WARNING: MENTION/DESCRIPTION OF BLOOD AND MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. IF THIS TRIGGERS YOU, JUST SCROLL TO THE END OF THE CHAPTER AND I WILL GIVE YOU A CHAPTER RECAP. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Luke's POV

When Alex, Reggie and I poofed into Caleb's club, we found ourselves behind the stage we had been forced to play on less than three weeks ago. I looked around and shuddered. I had hoped to be rid of this place forever, but apparently fate had other plans.

"Okay, if I were a little teenage scumbag working for Caleb, where would I be?" Reggie growled, looking around at all the costumes and makeup.

"Wait," Alex whispered, pulling us behind a costume rack. "If we're seen, we might get trapped here again."

At that moment, a ghost poofed just a few feet away from the costume rack we were hiding under, followed by another.

"When is the show starting?" One of them asked.

"Twenty minutes, I think," the other answered. "Caleb wants you to take this to the girl."

My eyes narrowed. So Nick had  taken Julie here.

"You want me to take it to her now?"

"Not yet. Caleb just went to her cell."

My blood boiled. Cell? Caleb was keeping her in a cell?

I clenched my fists and let out a low growl. Alex put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a look that said calm down before you get us caught.

I peeked through a bunch of fluffy costumes and saw two pairs of shoes facing each other for a split second before they poofed away. We slowly climbed out from behind the rack. I gave the signal to the guys and we poofed into the hallway.

I looked down the hallway to make sure the coast was clear before leaning against the steel door in front of me.

"Where could he have taken her?" Alex asked quietly, scuffing his feet on the ground.

"I don't know," I said. "But when I get my hands on him- both of them... they'll be sorry." Reggie nodded in agreement.

"Yeah. No one hurts Julie and gets away with it."

"Alright, but we don't even know where to look," Alex said. I bit my lip.

"Neither do I," I replied. "But we can't leave without Julie."

The guys nodded as I got lost in my thoughts. Who knows what Caleb and Nick have done to her by now? Were they using her to get to us? Or do they actually need her for something? They could have hurt her, or worse...

I shook my head. Don't think like that, I scolded myself. She'll be fine, and we're going to make sure of it.

"So where do we start?" Reggie asked. 

"I don't know, maybe we try to find Willie?"

I shook my head.

"We don't know  if Willie's even here, Alex," I said. "Plus, it's too much of a risk. I say we go through all these rooms here-" I gestured to all the steel doors lining the hallway- "and go from there."

"That's not a good idea either," Alex said. "What if we waltz right into a room and Caleb sees us?"

I groaned and rubbed my eyes. Everything we thought of only lead to a dead end.

"We have to find Julie," Reggie said confidently. "So we have to take the risk."

He was right. Our first priority here was Julie's safety, not ours.

"Alright," I said. "So we go through the whole club. We'll tear the place apart if we have to. Whatever it takes."

Alex and Reggie nodded in agreement. I opened my mouth to say something else, but I never got the chance because all of a sudden there was a soft, metallic noise from the other side of the door I was leaning on. It almost sounded like the clinking of chains.

Alex and Reggie froze as I jumped away from the door, staring at it with wide eyes.

"Do you think they heard us?"

I slowly shrugged me shoulders.

"Let's just get out of here," I whispered, and we poofed to a different part of the club.

We appeared in a small staircase, obviously leading down to some type of basement. As much as it made me sick to think about, if there were any cells at the Club, they'd probably be in the basement.

I got the boy's attention and jerked my head down the stairs. We slowly creeped down towards whatever was at the bottom of the stairs- it was too dark to see.

All of a sudden, I heard a loud creak from behind Alex and I. We whipped our heads around to see Reggie grinning sheepishly, his foot on a loose stair. I shook my head and turned back around and continued walking down the stairs.

