Chapter 415 The ghost in the bathtub

Far away from Silver, in the hidden mansion where the twins had once made their switch in the past, the nearly full moon hung high above the small, disguised cottage that concealed the vast underground mansion beneath it.

From deep below the seemingly ordinary house came the sound of violent coughing, loud enough to be heard even from the front doorstep of the mansion. The cough was so dry, ragged, and heart-wrenching that hearing it alone was enough to make anyone cringe.

The cough came from a man kneeling on the floor of his bathroom, clutching his chest as he spat blood onto the white tiles beneath him. When the fit began to subside, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his handkerchief already soaked red in his trembling hand.

Alex cursed under his breath and sank onto the floor, leaning his back against the toilet as he struggled to catch his breath. He remained there for a long moment until the trembling in his body finally subsided.

His silver eyes drifted upward to a portrait he had hung on the bathroom wall, just as he had in every other room of the house. Looking at her smiling face only shattered his already broken heart even further, and silent tears slid down his face as a fierce longing gripped his throat, burning like acid all the way down to his chest.

“Natalie… I miss you more with every day that passes. The loneliness is killing me.” He whispered to her image, swallowing convulsively to suppress his emotions. The walls of this house pressed in on him more each day, to the point he could barely breathe freely anymore.

Sebastian hadn’t brought their monthly prisoners, the ones they used to suppress the other half of their shared curse, and Alex suspected his brother wasn’t doing anything about curing him, or arranging for them to switch again this month.

Maybe he wouldn’t even come this month…

He didn’t have much time left, and his heartless twin wouldn’t even allow him to see their sister before he died, or let him step outside this hellhole and see what life was like again. He was slowly losing his mind, talking to shadows in this house while his brother went on living his life, married to his own wife, probably happy, probably experiencing what it felt like to fall in love with the right woman and to have someone to hold to bed every night.

Alex felt cheated of life. He felt abandoned, forgotten, and utterly alone. His brother had taken everything from him, and yet Alex couldn’t bring himself to resent him enough to wish him dead. He only wished that Sebastian might one day feel this same pain, might lose his own wife too, and finally understand why Alex could never forgive what he had done to him. He had killed his beloved wife and their unborn child…

He had taken away his wife and child, and more than anything, Alex thought it would have been better if Sebastian had killed him too when the elders had pressured him to do it years ago, before he had ever met her.

If his wife hadn’t died, their child would have been a few years old by now, he thought bitterly, the memories and what-ifs only making the pain in his chest grow even worse.

Alex was about to stand up when he suddenly heard water gushing into his bathtub. He turned toward it in mild surprise. He hadn’t turned on the tap, and yet the bathtub was filling on its own. He remained seated, utterly still. Ghosts no longer frightened him. He had lived alongside them for far too long now.

The water continued rising until it reached the brim and began spilling over the edge, flowing across the floor toward where he sat and soaking the fabric of his trousers. Then, without warning, a head broke the surface of the water.

It might have frightened any sane person, but Alex was barely fazed.

It was a young woman with dark hair and striking blue eyes, her head just breaking the surface of the water as she turned to look at him. She looked just as startled to see him as he was to see her, and after a brief moment of frozen silence, she slowly began sinking back beneath the water, as though she hadn’t meant to intrude on his privacy… or had somehow appeared in the wrong place.

“Who are you?” Alex asked, before realizing that wasn’t really the question he should be asking, it should have been *how the fuck did you get in there* but a lonely bastard like him would welcome even the company of a ghost.

The head stopped disappearing beneath the water, and the blue eyes stared back at him. The sight was strange, almost eerie, like a mummy crawling head-first out of water, but he only sat there, staring into her eyes.

“I’m sorry, I came through the wrong bathtub,” came the woman’s voice, though she spoke from underwater, and it sounded garbled, unsettling in a way. “If you don’t mind, I’ll quietly go back the way I came, and you can carry on talking to the photo on the wall.”

Alex frowned. “Don’t go. Wait. What’s your name? Are you a ghost?” He asked, wondering if perhaps his head was too full of wine, talking to a disembodied head floating in water. He must be having delusions but Alex didn’t care.

The eyes looked confused at his question, and then, as if realizing something, she nodded. “I am. I visit lonely souls like you, sir. But I think I’ve come at the wrong time.”

Alex chuckled softly. “Lonely soul indeed. And no, you haven’t come at the wrong time at all. Does my ghostly company have a name, at least?” He asked, humoring the ghost and somewhere happy that he had company.

“It’s Ivy, sir.” She said, wanting nothing more than to sink back beneath the surface and return to the sea. Using her Tidekin’s portal to try to reach her sister had clearly not been a good idea.

“Ivy,” he tested the name. “I never imagined ghosts had names, Ivy. Would you like to come out of the water and join me for dinner? I make wonderful meals, I imagine even ghosts appreciate good food. I don’t have guests here often, but don’t worry, I know how to be a proper host.” He said, rising from the floor with the eagerness of a child offered candy after a bitter dose of medicine.

But the head sank deeper into the water as he stood, and she said, “Sorry, sir, I—”

“It’s Alexander. You can call me Alex. What were you saying, Miss?”

Ivy laughed nervously, convinced this man was mad, and that she had swum straight into a madman’s bathroom, talking to a disembodied head as though it were perfectly normal. Shouldn’t he be screaming and trying to make sense of what was happening in his bathtub?

“Alex, I’m sorry, I have other places I need to be. If I have the time, I’ll come by for that dinner. Good night.”

“Don’t go!” Alex called out, rushing toward the tub, but by then she had already vanished beneath the water. His heart tightened painfully as he sank back onto the floor, reaching a hand into the water that was already swirling away through the drain.

•••

Meanwhile, beneath the sea, Ivy pulled her head back under the water and muttered, “What a strange man. Probably a mad one too,” she thought, scratching the back of her head nervously. She had honestly believed she was about to be beheaded for appearing in the wrong bathtub.

“Did you see my mama, Aunt Ivy?” Pearl asked immediately, swimming closer to her aunt. Ivy looked down at her and sadly shook her head.

“Not yet. I didn’t find her, but don’t worry. I’ll keep looking until I do.”

The little mermaid’s head dropped, her expression falling.

“Papa said he’ll hand you over to the sea witch if Mama doesn’t come back. I miss my mama…”

The little mermaid began to cry, pink pearls slipping from her eyes one after another. Caught in an impossible dilemma, Ivy could only hug her niece tightly and silently pray that the Tidekin she’d sent to her sister’s bonded Tidekin would deliver the message in time. It seemed Wave was having a difficult time traveling between the land and the sea because he had been tampering too much with the sea witch.