Every Breath You Take

by Chris Marie Green

Coolly, Amanda Lee looked away from it. “Who is that refusing to honor my space bubble?”

  “Oops,” Twyla said, backing off. “Sorry, Grams.”

  Amanda Lee probably only heard static from Twyla, but it didn’t seem to matter, because her screen was back to being more readable, at least.

  Another rap sounded at the door, and Twyla immediately scooted over to it. “Who’s there?”

  Another rap.

  Twyla glanced at me, her brow wrinkled. Even Marg and Amanda Lee paid attention. Usually ghosts IDed themselves right away.

  But then the raps turned into that knock-knock pattern everyone does. Bump, bump-ba-bump-bump . . . bump-bump.

  “Randy?” Twyla asked.

  “In the flesh!” he said through the wood.

  When I called for him to come in, he slowly seeped through the tiny, slim crack on the side of the door. Since I was a ghost and I’d lived here for a while, Amanda Lee couldn’t spirit-proof the house, so we were a polite sort who respected her and my rules about knocking.

  His sailor hat was tilted as he expanded into regular form, hovering and grinning crookedly at us, Marg in particular. His gaze seemed to rest on her X a moment too long before he looked around the room at the rest of us.

  “What’s shaking?” he asked.

  Twyla pointed to him. “Looks like you are.”

  His form was oddly quivery around the edges. I hadn’t noticed, because I’d been concentrating on his grin. It was a welcome sight, because I hadn’t seen it for . . . Well, too long.

  “You’re happy,” I said.

  “So?”

  Marg floated away from the window, toward Amanda Lee, for some reason. Maybe it was the same one that was making me frown now. I’d never seen Randy quiver like this, as if he were expending more effort than usual just to hang out.

  Twyla even came to my side. “So what gives, Randy? You’ve been such a bummer lately, and now you’re geeked.”

  “Isn’t a guy allowed to smile?”

  There was something about the way he said it. The proper, sober grammar . . .

  A jagged tremble nudged through me. I felt one go through Twyla, too. At the computer, Marg was blocking Amanda Lee with her near transparency, like she was intuitively . . .

  Protecting her?

  Amanda Lee stiffly got out of her chair, like she felt our electric wariness, and if I still had skin, the hairs would surely be standing at attention on it, too. But I didn’t have skin. Just buzzes and hums racing around me like tiny screams in the night . . .

  When Randy looked straight at me, pulling back his lips in a grotesque smile, I knew. And when he raised his hand, hardening his form so that it turned into an ax, I was sure.

  “It’s him!” I screamed, just before Randy’s form melted away to reveal the dark, formless blob of my killer lifting his bladed weapon to murder me again.

  A flash of terror enveloped me: that night, cowering on the ground, my breath stabbing my lungs as I held up my hands to shield myself.

  “Stop! Please! Why’re you doing this?”

  Before I knew what was going on, Twyla had hardened her own arms into blades and was zooming at the dark spirit.

  He swung back his ax hand, ready for her. . . .

  Just as I was hardening my arms into blades, too, a jumbled cloud surged from the left, turning into a thousand swirling needles, all aimed at my killer—

  Is that Marg?

  But then something rushed through the thick of her, and I realized Amanda Lee was running toward the blob, holding a real weapon, long and pointed. She yelled as she swung it through the dark shape, cutting it in two.

  Iron?

  “Out!” she yelled, swinging again, making it go misty. “I cover myself with the blood of Jesus! Out!”

  As he rose to the ceiling, shying away from Amanda Lee’s protective invocation, his laughter filled the air, like he wasn’t at all surprised to find someone packing an iron ghost-poison pipe. But he wasn’t attacking, even as he kept dissipating, forcing Twyla, Marg, and me away, since there was nothing to cut through anymore.

  “Anytime, anywhere,” said his screechy, disembodied voice as all the separated wisps of his form sucked to the ceiling, almost like severed limbs trying to find their ways to each other. “I’m eating your beautiful fear minute by minute, Jensen Murphy, and I’ll keep at you until I’m too full to want any more. You just keep being afraid!”

