Spooktober Stories: Audeni Deneen

"Audeni! You made it!" Clara cheered as she ran toward the old house.
Shell agreed. "So the princess really can sneak away from the castle."
"I told you I could."
"I never doubted it for a minute," Suli said in Antaran Creole. Audeni smiled and took his hand. All three of the girls could speak the language, but she had been teaching Suli because he was Florarovan, and her parents were unlikely to approve of her being friends with him, let alone dating him. He knew she could sneak out because she'd done it plenty of times before--to see him.
"Blech, gross." Clara said as Suli kissed Audeni lightly on the cheek.
"Yeah, can we get on with this ghost summoning business?" Shell turned to face the house. It was a small house, brick, with broken windows and a roof crumbling on one side. A dead tree stood in the yard. Audeni and Suli had discovered it while wandering Forgecard Falls, looking for a quiet, hidden place for their language lessons... among other things.
The house was mostly empty, but there were a few pieces of furniture, which was just as dilapadated as the house itself. On an old bookshelf, the actual shelf of which had broken and fallen on one side, they had found a journal full of writings and clippings from newspapers. A lot of the stories were conspiracy theories about the Homeworld that the people of Nideon had once come from, and Janishbu--enormous monsters that had supposedly once flown around the planet before dying out. There was no evidence of them, of course.
In the front of the notebook was a name: Elijah Asher. Suli had managed to find him in records. Elijah Asher had died over a decade prior, and his house had apparently been crumbling ever since. He thought it was kind of sad that Elijah didn't seem to have anyone to mourn him in death, and thus was born the idea of bringing him back. Clara had always wanted to attempt a seance. Shell didn't believe in ghosts, but she agreed that if they were going to do it, they had better do it on the Eve of Krouin, when the spirit world was closest.
The four teenagers entered the house. They settled on the floor in the front room, not far from the broken bookshelf. Clara drew some symbols in the dust in the middle of their circle, though they were marred in some spots by the footprints Audeni and Suli had left earlier. She placed candles in the middle and had Suli light them with his fire magic, which none of the girls, being of Mermish descent, had. Then she accepted Elijah's notebook from Audeni and began to chant.
"Elijah Asher, speak with us!" Her voice grew louder, "Elijah Asher, speak with us." Then she spoke in another language that Clara insisted was Calistian, but Audeni suspected that it might just be nonsense. As Clara continued, Shell started chanting something that definitely was just nonsense, and eventually they all dissolved into a fit of giggles.
Clara tried several different tactics, but all of them seemed to end this way. After a few hours, the candles were low, and no ghosts had joined them. Clara snuffed the candles, and they stood, stretching  from stiffness."Are you upset that we weren't able to talk to him?" Audeni asked as they left.
Clara grinned. "There's always next year."
"I don't know, I was kind of hoping he was secretly a janishbu rider," Suli said.
Shell laughed. "First ghosts, now janishbu?"
"He's Florarovan," Clara told her, "he can't swim to the bottom of the sea the way we can, so we wants to fly."
Audeni laughed and turned toward Suli, who gasped and looked up. "Did you see that?" he asked.
"What?"
"I thought it was... wings."
"I think a few Dragons live around here," Clara said.
The boy shook his head. "Bigger."
Audeni saw the small smile on his lips and smacked him. "Come on, I've got to get home."
"Hey wait," Suli pulled her back as Clara and Shell waved goodbye. He put a hand around her waist and drew her in to kiss her. "See you tomorrow?"
Audeni kissed him back. "Same time, same place?"
In response, he kissed her one last time.
***
Audeni was late arriving the next day. The house looked less spooky in the daylight, but she had been here enough times with Suli that it almost felt familiar at this point. He wasn't waiting for her outside, so she assumed he was already inside. But when she opened the door, the front room was empty but for Clara's drawing and the stubs of last night's candles.
"Suli?" She called. She stepped down the hallway, poking through the other rooms. But he wasn't there. It was possible he was also late. She waited. And waited. And waited. As dusk began to fall, she trudged home, wondering what had happened to him. She knew she couldn't tell anyone. Her parents wouldn't take kindly to her dating a Florarovan boy, and even less so her spending time in an old, abandoned house. She expected that his parents would send out a search for him, soon enough, when he didn't return. But whether or not they did, she never saw him again.