Another One Bites the Dust

by Chris Marie Green

  Scott would be back, I knew. He wasn’t about to be deserting Wendy anytime soon.

  As I heard footsteps outside her room, she sent me an anxious look. And when Gavin appeared in her doorway, I was the one whose pseudo-nerves were jangling.

  Jeans, boots, and a white button-down. Short brown hair. He seemed to fill the room’s doorway, and as he slipped off his sunglasses, he revealed those intense pale blue eyes framed by dark lashes. His gaze was enough to pierce.

  Wendy pointed to the window, where I knew Gavin couldn’t see me.

  “There’s someone who wants to talk to you,” she said.

  He bristled, but I didn’t shrink or back down.

  “I thought I felt some ice in here,” he said, frostier than even a ghost could be. “What does the witch want?”

  10

  Yeah, that hurt. But I guarded my emotions like a pro. Hell, I’d been getting verbal Wendy missiles launched at me earlier, so I was sure as shit ready for this confrontation with her brother.

  I took him in: tall, broad, rough on the outside but bruised underneath. His eyes showed the wounds, but his clenched jaw and fists fought them.

  Why did his toughness get to me? Just looking at him made my essence tumble, a faint, electric echo of how it used to feel when the alive middle-school Jensen would see a hunky guy walk into a room. Everything around Gavin had color, drawing me, pulling me in with that life force that I felt only from him.

  Wendy was suddenly the peacemaker. “It’s time to move on, Gav. Jensen and her friends defended me from a crapstorm today, and they wouldn’t be doing that if they wanted us to suffer.”

  “I’ve done all the suffering I’m going to,” he said, sauntering past a palatial vanity table framed by some of Wendy’s comic book art. “Just expel that ghost. Or do whatever Eileen is teaching you to do online with her.”

  As he began to turn his back on me, Wendy raised her voice. “I don’t want to.”

  He slowly faced her, mild astonishment etched on his face. “What was that, Wen?”

  “No disrespect but, like I said, some heavy stuff went down today, and Jensen’s crew took care of it like bosses. And that’s all they were doing with Elizabeth, too—taking care of business.” She took a step toward him. “You and I had some time to think about what went down back at the old mansion. We’ve talked about things to death. Now I just want to get past all of it.”

  “You want to welcome a destructive ghost into our new home.” His lip curled. “A ghost who rifled around in my head more than any other woman I’ve ever . . .”

  He cut himself off, his hands fisting again until the veins in his arms strained.

  I wanted him to go on, because he’d called me a woman. Not a spirit. Not a ghoulie or spook.

  A woman.

  Wendy walked toward him. “You know all the smudging and incantations I did around here to keep ghosts out? Well, one word and I can invalidate its powers and invite Jensen in.”

  “You really want her in.” He chuffed. “That would be a mistake.”

  “After what she did for me today, I trust her and her friends. She’s not the enemy—that dark spirit is. It was here, Gav, for the first time since the séance.”

  I could see Gavin’s body grow even tauter. Was he thinking the spirit was his father, just like I was?

  He glanced toward the window, where I was still lounging, but he looked right through me.

  Now was my moment. “Wendy, will you translate?”

  “Sure.”

  He talked first, though, and it was to Wendy. “Tell Jensen Murphy thank you for the bodyguard service, but we can take it from here.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  Wendy ran with that. “She agrees with me—the more defenses we have set up against darkness, the better. Now that I know I’m sensitive to the other side, more ghosts might be coming around to see me, too. This is what my life is now, and it doesn’t surprise me, because I’ve always had an interest in the paranormal. An affinity for it, like Eileen says. It just took today for me to drop my pride and let Jensen in. What’s it going to take for you?”

  He just stared at the wall, a force field of contained emotion. Didn’t he know that, with a touch, I could bring him instant peace? That I could make him see hallucinations with me that could eventually heal and soothe his soul?

  None of it would be real, though. I wasn’t capable of real anymore.

  “Gavin?” Wendy asked.