  Then he exploded, filling the room with the stench of sulfur, like gunpowder and death. Some of it sprayed on me and Twyla, and we zipped back before it completely shrouded us. Still, its wet, burning darkness ate into me. Twyla let out a disgusted sound, like she was feeling the exact same way.

  The rest of his falling blackness swirled toward the door, tendrils reaching through the cracks and leaving silence, except for Amanda Lee’s labored breathing.

  She was still holding the sharpened pipe she’d been wielding, and, I swear to God, at that moment, she was Wonder Woman, especially when she charged toward the small kitchen and opened a cupboard. She started tossing out salt and sage from the supplies she’d always kept handy. There was a stash in her ghost-proof house, too.

  “I should’ve used Saint Michael’s prayer, as well,” she said, shaking her head like she hated herself.

  I was blipping, feeling drained from my killer eating my fear. I also felt like I’d been dragged through mud, heavy and gross and dirty. Had his darkness gotten to me a little?

  “He’s gone, Amanda Lee,” I said. “You chased him out of here.”

  “But he’ll be back.” She took the salt and sage in her hands, coming toward us. “Next time I see him, it’s going to be on my terms. I’m sending him to the infernal place he came from. It’s all my fault he’s here.”

  Marg was on her tail like a bodyguard. Her X made her look like a superhero, too.

  Twyla had reverted back to her regular form, her sword arms normal again. “Jen, remind Amanda Lee that salt won’t do anything but sorta trip up a ghost. It’s, like, a myth that it makes us go owie.”

  “She already knows about the salt.”

  As Amanda Lee put down the sage and grasped the salt container, she said, “Yes, I know about it, and I know what they say about its effectiveness on ghosts. But this thing . . .” She finally slowed down, pushing back a fall of gray-red hair with her free hand and blowing out a breath. “This thing isn’t just a ghost. I don’t know what it’s been picking up tips from, so I’m going to try whatever I need to.”

  She didn’t have to say that a cleaner should be called in. And she was right. “I’ll get the group to come back here to guard you, Amanda Lee. Needless to say, I can’t be in this casita anymore.” Not after she finished spirit-proofing it.

  “Randy and Louis . . .” she said.

  “I’ll explain that they can’t be on guard duty for you, not if the dark spirit can imitate them with the essences it stole.”

  Then I thought about those blond spirit girls I’d seen today—the one who’d dove behind a rock in Elfin Forest and the scalped girl.

  “Shit,” I said. “Do you think my killer stole some essence from two of his victims, and that’s why he could imitate them to haunt me? They were both blondes, just like me, just like the profile of his other possible victims.”

  Everyone stared at me, not answering, which was answer enough.

  Twyla was by the door, like she was ready for him to come back. “We never even felt his bad vibes to clue us in.”

  I laughed, but not because I found anything funny. Or maybe I did. “He learned. Somehow, somewhere, he learned to disguise himself. He keeps learning.”

  Then Marg spoke up. “The haunter is now the haunted.”

  A moment of silence, just before Amanda Lee lifted her chin and started to spread salt at the foot of the door. “We’ll see
how long that lasts.”

  I looked around at my friends, feeding off Amanda Lee’s determination at the same time.

  It wasn’t enough to chase away that slimy blackness I felt on me, but it was enough for now.

  7

  After Amanda Lee had ghost-proofed the casita and retired to her protected main house, I made sure that Twyla and Marg were ready to look out for her.

  We were hovering outside Amanda Lee’s lit kitchen window, the Mediterranean architecture totally devoid of charm under the current circumstances.

  Twyla went first. “We could recruit some lookiloos to work with us.” She pointed at the gaggle of random ghosts who always seemed to be around. Either they were curious about what we were up to or they were waiting for a chance to ask for our help in their own cases.

  “And what if one of them turns out to be the dark spirit in disguise, and we’re only inviting him to get close to us?” I asked.

  No answer to that one—not even from me.

  “Don’t trust anyone, you guys,” I said, feeling more paranoid than I ever had. “And don’t let each other out of sight, because that’ll mean you can’t trust each other.”