When I finally got to the bottom, I could see a little better. Just like the rest of the Club, this basement was clean and tidy. There was a Hollywood Ghost Club Plaque on the wall and a single light bulb above us, the gold chain hanging down to eye level.

We tiptoed forward, trying to see if we could find any cells. Unfortunately, the ghosts that were talking about it didn't describe the cell at all, so I had no idea what I was looking for.

We came across a wooden door and I flung my head up to stop the guys, accidentally smacking Reggie in the face. I gave him an apologetic glance before turning back to the door.

I  placed my hand on the knob and turned it as slowly as I could. I waited a few seconds, and when there was no noise coming from behind the door, I swung it open. 

We were now standing on the threshold of a small, dark room. I reached up and found another light bulb chain. I pulled it and the room lit up. I heard Alex gasp from behind me. I suddenly felt sick.

There was nothing in the room except for hundreds of shelves, lining the walls and stretching all the way up to the tall ceiling. The shelves, however, did not cause my stomach to churn.

On the shelves were jars. Glass jars, with light brown corks in the top. Inside the jars were swirling lights of many different colors. I stepped forward and saw that the jars were labeled. I squinted at one with a purple light swirling inside and read the name "Delilah Johnson." 

They were souls.

I remembered when Willie came to us and told us we had to do our unfinished business before we were destroyed. He mentioned that Caleb owned everyone's souls at the club. I didn't know he meant that literally.

"Oh my god."

I turned and saw Reggie and Alex looking around, horrified looks on their faces.

"This guy is seriously a sicko," Reggie said, looking from jar to jar. I silently agreed.

"No."

I looked over to see Alex staring at a jar resting on a corner shelf. I walked forward and my blood ran cold when I saw the name.

"I'm sorry, Alex," I said quietly.

"Willie," he whispered, his eyes filled with tears. Reggie gave him a sympathetic pat on the back.

"Sorry, man."

Alex wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his pink hoodie and turned away from the jar.

"Let's get out of here," he said.

Reggie and I nodded and turned towards the door. But all of a sudden, it swung shut.

"Hey!" I yelled, banging on the door.

"Luke, chill. Let's just poof out," Reggie said. I mentally facepalmed. Duh.

I tried to poof out- except I couldn't. I looked back at the guys, who were looking down at their hands, confused.

"Why can't we poof?"

All of a sudden, a purple cloud filled the air, and after it dispersed Caleb stood in its place.

"Aww, how sweet. The rescue party is here," he said slyly.  

"Where's Julie?" I yelled, balling my fists. "If you hurt her, I swear-"

"Relax, Luke," Caleb said calmly. "She's fine. For now."

I growled and tried to lunge at him, prepared to claw his eyes out, but Caleb held out his hand and I ran into an invisible barrier. I stumbled backwards, but my glare never faltered.

"Let's not be impulsive now," Caleb said. "You are of no importance to me, so I will not hesitate to destroy you." My eyes narrowed.

"And Julie?"

"She is very valuable," Caleb replied. Suddenly, his calm expression was gone and his gaze became hard and cold.

"But I will harm her. And you can help me."

"Why are you doing this?" Alex asked angrily. Caleb sighed.

"I am doing this, Alexander, because I can," he said, slowly walking towards us. "Any more questions?"

"Yeah, just one- how dare you?" Reggie snarled. Caleb let out a cold laugh. 

"I can't believe I ever thought you three were important," he said, the smile sliding off his face. He brought his hand to his lips and kissed it, blowing a jet of thick fog at us.

"Not again!" Was the only thing I could say before I squeezed my eyes shut as the fog enveloped us.

When I opened my eyes, we were sitting in a bare room. There were no windows, just three blank walls (the fourth wall looked like glass but it was so tinted we couldn't see what was on the other side), a ceiling, a cold concrete floor, and a steel door on the other side of the room.

I looked down and noticed that our hands were bound in chains that were infused in the floor. I looked to my right to see Reggie, who was desperately trying to yank his hands out of the cuffs, and then to my left to see Alex sitting there in silence.

