding to shine beneath the streetlamps. The paving stones gleamed like black skin, shop windows reflected faces painted with blood, and every burst of laughter at a street corner sounded like a scream from an old horror film.

Elizabeth hated parties.

She especially hated costume parties.

And more than anything, she hated costume parties where someone had had the brilliant idea of adding the word mandatory to the invitation.

Yet there she was, standing in front of a house in Camden decorated with cobwebs, carved pumpkins, and fake hands reaching out of flowerpots. A plastic skeleton hung above the door, swaying in the wind as though it were trying to warn her.

Liz pulled her coat tighter around herself.

Under the black fabric, she wore a long dark dress, almost Victorian, found in a charity shop two days earlier. A high lace collar, narrow sleeves, an old locket fastened at her throat. She had wanted to dress up without really dressing up. To be a haunted widow, a heroine from a gothic novel, someone no one would notice too much.

Someone who could stay in a corner.

Someone nobody would force to dance.

She could already hear the music through the walls. Something too loud, too cheerful for a house covered in fake blood. She drew a deep breath and rang the bell.

The door opened almost immediately to Noah, a university friend she still saw from time to time since he had started visiting the library where she worked.

He was wearing such a terrible werewolf costume that Liz almost forgot to be anxious.

“Liz!” he exclaimed. “You came!”

“I considered falling ill,” she replied.

“Too late. Come in. You look amazing, by the way. Very… woman hiding a corpse in her attic.”

“That was exactly the effect I was going for.”

He laughed and stepped aside to let her in.

Inside, the house was suffocating with bodies, heat, music, and mingled perfume. Electric candles flickered on the furniture, red garlands gave the walls the tint of a darkroom, and everywhere, costumed people talked too loudly, laughed too quickly, and drank from paper cups.

Liz immediately felt like too much.

She recognized a few faces. Not enough to feel reassured. Too many to be able to leave without being noticed.

“Do you want something to drink?” Noah asked.

“Water.”

“You know it’s Halloween, not a dentist appointment?”

“Exactly. I want to survive.”

He gave her a military salute and disappeared toward the kitchen.

Liz remained alone near the entrance, her fingers tight around her bag. She watched people the way she watched readers at the library: discreetly, methodically, trying to guess their stories from the way they moved.

A girl dressed as a broken doll was already crying in the arms of a demon. Two boys in zombie make-up were arguing about who had used the better fake blood. A dead bride was kissing a vampire against the living-room wall. Everyone seemed to belong to the scene.

Except her.

She was about to look for a quiet place when the door opened abruptly behind her, letting in a draft of cold air and a bright, ringing voice.

“I’m warning you, if anyone criticizes my shoes, I’m cursing them until Christmas.”

Liz turned.

The girl who had just walked in did not look like someone afraid of being noticed.

She had flaming red hair, almost golden beneath the red glow of the garlands, and a smile that looked capable of lighting the room all by itself. She was dressed as a horror-film nurse, but with insolent confidence: a short black dress, a red cross embroidered on it, dark stockings, flawless make-up, and a small cap stained with fake blood. Everything about her shouted provocation, humour, certainty.

And yet, for one second, Liz thought she saw something else.

A tiredness in her eyes.

Something that vanished so quickly one could pretend to have imagined it.

“Lelliana!” someone called from the living room.

The redhead lifted both arms like a star welcomed by her public.

“Yes, yes, I know. The party may now begin.”

Laughter broke out.

Liz looked away.

She knew her name. Of course she knew it. Everyone seemed to know Lelliana. She worked as a nurse, was nineteen like Liz, came from Ukraine, laughed loudly, joked quickly, and dressed as if she had no intention of apologising for existing.

And people talked.

They talked a lot.

At the library, Liz had already heard girls her age say Lelliana’s name with that little grimace full of contempt. She’s pretty, sure, but come on… She knows exactly what she’s doing. With all the guys she gets with, what does she expect?

Liz had never liked that kind of sentence.

Not because she was defending Lelliana. She did not know her.

But because she hated how easily people turned a woman into a rumour.

Noah came back with a glass of water and handed it to her.

“Are you looking at Lelliana?”

“No.”

“You literally just turned around to look at her.”