  Marg, the ex-teacher, was all leader. “Right. You think the dark spirit might attack one of us, steal our essence, then come back pretending to be Twyla or me.”

  I nodded.

  Twyla said, “There’s got to be another way to ID him if he’s, like, hiding his nasty vibes from us.”

  “I’m hoping to find a way to do that tonight.”

  With that, I brought up my travel tunnel, pink and swirling in the darkness. I flew past the lookiloo ghosts and into the arterial pulse of it, knowing just where I was headed.

  The tunnel spit me out in the Edgetts’ luxury-condo courtyard, where the fountain trickled happily and hydrangea draped over the high walls, where you could catch a glimpse of trees and fancy statues among the dim walking paths.

  Wendy’s second-story light was off, which told me she probably wasn’t home, so I headed for the next-most-likely place she’d be.

  And . . . bingo. There she was, sitting outside a coffee shop in a swank little village shopping nook that had a health-nut food store, a high-end pet grooming place, and a dry cleaner. She was a petite Asian girl in a black sleeveless top, skirt, and combat boots, and had a temporary tattoo of Hello Kitty on her arm. Her dark hair, with its pink stripe flowing down one side, was draped over her face as she bent over a sketch pad, penciling madly.

  Her subject, Scott, a spirit teen dream who’d died in the fifties, floated just above the table next to her, resting his chin in his hand, his greased-back hair eternally slick. He watched her with a hazy smile, totally enamored. Because of all the paranormal trouble I’d brought to her life, he’d become her lovelorn bodyguard, and Wendy didn’t exactly mind being watched over by her ghost crush.

  In fact . . . Had I interrupted a date of sorts?

  My chest felt hollow again, just from looking at them. Everyone seemed to have someone, and the temptation to swallow my pride and call fake Dean back to me in case he could protect me and my friends was overwhelming.

  Would he have ended up helping me if I hadn’t banished him, though? I couldn’t say—he might’ve used the dark spirit’s aggressive haunting as an excuse to shut me into the star place, telling me it was for my own protection. Yeah, I knew how he worked.

  That didn’t mean I couldn’t wonder if he really did like me enough to cast aside all his rules for me, though . . .

  “Jen!” Scott called over in greeting.

  Wendy glanced up, unsurprised, totally used to seeing me pop up every once in a while. She was even more sensitive than Amanda Lee when it came to seeing and hearing ghosts, and we’d only found that out while I’d been haunting her former house.

  Since there were other humans around at other tables, slowly drinking their fancy coffees, Wendy didn’t call out to me, but she smiled, angling her sketch pad so I could see it.

  Like her adopted brother, Gavin, she was a pop artist, except instead of designing video games like he did, her thing was what they called manga. She’d drawn a punk-haired, big-eyed version of Scott in a plaid shirt over a tee, rolled-up jeans, and high-top sneakers.

  I didn’t miss the swelling heart she’d drawn next to his image, either. Was it time for a ghosts-and-the-bees talk with Wendy? Yikes. Like I’d even know what to say.

  As I floated to them, Scott lost his grin.

  “Uh-oh, there’s trouble on her face again.”

  “Oooh,” Wendy said, putting down her pad and pulling out her smartphone. She pretended to dial it and held it to her ear. Since she was a sensitive, she had no problem seeing me and hearing me, but for someone like Suze, I had to talk to her through a Bluetooth device when other people were around and I hadn’t materialized.

  They both used a ghost seer’s trick, though. Wendy was going to “talk on her phone” so she could chat with me without looking like a basket case to the other people. Not that I would’ve blamed her for being a nut job in general—it hadn’t been more than three months since her adopted sister had been exposed as the murderer of Elizabeth Dalton, plus Wendy’s other brother, Noah, who she’d killed during her own suicide. That’s some dark shit, and I was pretty sure Wendy had pushed aside depression and grief to focus her mind on the afterlife instead.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Scott was right,” I said. “I bring warnings and scary stories with me.” I’d get to the so-would-you-consider-helping-me-out part in a bit.

