The Ghost Files 2 (The Ghost Files - Book 2)

by Apryl Baker

  “No, you’re not late.” I grin and give her a hug, careful of her left arm. It was shattered in so many places they’re still doing reconstructive surgery on it.

  “Come on, guys, sit down,” Meg tells us and waves at the waiter to take orders.

  Megan is the first best friend I’ve ever had. I’ve always made sure I was in with the popular crowd at school no matter what district my new foster home was in, but I’d never actually been “friends” with any of them. Meg refused to let me get away with that. She bowled me over and forced me to be her friend. That’s just the kind of person she is, though. Everyone’s sweetheart. Not at all like me, the messed up foster kid who grew up learning to survive by herself. I’m still not sure why Meg and I are friends, we just are.

  “So, did you get boots?” she asks me, laughter twinkling in her green eyes.

  “I swear to all that is holy, if you think you’re taking me hiking or camping…”

  She bursts out laughing. “Do I look like an outdoorsy person to you?”

  Well, no. Meg is definitely NOT an outdoorsy person. She’s a mall kind of girl. “Then why do I need boots?”

  “It was on the list of needed things,” she shrugs. “Anyway, I can’t wait! We fly out tomorrow morning.”

  “Fly?” I feel a bit of panic at the word. Like in an airplane? My eyes go wide at the thought of twisting, burning metal, screaming people…uh, no. “I don’t fly, Meg.”

  “Oh My God!” Meg exclaims. “Don’t tell me the great and fearless Mattie Hathaway is afraid of flying!”

  “I’m not afraid,” I deny. I am, but no way will I admit that. “I just prefer to keep my feet on the ground is all.”

  Dan snorts, not believing a word of it.

  The waitress saves me from having to answer. She drops by to take drink orders and hands out menus. Mine is easy, double bacon cheeseburger and chili cheese fries. My mouth waters just thinking about it.

  I look up to see my social worker, Nancy Moriarity, coming to our table. She’s wearing a smile the size of a kid who just stole the last chocolate chip cookie and waving a manila envelope, which sets Mary squealing. What in the world? I look from one to the other.

  Eric leans in and whispers, “I think you’re about to get the best birthday gift ever.”

  “Why, what do you know?” I ask suspiciously.

  He only grins at me, which in turn causes me to stick my tongue out at him and he bursts out laughing.

  “Happy birthday, Mattie!” Nancy beams at me and the waiter brings her a chair. Once she’s seated, she hands the manila envelope over to Mary’s mother. “Do you want to tell her or should I?”

  “You’re coming to live with us!” Mary nearly bounces out of her seat before the words are even out of Nancy’s mouth.

  My head snaps round to her. “What?”

  She is grinning like The Cheshire Cat. "We’re taking you home with us, Mattie.”

  I frown at her and then look at Nancy.

  “We didn’t say anything to you before because we didn’t want to get your hopes up,” she tells me. “Mrs. Cross applied to be a foster parent so she and Mary could give you a proper home.”

  A home? A real home? For me?

  Mrs. Cross smiles at me from across the table. “You gave me back my daughter, Mattie. The least I can do is to give you a home where you can be yourself and not worry about…temperature spikes.”

  My eyes go a little round at that.

  Mary nods. “I remember everything, Mattie. Mom understands.”

  Dan reaches over and squeezes my hand. He can see the panic on my face. He understands how hard this is for me. I’ve never had a home before, never even contemplated it. Now, here I am being offered one by people who understand that I can see ghosts and won’t call me a freak.

  I feel the onset of tears and force them back. I do not cry. I will not cry. Please don’t let me cry.

  “That is, if you want to come live with us?” Mrs. Cross asks me softly, seeing the same panic Dan saw.

  “Of course she does, Mom,” Mary tells her and then glances at me. “Don’t you?”

  “I…” What do I say?

  Nancy is staring at me with growing concern.

  “I think she needs some air,” Dan tells them and then hauls me up. “We’ll be right back.” Before I can blink, he’s dragging me through the restaurant and outside where I get wrapped in the biggest bear hug imaginable.

  “Just breathe, Squirt.”

  “What do I do?” I ask him, my face buried in his shirt.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I’ve never had a home before,” I whisper. “What if I mess it up? What if I can’t…”

  “Mattie, you won’t mess it up.”

  “I always mess things up.” I shake my head. “I screwed up the last couple foster homes I was in and they were all really, really nice ones. I can’t help myself, Dan. I think I’m just too broken.”

