Every Breath You Take

by Chris Marie Green

  Obviously me.

  “You’d look gnarly in that,” I said, trying to make up for my shortcomings. “Why don’t you go in and try it on, just for the fun?”

  Suze chuffed. “Because it wouldn’t fit.”

  Um, what? Just a glance at her awesome-for-her-fifties figure disputed that.

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  “Try me.”

  She sighed, still facing away from me. Behind us, the sound of cars roamed over the street. Music from the bars and restaurants melded into each other.

  “This dress,” she said, “will never fit because it’s the kind of dress a person would wear with Gavin at one of the charity functions he always turns down because it’s awkward to bring a woman like me. Or at least that’s what I suspect.”

  The guilt hit me again. “Suze, as far as I know, Gavin never liked those parties after Elizabeth’s death, anyway. He didn’t stay away from them because he was embarrassed to bring you. Besides, he would’ve been proud to have you on his arm.”

  “You’re using past tense with him. Did you somehow hear about the breakup?”

  Crap. Just tell her that you saw him before you came to her.

  “Yeah,” I said, working up to it. “I . . . I checked in with him, Suze.”

  Relief mingled with the guilt when she didn’t quiz me. It wasn’t exactly abnormal for me to be checking in with him, since I did that with his little sister Wendy all the time. Suze knew I felt a responsibility to keep an eye on him, too, seeing as I’d almost driven him insane with my haunting.

  “Not that there was much to break up in the first place,” she said quietly. “I should’ve known that we weren’t meant to be together.”

  Now my best-friend urges took over. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. You two were definitely a good fit.”

  “For a short time I thought we were.” Suze let out a long breath, touching her fingertips to the window. “But we never got around to being a real . . . You know. Couple.”

  They’d never slept together, had barely even gotten intimate. Yeah, I knew that, too. They’d been slow with each other, going from friends to a possibility, then right to a breakup.

  “Still,” she said, “it was more about emotion with Gavin, not anything physical, even though I was damned attracted to him—”

  Behind us, a squeal hit the air, and my form fritzed hard, all my ghost alarms going off.

  Dark spirit!?!

  When I whirled around and saw a souped-up Chevy peeling down the street, making everyone on the sidewalks stare then go right back to their business, I felt like blushing this time.

  Suze was sending yet another weirded-out look in my invisible vicinity.

  “Did you just spark?” she asked.

  Oops. “Like I said, I’m just a little on edge right now.”

  “No, you’re really on edge.”

  And I was impulsive and angry most of the time, too. Three cheers for the dark spirit’s mist.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “I need to charge up, that’s all.” Even though I didn’t.

  She gave my invisibility one last glance before wandering away from the dress in the window and continuing down the sidewalk.

  I trailed her. No matter how much I wanted to avoid talking about Gavin, I had to do it.

  “You’re totally wrong about you and Gavin,” I said. “I’m sure your fight couldn’t have been that big. Why don’t you call him? Ask him to meet you after work to talk things out?”

  “Jen,” she said, and I knew I was in for it, because in that one Jen, there was a whole encyclopedia set of explanations about why she and Gavin weren’t together.

  I wanted to do some empathy on her, just a touch of my hand to her neck so I could learn how to make her feel better. But I didn’t want to invade Suze.

  She sighed. “The bottom line is that we both needed the comfort from each other, and how long can a relationship like that last? I had all these dug-up emotions that came from seeing you again. Gavin was hurting from all the death around him, and he knew that I knew about you. We seemed like the only two people on earth who understood each other, and that was what drew us together. But you already know that.”

  “I . . .” My words trailed off. What was Suze saying?

  We were in front of the Subway shop now, the fresh smell of bread baking around us. People passed, never paying a second glance to the woman talking into her Bluetooth device.

  “Jen,” she said, “I’m not accusing you of anything, but do me a favor, okay? Treat me like you used to treat me when we were kids. Don’t lie to me . . . especially about what really happened with Gavin.”