  A few choked beats passed, then he said, “I know you’ll do what you want, so she’s yours to handle.” A muscle ticked in his jaw.

  A weight seemed to fall off Wendy’s thin shoulders, but not all the way. She was still carrying too many burdens for someone who was only fifteen. For anyone, really.

  “You can come in, Jensen,” she said almost triumphantly.

  Something vague in the room seemed to break apart, and the smell of sage I’d caught before lightened up. I floated off the sill to hover over the floor. Wendy smiled, maybe because she’d never had much power before, and now it was at her fingertips.

  “She’s in,” she said to Gavin, going over to shut her window.

  He began to walk out of the room. “I’m ecstatic for you both.”

  “Not so fast,” I said.

  Wendy caught him by the sleeve. “She wants to talk with you. Jensen, what should I say?”

  “He’s been seeing my friend, Suze.”

  “Gav, she knows you went to see Suzanne Field.”

  He let out a short laugh, leaning back against the doorframe, his arms loosely crossed over his chest. “This Jensen really gets around.”

  “Not nearly as much as he does,” I said, wafting over to him. The closer I got, the more I buzzed.

  After Wendy repeated what I’d said for his sake, he laughed, but not because he was in good spirits.

  Wendy looked exasperated. “I told her that we’ve been doing research into her past. We’re curious about her.”

  “And what did she say?”

  I spoke now. “I said that I understand, because I had to do my research on you, too, remember?” The empathizing, the hallucinations, the dream-digging.

  Wendy whispered to me, “Are you sure you want to go with that?”

  I shrugged, and from the way Gavin was staying here, I guessed that he really did give a fig about what I was telling him.

  As I remembered what Twyla said about him being obsessed with me, I shivered. And it wasn’t in a bad way, either. Sick.

  I was so close to him now that I could see his throat constrict with each swallow, could hear him breathe, could imagine what his Cupid’s-bow lips would feel like against me if a dimension wasn’t between us.

  “She doesn’t like me talking with Suzanne, does she?” he asked, like maybe he was content just to rile me up.

  Had he been taking some pleasure in contacting Suze, knowing I wouldn’t go for it?

  “No, I don’t like it,” I said. “He can ask me any question he wants about the majorly mysterious Jensen Murphy, and I’ll answer. But leave Suze out of this.”

  As Wendy translated, he only smiled that slightly raw smile that made the energy in me dive downward, into my belly area. He clearly couldn’t stop remembering how I’d crossed a lot of lines with him.

  “Tell Jensen,” he said, “that I’m a stickler for research, just like she is.”

  Wendy shook her head. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “I’m only being honest.”

  Damn, he was stubborn. “Tell him there’s something else I need to talk to him about. In private this time.”

  “We tell each other everything these days,” Wendy said. “That’s because we know what happens when you keep secrets.”

  Poor thing. She was in for another rude awakening someday about her adoptive father.

  Gavin seemed to get a hint of what I might be talking about, and his hackles went up. Since he knew I could be a loose cannon, I wasn’t surprised when he shot m
y cold spot a glare and started to leave the room.

  “I’m done for the day,” he said as he moved down the hallway. I followed.

  “She’s coming!” Wendy said from her room.

  I waved back at her. “I’ll deal with him. No translation required.”

  Her door slammed. Had I pissed her off yet again by shutting her out of this? Teenagers. It hadn’t been so long ago that I’d been one but, damn. What a drag.

  On the opposite end of the condo, Gavin went into a room with me on his tail. I paused by a drawing board as I entered, my gaze locked on all the sketches of me posted on the walls. The angelic me’s with my flowing hair and ethereal form . . . and the hellbitches with the fire eyes and haggy mouths.

  Shutting out the disappointment, I found the nearest outlet, made one of my hands into a prong, and plugged in. I hadn’t gotten all the juice I probably needed out of the little space-age reader.

  Time to get real.

  I materialized in front of him, taking perverse delight in how his expression changed at the sight of ghostie me, blinkering around the edges with energy.