  Scott butted in. “The dark spirit’s back, isn’t it? It even looks like it . . .” He paused. “Did it get ahold of you, Jen?”

  What a strange question. “No. Why would you ask that?”

  “I dunno.” Scott gestured at me. “You’ve got this . . . How would you say it, Wen?”

  “Attitude?” She cocked her head and laid her sketch pad on the table, quickly drawing while still holding the phone to her ear with one hand. When she slanted the paper toward me again, I was on it, a manga version of Jensen with those wide eyes, bouncy hair, and . . .

  Wow. She’d shaded part of my face and half of my chest, like I had been dirtied.

  I flashed to the moment the dark spirit had swept some of his essence over me, and I touched my face to feel if there was any difference there. But all the contact did was make a zzmming sound. I looked at my hand: no darkness, even though it’d lost some of the color I’d gotten from fake Dean earlier.

  “My murderer didn’t reach into me to steal my essence, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I said. “He was pretending to be Randy and he came into the casita, just to let me know that he’s back. He’s not even putting out bad vibes anymore to let us know that he’s around, so I came here to tell you guys to be alert.”

  Wendy was still pretending to be on the phone. “He cloaked himself from you?”

  “That’s a good word for it. He must’ve run into a mentor who taught him how to do it, too. That’s all we can figure.”

  Scott stood, floating over the table. “What a bringdown.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s not all there is to it,” I said. “Amanda Lee and I are pretty sure he’s haunting me by showing me images of blondes in trouble. And that’s probably just the start of what he’s planning.”

  “Ghosts can haunt each other?” Wendy asked.

  “This one has no trouble doing it. He wants to feed on my fear.” I smiled bitterly. “He did that as a human, too, except this time, it’s literal. In life, he killed women because it kept him going mentally and emotionally. Why not continue the pattern in Boo World?”

  “And since he can’t kill you again,” Scott said, “he’s getting what he needs this time by terrorizing you. What a sicko.”

  Wendy turned to Scott. “You’ve been around awhile. What do ghosts do with other
spirits like this? Isn’t there some kind of social rule of order to keep him in line?”

  “Not that I know of. Before Jen got here, I wasn’t involved with this stuff. I hung with happy-go-lucky spirits and amused myself with dumb hauntings. You know, a boo here to a group of kids I’d find wandering through a graveyard, a boo there to someone eating at the diner booth I was at when I choked to death. That was getting old, though. I never knew what I was missing with all this crime fun.”

  Wendy looked at me, her dark eyes sympathetic. “Is there a way to stop feeding your killer with your fear?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Stop being scared. And I’m getting there, believe me.” Ever since I’d seen the dark spirit at the casita, my anger had started taking over. Hatred for this creature who hated me right back.

  Scott shifted on the table. “Does this mean Wendy will need to stay inside again?”

  “No!” she said. “I just got out of house jail!”

  We’d been keeping her safe and sound because we’d thought that the dark spirit was her dead jerk father. But that was before my killer had revealed himself to me. He’d only been using Wendy to draw me out.

  “I know it’s summer and you’ll be going back to school jail soon enough,” I said, “but it might not be a bad idea to stay inside until we get this situation under control. Make sure your condo is spirit-proofed enough to keep everyone out, though—except me and Scotty here.”

  “Oh man.” She rested her elbows on the table, all teenage drama.

  Scott narrowed his gaze at me. “But the dark spirit is after you, not Wendy.”

  “And I’m going to do everything I can to make sure it stays that way. I just wish I could barricade myself somewhere to keep safe.”

  Too bad my own ghost-proofed shelter would mean that I wouldn’t even be able to get into it.

  “Maybe . . .” Scott started to say.

  My anger and frustration reared up faster than it usually did. “Wendy just needs to do this, okay? Stop maybeing!”

  He raised his hands against my bitch blast. “I’m only sayin’ . . .”

  My outburst had made me fritz, and I calmed myself down. I gave Scott a sorry look as my voice trembled. “I’m not cowering from this bastard, because that’s what he wants from me. And I won’t give him what he wants anymore.” My tone rose. “I won’t.”