  Oh, God. She knew I was a turd. “I’m sorry, Suze.”

  “For what? It’s nothing you did. But every time your name was mentioned, he’d get this . . . strange joy. That’s the only way I can describe it. He would talk about you constantly. At first, I thought it was because I was the only one he knew who had been friends with you and who could listen to him with compassion. But he never did stop talking about you . . . ever.” She laughed softly yet not happily. “When you’re dating a guy who can’t stop talking about your best friend, you see an expiration date on the label right away.”

  Oh, boy. If I hadn’t felt like crap before, I sure did now. “He’s just obsessed with something he’s never encountered before. Fascinated by a ghost.”

  “It seemed like . . . more than that. He would refer to you like you had some sort of past with him. Like you two had been through so much together that nothing was ever going to break the bond between you.”

  Damn, I really needed to tell her the rest of it.

  I closed my eyes, then let it go. “There was a bond, Suze. Even before the two of you met, I was drawn to his life force. You probably have a good idea of what that means, but believe me, unless you’re a ghost, you don’t know all of it.”

  She was pressing her lips together, crossing her arms over her chest. But I had to get this out.

  “And then there’s the whole dream-digging thing. I’ve told you about how I do that with suspects.”

  “You did it with Gavin to collect evidence.”

  “Yeah. But I enjoyed it.” No stopping now. “I saw things in him no one else could ever see, and he knows that. That’s where a bond comes from. And I did it even after I didn’t have to anymore. That’s why I’m sorry, Suze.”

  That definitely put a pause on our conversation. I could feel the isolation in her, the slowness of her pulse hitting the air.

  “You never told me that,” she finally said.

  “I didn’t expect it to mean anything. And the first time he came to the bar to meet you, I wanted to tell you, but that didn’t seem necessary. Then you started getting closer to him, and . . .”

  “And you thought it might be awkward to tell me that you’d been mind-fucking the man I liked?”

  She stared at me, even though I wasn’t visible, but it still froze me.

  But then . . .

  Then she started laughing like she couldn’t believe this was her life. “Jesus, what would you have said anyway? ‘I’ve been inside the man you’re falling for. No . . . really inside. More inside than you’re ever going to get with him, Suze.’”

  I wasn’t sure if I should be laughing, too. “I knew that telling you about it would only cause trouble. I never meant to fascinate him or . . .”

  “Or whatever it is that he feels,” she said, finishing my sentence for me.

  She stuffed her hands into her jeans pockets. Was this where she told me that I needed to leave her alone? That I’d brought her nothing but grief and I should stay away?

  But Suze had never been your typical, hysterical teenager or early-twenties girl. She’d always been logical, the nurturer in our relationship. And she hadn’t lo
st that through the years.

  “I suppose this means I shouldn’t feel so bad about myself now,” she said. “After all, how could I compete with a woman who can go into a man’s head? Here’s a thought . . .” She lightened up, but in a majorly false way that told me she was back to putting on an act. “Maybe I need to die to have a successful relationship with Gavin.”

  Pow—her joke hit me right in the gut. “You hate me. Just say it. It’ll make both of us feel better.” In a way.

  “Hate?” She laughed as some businessmen swathed in cologne passed by. One of them gave her an appreciative glance, not that she would’ve cared. “Really, Jen? Hate?”

  “Okay, hate is an immature way of putting it. But I’m still twenty-three. A pretty emotionally retarded twenty-three, since I was stuck in a time loop for decades.”

  She shook her head in an affectionate way, even with the hurt emanating from her. “Just so you know, it’s not cool to say retarded these days.”

  Noted.

  She gathered herself, pushing back a few curls that’d come out of her barrette. “You know what? I think you should give it a shot with Gavin.”

  Huh?

  “I’m serious,” she said.

  “Cut it out, Suze.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

  “You’re just being flippant about handling a broken heart.”

  “What other way is there to be?”