“I heard a noise.”

“That’s Lelliana. She’s made of noise.”

Liz rolled her eyes.

“Charming.”

“You’ll see. She’s funny. A little dangerous for the ego, but funny.”

“I don’t see why my ego would be making her acquaintance.”

Noah smiled.

“Because I’m going to introduce you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Noah.”

“Liz.”

She did not have time to protest further. Noah gently caught her wrist and drew her through the crowd. Liz wanted to evaporate between two pumpkins.

Lelliana was now standing near the fireplace, surrounded by three people who laughed at every one of her lines. She was clearly miming a dramatic scene with absurd seriousness.

“And then,” she was explaining, “the patient looks me straight in the eye and says, ‘I think I’m going to die.’ So I, professional, calm, heroic, answer, ‘Sir, it’s a blood test.’”

The others burst out laughing.

“Lelliana,” Noah said, “this is Elizabeth.”

The redhead turned her head.

Her eyes settled on Liz.

And Liz, without understanding why, forgot for one second what she was supposed to do with her face.

Lelliana had clear eyes, very direct. Not shy. Not merely polite. Eyes that entered a room before the rest of her did. And yet, when she saw Liz, her smile changed. It became smaller. More curious.

“Elizabeth,” she repeated. “Very gothic novel.”

“That’s why people call me Liz,” she said. “To keep me from haunting the corridors.”

Lelliana blinked, then burst out laughing.

A real laugh.

Not the stage laugh she had been giving the others since she arrived. This one seemed to escape her.

“All right,” she said. “I like you.”

Liz stiffened.

“You decide quickly.”

“I’m a nursing student. I have to assess situations fast.”

“And your diagnosis?”

Lelliana tilted her head slightly.

“Severe expression. Dry humour. Magnificent dress. Probably capable of killing someone with a Virginia Woolf quotation.”

“Mary Shelley,” Liz corrected.

“Even better.”

Noah watched them both with a satisfied smile.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t just create the best encounter of the evening,” he said before slipping away.

Liz threw him a murderous look, but he had already vanished.

A silence settled between them.

Not long. Not truly awkward.

Just long enough for Liz to notice the way Lelliana held her glass without drinking. The way she was still smiling, but with something defensive at the edge of her mouth. As if humour were a door she kept shut with her shoulder.

“So,” Lelliana asked, “what are you supposed to be? Black widow? Dead poetess? Elegant murderess?”

“A librarian after three coffees and one patron returning books late.”

“Terrifying.”

“You have no idea.”

“I’m almost sure librarians know where to hide bodies.”

“Between the crime novels and the biographies of prime ministers. No one ever goes there.”

Lelliana placed a hand over her heart.

“There. I knew you were dangerous.”

Liz felt a smile escape. She tried to hold it back, but it was too late.

Lelliana saw it.

And her face softened in such an unexpected way that Liz looked elsewhere.

She was not used to being looked at like that. As if her smile were a discovery.

The party continued around them. People passed by, interrupted Lelliana, complimented her, teased her, sometimes with tenderness, sometimes with the heavy familiarity that made Liz’s teeth clench.

A boy dressed as a blood-spattered priest approached and slipped an arm around Lelliana’s shoulders without asking.

“Lelli, my favourite damnation.”

Lelliana smiled, but Liz saw her shoulders tense.

“Oscar,” she replied lightly. “Still alive. What a shame.”

“Avoiding me already?”

“I call it preventive medicine.”

He laughed too loudly, then let his eyes slide over Lelliana’s outfit.

“Seriously, that costume… How many guys are you planning to kill tonight?”

Something tightened in Liz’s chest.

Lelliana opened her mouth, probably to throw out a joke. But Liz spoke before she could.

“Maybe she dressed for herself.”

Oscar turned toward her, surprised.

“Sorry?”

Liz held his gaze.

“It’s a theory. A daring one, I know.”

Silence lasted a second.

Then Lelliana burst out laughing.

Oscar, offended, muttered something before returning to his friends.

Liz immediately felt heat climb into her cheeks. She was not the sort of person who provoked people. Usually, she preferred to disappear into a row of books until the world grew tired of her.

“Sorry,” she said. “That wasn’t my business.”

Lelliana looked at her with a strange expression.