  Motioning to a hellbitch sketch, I tried to seem flippant. “You got a few of the details wrong.”

  Even though I could tell he was fascinated, he deliberately turned away from me, pulling keys out of his back jeans pocket, tossing them onto a wide desk, where they slid across half of it before coming to a dead stop.

  “Just going off memory,” he said.

  “I never appeared like that to you—not in a photo and not in your subconscious.”

  “Sometimes personality overcomes everything else.”

  The air-conditioning kicked on, taking up the vacuum of silence that’d come between us as he switched on his computer and sat in a leather chair. What, was he going to ignore me and start working?

  He sure knew how to push a ghost’s nerves.

  “Hey,” I said, getting his focus again. “I’m using a lot of effort to appear to you right now. Also, I have about a million things to take care of out in the world, and you’re wasting my precious time.”

  “What do we have to discuss? You asked me to stop seeing Suzanne already.”

  “And I’m sure you’ll respect my wishes.” The sarcasm might as well have been a Vegas sign flashing Bullshit!

  “But . . .” I said. “There’s something else I want to mention out of Wendy’s hearing. It’s about that dark spirit from the séance. She doesn’t know who it might be, does she?”

  He fell back into his chair, an injured expression taking over his face again.

  “No,” he said.

  “You haven’t told her?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “When do you plan to?”

  “I was hoping on never.”

  He faced me now, allowing himself to finally get a good look at me. The way his gaze devoured me was reminiscent of how fake Dean didn’t hide his interest, either.

  Excited, I gave off a mighty bzzzt. Embarrassing.

  Questions filled Gavin’s gaze at my extra weird behavior, but I went on. “Please just hear me out. Lying is not the way to go here. Amanda Lee used a bunch of those on me, just like she did with you. You don’t want to keep lying to Wendy when it very well could put her in danger.”

  “How? That dark spirit is already coming around. How would knowing who it might be make things any better?” He raised a finger at me. “Over four years ago, my goddamned father nearly started putting Wendy through what he put Farah through. But when I found out about his abusive nature, I stopped it. And, you know what? I would kill him again if I had to.”

  Was that his accelerated heartbeat filling the air? Louder. More forceful. Or maybe it was my imagination.

  “Gavin,” I said. “You don’t know what dark spirits are capable of. I don’t even know for sure, but I can make an educated guess. I’m betting they’re deceitful, with silver tongues. I suspect, if this one is your father, that he’s hanging around Wendy’s window because he wants to lure her to him, and if you don’t arm her with the truth about who he really was, she’ll want to get to the bottom of whatever or whoever he is. You’re setting her up as a perfect target.”

  His gaze blazed through me. He didn’t like that the ghost who’d worked him over was giving him advice. Even worse, it was advice that he should be following.

  His defenses gave out almost imperceptibly, the chip on his shoulder loosening. “I keep telling myself that she needs a normal life, but it’s not happening. I moved us out of that mansion, but the ghosts followed. I told her it was okay to stay in and do her school assignments from home for a while because I thought she needed the space, but all it’s done is make her delve deeper into everything I wanted to leave behind. And I’ve let her do it, because I can’t fight any of it.”

  “There’re just some things you have to tolerate,” I said. “Like me. I’m going to fight against that dark spirit just as hard as I fought for Elizabeth.”

  He looked at me, his gaze a melancholy pale. My pseudo-heart broke a bit at the sight, because I’d only made his grief at losing his ex-fiancée worse by haunting him.

  But I was sure that, after a month, he was coming around to accepting that I would’ve haunted anyone who was a suspect in her murder. It’d been about justice.

  In the end, I was sure he believed in that just as much as I did.

  “You’re doing everything you possibly can for Wendy,” I said, closing out the discussion. “You’re a great big brother.”

  He must’ve known that I intended to leave now, because he stood from his chair, and before I could react, he was in front of me.

  Tall. At least a foot taller than I was. Big, with that wide chest that held a heartbeat I could hear and feel through the air, because it sure wasn’t mine.