  “Mattie?”

  I lift my face out of Dan’s shirt and see Mrs. Cross standing about a foot away from us. Her blue eyes are warm and full of compassion. She looks just like Mary.

  “I’m sorry if we shocked you.”

  “I…”

  “I heard you telling Dan you were afraid you’d mess things up,” she says with a smile. “If you are at all like Mary, you’re still angry and bitter over what happened to you, and I understand that. I can deal with it. You brought my daughter home, alive. That is a gift that I can never repay you for. Will you at least let me give you a home where you’ll be safe and cared for and loved? Where you won’t have to hide what you can do?”

  “You believe I can see..?”

  She nods, her face solemn. “Mary told me everything and if even half of what she said is true, then you’re a very special person, Mattie. You saved my daughter. Please let me save you.”

  “You really want me to live with you?” I ask softly.

  “Mary has spent the last month getting your room ready,” she laughs. “We can go pick out anything you don’t agree with. My daughter loves purple and assumes everyone else does as well.”

  I can’t stop the grimace…purple…shudder.

  Dan’s chest rumbles with laughter. He’d brought me a purple teddy bear in the hospital and I’d promptly had Meg throw it at him since my hands had been bandaged up. He knows about my aversion to anything pink or purple.

  “So what do you say, honey?” Mrs. Cross asks. “Do you think you’d like to try living with me and Mary for a little while?”

  I nod. “I’d like that very much.”

  “Come back in when you’re ready,” she tells me and then goes inside the restaurant.

  “You okay, Squirt?” Dan asks.

  “I think maybe I will be,” I say and smile up into his warm puppy dog eyes. “It’s a home, Dan, a real home.”

  His forehead presses against mine and all I can see are his eyes. “You deserve a home, Mattie.”

  Neither of us smile or move in that moment. I can see a question in his eyes and I know he can see the same one in mine. Is this a step we want to take?

  Maattiieee…

  Shivers run up my spine and my stomach knots up. The voice is full of ice and it surrounds me. Even Dan stiffens up a bit, but I don’t know if it’s in reaction to my face or if he senses something, too.

  I peek around him, looking for the source of the voice.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks, turning to look himself.

  The thing from my bedroom is calling me, knows my name. It’s standing across the street in front of the entrance to an apartment complex that takes up most of the city block. It’s an old building, probably as old as the city itself. It jerks and it’s standing in the street.

  Another jerk and it’s only a few feet away from us.

  Maattiieee…

  It reaches for me.

  Chapter Four

  I waste no time in running. I have no clue what the thing is, nor does Eric know. With Dan in to
w, I dash back inside and sneak a peek out the restaurant windows. It’s still standing in the street, but it’s not coming any closer. Doesn’t mean I’m safe, just means I have a minute until it figures out what it wants to do.

  “Mattie?” Dan is frowning at me.

  “The thing from before in my bedroom,” I whisper, still staring out the window. “Do you see it?”

  Dan glances out the window and stares. At first, I don’t think he sees anything, but the longer he looks, the more perplexed his face becomes. Then it goes to downright horror.

  “We’re calling Olivet as soon as we can,” he whispers. “Why can I see it?”

  “How should I know?” I whisper.

  “You’re the ghost girl. You’re supposed to know these things.”

  I stare at him as if he’s lost his mind. “Since when do I know everything because I can see the freaking things?”

  “Mattie, Dan, what’s going on?” Eric asks and we both whirl to see him standing there with a question on his face.

  “Do you see that thing?” I point out the window at the black form in the street.

  Eric walks closer and looks out the window. After a minute, he turns and shakes his head. “I don’t see anything, Mattie.”

  “It’s standing right there!” Dan almost shouts, but catches himself.

  Eric shrugs. “Maybe I can’t see it because Mason can’t?”

  “That makes no sense,” I tell him. “I can see you just fine, so you should be able to see that thing.”

  “Mattie, you can see me because you can see ghosts and I’m a ghost who borrowed a body. While I’m in here, I’m stuck with Mason’s abilities and he can’t see ghosts.”

  Dan’s phone starts blaring and he pulls it out and frowns. He walks a few feet away and starts talking.

  Eric leans closer. “So how’s it going with you and Officer Dan?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mattie, I saw him almost kiss you.” Eric laughs at my horrified face. “I’m not mad. In fact, I’m kinda glad. He’s good for you and you for him.”