“No. It was… kind.”

The word seemed almost difficult to pronounce.

Liz shrugged.

“He was being gross.”

“He’s always gross. It’s his permanent costume.”

“He should upgrade it.”

Lelliana smiled, but this time something trembled behind it.

“You don’t know me,” she said.

“No.”

“And yet you defended me.”

Liz did not know what to answer.

She could have said she disliked injustice. That she hated hearing men talk about women’s bodies as if they were a buffet. That she did not need to know Lelliana to understand that a comment could dirty an entire room.

But she only said:

“I like daring theories.”

Lelliana looked at her for another second, then raised her glass.

“To that, then.”

They clinked glasses softly.

The rest of the evening could have separated them. Lelliana drew people the way a lamp draws moths. They came to her to laugh, to flirt, to drink, to be seen. Liz, meanwhile, mostly drew empty places. Corners of rooms. Window ledges. Libraries, when there happened to be one.

And there was one.

At the end of a hallway, far from the living room and the music, a small room served as an office. Books filled two entire walls. Liz took refuge there naturally, like a wounded animal returning to its burrow.

She ran her fingers over the worn spines.

King. Jackson. Poe. Du Maurier. Shelley.

At last, something breathable.

An old mirror hung above a small writing desk. Its gold frame was freckled with black marks. At first, Liz avoided looking at it.

Then, as always, she eventually raised her eyes.

Her reflection stared back.

The same pale face. The same tight mouth. The same eyes, too dark for her age.

But for a fraction of a second, she thought she saw another expression.

A smile.

A smile she had not made.

Her heart stopped.

“Victoria,” she whispered.

The name slipped out before she could stop it.

The room seemed to grow cold.

She was twelve again. Twelve years old, a bridge, a grey sky, screams, hands too small to hold anyone back. She saw again her sister’s brown hair, identical to her own, whipped by the wind. She saw the water below. She saw the emptiness.

Liz closed her eyes.

Not here.

Not now.

She placed one hand on the desk, trying to breathe. The sounds of the party grew distant, distorted, as if they were coming from underwater.

“You know,” said a voice behind her, “if the mirror starts speaking Latin, I recommend leaving the room.”

Liz jumped.

Lelliana stood in the doorway, a glass of water in her hand. Her smile was there, but softer than it had been in the living room.

“Sorry,” she added immediately. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Liz wiped her cheeks quickly, furious to discover they were wet.

“You didn’t scare me.”

“Of course not. You were only threatening the furniture with your eyes.”

“It’s a librarian technique.”

“Very effective.”

Lelliana entered carefully, as though asking silent permission. She placed the glass of water on the desk.

“I saw you leave. I thought either you’d found the most interesting room in the house, or you were preparing a curse.”

Liz looked at the glass.

“And you came to interrupt the curse?”

“No. I was hoping to be included.”

In spite of herself, Liz gave a small laugh. Fragile, but real.

Lelliana smiled.

She did not ask why Liz had been crying.

She did not ask who Victoria was.

She did not force open any doors.

She simply looked at the books.

“Oh,” she said suddenly. “Shirley Jackson.”

Liz followed her gaze.

“You read Shirley Jackson?”

“Obviously. Haunted houses and dysfunctional families are my idea of a cosy evening.”

“The Haunting of Hill House?”

“I love it. But We Have Always Lived in the Castle is better.”

Liz looked at her, surprised despite herself.

“You have good taste.”

“I know. It’s tragic. It puts a lot of pressure on people who want to hate me.”

This time, Liz smiled openly.

Lelliana took a book from the shelf and leafed through it without really reading.

“And you?” she asked. “Do you actually work in a library?”

“Yes.”

“Exactly what I imagined.”

“Stiff, dusty, surrounded by rules?”

Lelliana lifted her eyes.

“No. Someone who knows stories can sometimes save your life.”

Liz went silent.

The sentence reached her more deeply than she wanted it to.

Lelliana seemed to realise it and looked away at once, as if regretting that she had been sincere.

“Sorry,” she said. “That was too deep. Let me start over. Librarians are sexy in a worrying way.”

Liz stared at her.

“Are you incapable of staying serious for more than ten seconds?”