  I put my hands on my hips, even though she wouldn’t see. “Remember, I was there when Marshall Trammel stood you up for the Valentine’s dance senior year. You were all flippant about that, too.”

  “I meant everything I said back then . . . and now.”

  “Sweetie, I was also there when he asked you out two weeks later and you said yes. I figured that meant you never stopped liking him and you were just pretending to be cool with his jerkiness.”

  “But I dumped him during prom,” Suze said, shrugging. “I had my revenge in the end.”

  She was so full of it. And what I meant by it was “pride.”

  But if hanging onto her pride made Suze feel better, then so be it. Still, I was pretty sure that pride was what also kept her from saying anything outright to me about the money Amanda Lee was sneaking to her every so often. Pride was so much Suze’s Waterloo that ABBA could’ve sung a song about her.

  She angled her body, like she was about to enter the sandwich shop. No one was near us now—the air had started to get colder, and it wasn’t because of me. The wind was starting to blow.

  I fought the urge to look around, because the last wind I remembered included the blond girl sitting on a curb, flashing her skeleton face at me and chomping at a car window.

  Suze raised a finger toward me, even though I wasn’t much more than part of that air.

  “I’m a big girl, Jen. You don’t have to worry about my heart breaking.”

  And with that, she smiled confidently, like the woman I’d always known she would grow up to be.

  Too bad it was the same smile she’d given me when she’d told me all those years ago that Marshall Trammel hadn’t broken her heart, either.

  * * *

  Amanda Lee had been right about making me take a break: seeing Suze again had grounded me somewhat, and there’d been another unexpected bonus to my time with her besides, even though I hadn’t known it until after I’d left Suze in her break room with her sandwich.

  For the first time in a long time, I felt like I could be somewhere away from my ghost friends and not be attacked by evil forces.

  Progress!

  When I arrived at Amanda Lee’s at dusk, just to see if anyone was there before I continued on to Elfin Forest, I found her and Marg back by the pool. Peering over the fence were lookiloo ghosts, including a turn-of-the-twentieth-century man in a pale suit and straw hat, plus a missionary Native American who wore a rough white shirt and short pants. Elliot and Angel had helped us catch Marg’s killer a couple months ago, and I’d learned their names and their death stories—about Elliot’s boardwalk stabbing and Angel’s scurvy—after the action had died down.

  I hadn’t seen them in a while, but tonight it was like they weren’t just hanging out to spy on Amanda Lee and all the excitement she brought to this corner of Boo World; I got the impression they were also keeping an eye on Marg. Either that or they were merely enthralled with that X on her.

  Even from outside the pool area, I could hear the waterfall and the women’s casual laughter. When I peeked above the fence, I saw that the only things missing from this idyllic scene were mai tais and . . . Oh. An actual body for Marg to sunbathe with.

  Not that she would’ve gotten many rays with the clouds covering the dusky sky.

  I patted my jealousy down as I checked out that X on Marg and told myself to be happy that she hadn’t turned into a disciple of my killer or anything yet.

  Before I went to them, I had to quiz Elliot and Angel, just to see if they were dark-spirit fakes, but they passed my test, giving me enough peace of mind to leave them and float over the fence.

  “Here she is!” Marg said, looking right at home while lollygagging around in her white mesh bathing suit cover-up.

  Amanda Lee gave me a what-kind-of-mood-are-you-in? look. I grinned at her, and she accepted that as a friendly gesture.

  “I thought I’d spend some time with Suze,” I said. “So I did.”

  “Seems like you had fun,” Amanda Lee said.

  I smiled again, then nodded at the wicker loungers they were relaxing on. “I see you’re taking a break, too. I guess we all needed one.”

  Marg sat up and swung her once-tanned legs to the side of her recliner. She smiled at Amanda Lee. “You should tell her.”

  Amanda Lee wore a canary-eating grin now. Clearly, the effects of her hallucination hadn’t completely worn off.

  “What?” I asked.