"You guys okay?"

I only got murmurs and nods in return.

Getting captured was definitely not part of the plan- which, I now realized, wasn't really much of a plan to begin with. We never should have rushed into the Club blindly, and now we had been captured.

After a few minutes, Caleb poofed in, a thick red substance on his hands. A white cloth appeared out of nowhere and he wiped his hands, tinting the white color red. I suddenly felt sick.

"Welcome to your new home, boys," Caleb snarled, discarding the now red rag. 

"Let us go!" I shouted, struggling against the chains. Caleb looked at me as one would look at a small child that took a box of markers to the wall.

"Now, Luke, do you really think I'm going to do that?"

I glared at him as he walked back and forth across the room.

"You see, I originally thought you three had special powers," he said, keeping his eyes ahead of him. "But I've come to realize..." he stopped walking and leaned down close to my face.

"There's nothing special about you three. The special one," he continued, resuming his pacing, "is your musician friend Julie."

Just hearing Julie's name come out of Caleb's mouth made me see red. I kept struggling against the chains, although I knew there was no way out of them.

"How can she see you? No other lifer has ever been visible to ghosts without my help. She truly must be special." Caleb stopped walking and pressed his lips together.

"Well... she was."

I nearly choked as my eyes went wide. In a small voice I heard Alex say,

"W-what?"

Caleb sighed and flicked his wrist, causing a purple cloud of smoke to appear. The smoke dispersed in the center of the cloud, creating an image that made my heart stop.

It was Julie.

Dead.

The tears formed in my eyes immediately. Julie was laying on her back, her limbs spread out in an awkward position. She was lying in a pool of blood, the majority of it surrounding her head like a dark, sickening halo.

"No..." I whispered. I felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest and torn apart. "NO!" 

I finally stopped struggling against the chains and collapsed to the ground tears running down my face.

I couldn't believe it. Julie was dead. She was the thing that made my afterlife bearable. Seeing her eyes, her smile, hearing her voice, was like the sunlight pouring down onto my face and making me feel warm and safe. I loved her more than anything in the world, and she was gone. The sunlight was no longer shining. I no longer felt warm and safe. I felt my entire world crash and burn around me, and although I didn't need to, I couldn't breath. I was being ripped apart from the inside out. I was dying all over again.

She was dead.

I didn't even hear Caleb leave. 

My wailing ceased and now the only sounds that filled the room were Alex and Reggie's sobbing. I wasn't crying anymore, but the tears continued to fall. I look at Alex and Reggie to see their faces splotched with tears, looking just as broken as I was.

We cried silently for what felt like hours.

I wrapped my arms around my stomach and lay on the ground, my tears streaking down the side of my face. Alex did the same, while Reggie sat against the wall with his head in his hands. My mouth was dry and my lips were cracked.

"She's gone."

When Reggie spoke, it became real. It became so, so real and the pain in my chest expanded. I took in a shaking breath.

"We can't give up."

I turned my head to look at Alex. His eyes were distant and cold. 

"She wouldn't have wanted us to give up. So we can't."

I thought about Julie again. Alex was right. If she were here, she'd tell us to get off our sorry butts and take action. 

"Stop moping around and go kick some ghost butts," she would say. "Don't get all worked up over me, now."

All of a sudden, all the feelings of sadness, grief, and regret disappeared. All I was left with was anger, hate, and rage. And it was all directed at one person. And one ghost.

"I'm going to kill them."

RECAP: So if you skipped this chapter, basically Luke, Alex, and Reggie snuck into the Holly wood Ghost Club and ended up being captured. Caleb then shows them a vision of Julie and she's... dead. Caleb leaves and the boys completely break down at the sight of Julie's body.

So... I know this was a super dark chapter, and I truly apologize. Just please stick with me 'till the end. Sorry again. 

I hope you don't hate me too much! See you next time!