“That’s false. At work, I sometimes manage fifteen.”

“Impressive.”

“Thank you. I had training.”

They both laughed.

Liz’s laugh felt strange in her own throat. She had not laughed like that in a long time. Not loudly. Not really. Not without wondering whether she had the right to.

In the mirror, her reflection had stopped troubling her. There were only two young women standing in a dim room, surrounded by books and distant noise.

“You don’t like parties,” Lelliana observed.

“Is it that obvious?”

“You’ve looked like you were searching for an emergency exit since you arrived.”

“I’ve always liked emergency exits. They’re honest.”

“I like dramatic entrances.”

“That is also obvious.”

Lelliana tilted her head, amused.

“Are you judging me?”

Liz thought of the rumours. The looks. The phrases she had heard at the library. All those people who believed they knew Lelliana because they had counted her stories, her dresses, her smiles.

“No,” she said at last. “Not tonight.”

Lelliana’s face changed.

Something crossed her eyes. A recognition almost painful, quickly hidden beneath a theatrical grimace.

“How generous. I’m honoured.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

“Too late. I’ll cling to this absence of judgment like a life raft.”

Liz lowered her gaze to her hands.

“People talk a lot.”

“Yes.”

The word was short.

Cold.

Lelliana closed the book and returned it to its place.

“They talk because it’s easier than thinking,” she added. “And because if I laugh loudly enough, they assume nothing hurts me.”

Liz recognized the sentence.

Not because she had heard it before.

Because she could have said it another way.

If I stay cold enough, they assume nothing hurts me.

The silence between them became less empty.

More inhabited.

“I’m sorry,” Liz said.

Lelliana shrugged.

“Don’t be. I’m gorgeous, funny, intelligent, and my legs should be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The universe has to balance that with a few idiots.”

Liz burst out laughing before she could stop herself.

“You’re unbearable.”

“Thank you. It’s my finest quality.”

The music changed in the living room. An old pop song, too cheerful, made several people shriek. Lelliana turned her head toward the noise, then back to Liz.

“Do you want to go back out there?”

“No.”

“Perfect. Neither do I.”

“I thought you liked dramatic entrances.”

“Entrances, yes. The rest is often disappointing.”

She sat on the edge of the desk, without awkwardness, but not without elegance. Liz remained standing near the shelves.

“So, Elizabeth-but-not-too-much,” Lelliana said, “why horror novels?”

Liz hesitated.

Because the monsters in them had names.

Because fear had a shape.

Because in books, ghosts sometimes had a reason for being there.

“Because horror stories are honest,” she answered. “They say the house can be rotten. That family can be dangerous. That the past does not stay buried just because you politely ask it to.”

Lelliana did not joke.

Not this time.

“Yes,” she murmured. “Exactly.”

Liz looked at her.

There was something there she did not dare question.

A shadow behind the light.

“And you?” Liz asked. “Why horror?”

Lelliana twirled a strand of red hair around her finger.

“Because in horror, when someone screams, at least everyone understands there’s a problem.”

The sentence remained suspended between them.

Liz felt her throat tighten.

Lelliana smiled at once, as if trying to erase what she had just revealed.

“And also because vampires have an excellent wardrobe.”

Liz decided not to let her flee completely.

“You know, you can love both reasons.”

Lelliana looked at her for a long moment.

Then she nodded.

“Yes. I suppose so.”

Outside, the rain began again against the windows. A fine, steady sound, almost soothing.

They kept talking.

First about books. About monsters, haunted houses, women called mad because they saw what everyone else refused to see. Then about London, exhaustion, night buses, impossible patients, and readers who asked for novels “like that one with the blue cover, but they had forgotten the title.”

Lelliana told everything with gestures, expressions, and different voices. Liz, despite herself, listened with growing attention. Beneath the exuberance, she discovered a quick intelligence, a sensitivity hidden under layers of irony. Lelliana was not light. She pretended to be light in order not to sink.

And Lelliana, in turn, seemed to discover that Liz was not cold. Not really. She was a locked door, yes. But behind it, something burned.

When Noah poked his head into the room almost an hour later, he found them sitting on the floor, backs against the bookcase, seriously debating the best way to survive in a haunted house.

“I knew you two were here,” he said.