  His life force, I thought. It was all around me.

  I wasn’t positive about what I saw in his gaze, but it was steady, intense. Obsession, Twyla would’ve said.

  And when he reached out to touch my face, I held my ghost breath.

  It seemed to take forever for his hand to reach out to me, and I actually waited, waited to feel him against me.

  But when he passed through me, I flinched, shocked.

  He backed away, too, clenching his hand, probably trying to stop the chills and electricity from crawling up his arm and through the rest of him.

  I made everyone so cold, didn’t I?

  Jerking my hand from the outlet, I disappeared into the air, becoming a nothing to Gavin once again. I rushed downstairs to their fireplace and swept up the chimney. But all the while I kept thinking of the moment before his hand had passed through me and how hopeful I’d been.

  And how disappointed I’d ended up.

  • • •

  I blasted over the courtyard, catching the sight of Scott hunkering on the wall with one knee drawn up like the cool dude he was.

  As I wheeled back around, he spotted me, lifting his hand in a wave, so very calm and collected that anyone would’ve been hard-pressed to remember that he’d been in a knock-down, drag-out fight with a dark spirit recently.

  I swooped to him, and he said, “I came back here after I saw you go inside with Wendy. No dark spirits around now.”

  “Hopefully Wendy’s prayer gave it a goose that it didn’t like. How’s Cassie?”

  “Doing fine. She feels a little . . . off, though.”

  “How?”

  Scott idly played with a lace on his high-top sneaker. “Can’t say. She says she feels like a part of her is missing.”

  Yikes. “When I saw that dark spirit reach into her and take out some essence, it shoved the chunk into itself, like it was feeding.”

  “That ain’t good.” Scott’s big light eyes were wide. “Cassie went with Twyla to Amanda Lee’s if you want to give her a holler.”

  “I’ll do that.” I needed to touch base with Amanda Lee, anyway, mostly to see that Louis had been allowed to go to Tim Knudson’s house to keep watch over
that problem.

  As Louis said, when it rains, it pours.

  Scott nodded toward Wendy’s window. “You got to go inside?”

  “You wouldn’t like it. Very girly in her room.”

  “I’ve been in some female rooms in my time.”

  “I don’t doubt it, Casanova. This one isn’t open to you, though.” God, why did ghosts have to be so horny?

  He smiled to himself. Then he asked, “Anything exciting happen in there?”

  “I made contact with Gavin.”

  “That’s a large charge.”

  I think that meant it was cool in fifties-speak. “Seems like we’re on firmer ground with these two. But we’re not all exactly BFFs yet.”

  “Just give it time. You can work your charm on the wet rag just as easily as you did with Wendy.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “in all the excitement, I haven’t thought to ask. . . . I need to find a couple possible ghosts in Boo World fast. Patrick McNichol, one of the kids who was at the Elfin Forest party, and Milo Guttenburg, this crabby person of interest in my case. If they’re around, I’d like to ask them about my murder.”

  “Good luck. You know that ghosts don’t have those smartphones these kids walk around with now. We don’t even have an official Boo World hangout.”

  Right. Ghosts kind of pieced everything together, taking what they could get, finding one another as we wandered from one stimulating situation to the next. Sometimes I even wondered if my friends stuck around only because of the excitement me and Amanda Lee provided.

  Scott ran a hand through his greased hair. “You just leave it to me. When I get a break, I’ll spread the word about your guys and see if anyone has any news about where they are. You might even fly by their death spots to see if they’re one of those nerds that like to haunt them.”

  “Do you think they could also be at their burial spots?” I asked, because, yeah, I’d been wondering.

  “Sometimes that happens, like with Old Seth.” He was a ghost who was six feet under in an Escondido graveyard, and he liked to attend parties at a haunted house built over it. “But to haunt a burial spot, you’ve got to have one to go to in the first place. I was cremated, just like lots of others. Some ghosts just don’t like to haunt their resting places.”