  She gave it up. “Ruben will be stopping by tonight before we go back to Elfin Forest, so we’re waiting for him. He’s found out more about your murder, Jensen.”

  “About Franklin Anson Bruckner?”

  “That’s what I assume. And all I can go on are assumptions at this point, since I’m not getting a reading on Ruben’s success one way or the other.”

  Out of habit, I blew out a breath, and it materialized, sending a huff of air over the back fence, making the bushes behind it bob. I could barely see Elliot’s and Angel’s heads as they listened in.

  The closer we got to knowing more about my killer, the more nerve-racked I was getting. It was like the worst mystery date ever, not knowing everything about who was going to show up at the door.

  “Aren’t you excited?” Marg asked.

  “Yes and no.”

  “I would be.”

  My temper, which had been doing so awesomely, stirred. “We know who your killer was, Marg.”

  She and Amanda Lee glanced at each other. The bitch is back.

  But I didn’t want to be a bitch. “You know what I mean.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Marg said.

  “One thing I know,” Amanda Lee said, “is I cannot wait to banish your killer, because I’m hoping that mist will disappear right along with him. I miss the less persnickety Jensen.”

  Missed? Aw. That was actually kind of sweet.

  Feeling the love—yeah, look at me getting today’s lingo down—I settled on a chair. After all, from now on, we were the team, right? We were crusaders against the bad, the brigade of the just. Hell, we were a strange version of Charlie’s Angels.

  We all looked at each other, and it was like we were thinking the same thing about working together. Cool beans.

  “So, how’s this gonna work?” I asked. “As far as divvying up the cases?”

  Amanda Lee had obviously given it some thought. “You, of course, have enough to handle with
your own case, Jensen. Marg will help me with the ghost hunters. Along with Twyla, of course.”

  “Where is Twyla, by the way?” I asked.

  Marg leaned back on her chair. “Still at the happy house.”

  Hmm. I hadn’t seen Marg and Twyla separated since Marg had first come to Boo World.

  As my gaze lingered on her in the afterburn of her comment, I thought I saw a tiny smile claim her mouth right before it disappeared, leaving me to watch that X on her chest.

  And I kept watching as I sat down to wait for Ruben.

  14

  “A rey muerto, rey puesto!”

  Ruben was sitting on one of the pool chairs a half hour later, talking and gesticulating with his hands while having no earthly idea that two ghosts, plus our lingering lookiloos, were hovering nearby.

  He was, for sure, no sensitive.

  Amanda Lee was in the chair next to him. She’d shut off the waterfall when he’d arrived a few minutes ago, and the night sounds of creaking, humming things around us seemed so much louder in the cool air.

  “My Spanish isn’t wonderful, Ruben,” she said. “What did you just say?”

  The shadow of his cap brim shaded his face. “Some would translate it as, ‘Off with the old; on with the new,’ but my mother preferred it to mean, ‘As soon as one goes out the window, another comes in the door.’ She used to say this to us kids when she was shooing us back outside when we’d try to sneak snacks before dinner. But it has yet another whole new, not very welcome meaning now.”

  To think, Charlie’s Angels had been in such a nice place before he’d shown up.

  Stifling a sneeze, he held up a finger, and we all waited for him to a-choo. Then he pushed the brim of his cap up, revealing more of his worn face, and sighed.

  “What I’m getting around to telling you, Amanda Lee, is that we now have more than one person of interest who looks good for Jensen Murphy’s crime.”

  It took a second for that to sink in. Did he mean that we had another guy who might’ve killed me?

  Marg slowly floated around to the back of Amanda Lee’s chair, and I kept watching her, still wary of Madam X, even while I was trying to wrap my mind around what Ruben was saying. At the fence, the lookiloos, Elliot and Angel, dared to float higher so they could take in everything better, but I didn’t shoo them off. Not when I actually trusted them, and not when they kept batting away other ghosts who got curious and drifted onto the property.