“We’re organising the resistance,” Lelliana replied.

“Against what?”

“Noisy people,” said Liz.

Noah smiled.

“So against my party.”

“Exactly.”

He lifted both hands.

“I’ll leave you to plot.”

When he had gone, Lelliana leaned slightly toward Liz.

“See? Already a common cause. This is the beginning of a great alliance.”

“An alliance?”

“Yes. An unlikely friendship.”

Liz repeated the words silently.

An unlikely friendship.

She liked it.

It was vague enough not to be dangerous. Simple enough not to need explaining. Innocent enough to account for the way her heart had beaten a little too fast when Lelliana came closer.

Because it was beating too fast.

Liz did not want to think about that.

She had never been attracted to a woman.

She had never even considered the possibility. Women were friends, colleagues, silhouettes against whom she measured herself with a mixture of distance and insecurity. Not people whose mouths she noticed when they smiled.

Not people whose voices made her want to stay longer in a room.

So she filed it away in a safe drawer.

Curiosity.

Tiredness.

Halloween.

Lelliana, for her part, seemed just as determined not to see anything. She joked, talked, laughed, but sometimes her gaze lingered on Liz with astonished softness. Then she would catch herself at once, as though she had surprised even herself.

Around two in the morning, the party began to empty.

The vampires lost their fangs. The witches searched for their coats. The monsters ordered Ubers while shivering beneath the rain.

Liz put her coat back on in the hallway.

Lelliana appeared behind her, jacket over her shoulders, hair a little undone, make-up less perfect than when she had arrived. She looked more real that way.

“Leaving without saying goodbye to your ally?”

“I thought gothic alliances always ended in silence.”

“Only when there’s been a murder.”

“The party isn’t over yet.”

Lelliana smiled.

They went out together under the porch. Cold air struck their faces. The street shone with rain and orange light. For a moment, they stood there without speaking.

“How are you getting home?” Liz asked.

“Night bus. You?”

“Tube, if I walk fast.”

“Do you always walk fast?”

“When I’m fleeing a party, yes.”

Lelliana laughed softly.

Then she seemed to hesitate.

It was the first time all evening Liz had seen her truly uncertain.

“Give me your number,” she said at last. “For our unlikely friendship. We need an official channel.”

Liz could have refused.

She often refused this kind of thing. Not out of cruelty. Out of fear of being expected somewhere. Fear of disappointing someone. Fear that someone might enter her life and discover too many locked rooms.

But Lelliana was looking at her without pressing.

Without performing.

Almost without a mask.

Liz took out her phone.

“All right.”

Lelliana dictated her number, then immediately sent a message so Liz would have hers.

A few seconds later, Liz’s screen lit up.

Lelliana: This is an official message from your Halloween ally. Do not replace me with a ghost.

Liz read the message and smiled.

“I make no promises. Ghosts are less demanding.”

“But far less well dressed.”

“Fair point.”

A taxi passed along the street, splashing the pavement.

Lelliana shivered slightly.

Liz noticed the movement before she had even decided to notice it.

“You should go home,” she said.

“So should you.”

“Yes.”

Neither of them moved immediately.

It was ridiculous.

They had only known each other a few hours. They had talked about books, monsters, loneliness, while avoiding the deepest wounds. It was nothing. Nothing important. Nothing that could change anything.

And yet, when Lelliana finally descended the steps, Liz felt a small resistance inside herself.

As if something did not want the evening to end.

The redhead turned one last time beneath the fine rain.

“Good night, Elizabeth.”

Liz should have corrected her.

Said Liz.

As she always did.

But in Lelliana’s mouth, her full name did not sound cold. It sounded like a secret spell, something taken from an old novel, something one kept carefully.

“Good night, Lelliana.”

The redhead smiled, then walked away down the street.

Liz stayed under the porch until her silhouette disappeared around the corner.

When she got home later, she first avoided the mirror in her hallway. Out of habit. Out of fear. Then she stopped.

Slowly, she lifted her eyes.

Her reflection was there.

Only her reflection.

Not Victoria.

Not tonight.

Liz touched the locket at her throat.

“I think I made a friend,” she whispered.

The silence of the flat answered her.

But for once, it did not feel empty.