  “He’s too old.” That and the fact that I don’t get butterflies when I think of him that way. I love Dan, I really, really do, but I don’t know if it’s the kind of love Eric is talking about.

  “You’re seventeen, Mattie. He’s only three years older than you.”

  “But what if the only person I want is you?” I whisper, staring up into his blue eyes.

  His smile is sad. “That’s never going to happen, Mattie. I can’t…I’m…it can’t be no matter what either of us want.”

  I know he’s right, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting it. Sad that the only person who gives me butterflies is a ghost. It’s those big blue eyes of his.

  “Mattie.”

  The serious note in Dan’s voice causes me to tense up. He only uses that tone when it’s something bad.

  “What?” I ask, afraid of the solemn look in his eyes.

  “We’re skipping your birthday dinner,” he says quietly. “Mas…Eric, can you let them know that Mattie and I are going to celebrate somewhere else?”

  “Dan, Meg is going to pitch a fit…”

  “It’s about your mom, Mattie.”

  My mom. The woman who’d raised me and then tried to kill me when I was five. Her ghost had finally come to see me in the hospital after I’d survived Mrs. Olson’s terrorfest. What she’d told me had floored me. She wasn’t my mother. That’s all she said before disappearing into the light. Dan had been looking into it since I told him the next day.

  “Come on, that thing’s not out there anymore.” Dan grabs my hand. “Let’s go before it comes back.”

  I’m feeling numb. I get bustled outside and onto a bus. Ever since my mom dropped that little bombshell on me, I’ve thought of little else. What did she mean? Was she an aunt, or a friend of my real mom’s? Did she kidnap me? There are so many possibilities and I’ve given myself migraines trying to figure out what she meant.

  I know Dan has been trying to track her movements, but we’d moved all over the place when I was little. My mom never stayed in the same place more than a couple weeks. That right there says to me she probably kidnapped me. I’m sure Dan thinks the same thing, but he always tries to be positive about it.

  “What did you find out?” I ask at last.

  “Your mom moved you guys around a lot, Mattie, probably more than even you remember. It took me about four months just to track her movements. You were only in Jersey about a week before she…well, before the incident.”

  I nod. I already know all this.

  “The one place she kept going back to was New Orleans. Dad has a friend who’s a PI down there. I called him and he agreed to look into it.”

  “And?”

  “And he wants me to come down there,” he says slowly.

  “Why?”

  “He wouldn’t say over the phone, Squirt.”

  “That’s bad, yeah?” I ask.

  “Not necessarily,” he says as the bus stops a block from his apartment complex. “Come on, we’ll order pizza.”

  “I’d rather have my burger,” I grouch half-heartedly. What could be so bad that Dan would need to go to New Orleans? When we finally reach his place, I fall down on the couch, grab the fuzzy blanket he keeps just for me, and start to tear at the frayed edges.

  “Don’t freak out, Squirt,” he tells me while logging on his computer. He and I both agree the only pizza worth eating is Papa John’s but we both love Domino’s subs.

  “Dan, what if he tells you something really awful?” I ask. “What if he tells you my mom kidnapped me or…or…I don’t know, just something worse.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Mattie,” he tells me. “I promise, everything is going to be fine.”

  But it won’t be fine. He knows it and I know it.

  “Why don’t you call Dr. Olivet while I finish ordering pizza and subs, yeah?”

  “I don’t have a phone…” I stop mid-sentence when he gives me his patented Officer Dan stare. It says eyes rolling and sarcastic tone all with just a look. I grin sheepishly at him and pull my phone out of my pocket. Thankfully, I’d shoved it in my jeans pocket instead of my purse, which was still at the restaurant.

  Maybe talking to the Spook Doctor about that creepy thing from earlier will distract me from thoughts of my mom and what she’d done. I’d met Dr. Olivet a few months ago when I was trying to find out what had happened to my foster sister, Sally. He was a parapsychologist who helped me understand a little bit more about my gift.

  According to him, people who can see ghosts the way I can are meant to be reapers after they die. Reapers help souls get from this plane to the next by navigating through The Between, a place of shades and horrors that want to consume the energy of the newly freed soul. That’s why I can see ghosts and open a doorway to The Between. I’m a living reaper, meant to help souls cross over. Not that I want to be. I’d just as soon be normal. No one wants to be bothered with spirits popping up at unexpected times, scaring the bejeezus out of them.

  In order for my gift to activate, I would have to have died at one point. Dan checked my medical records for me. When the EMTs arrived at our apartment the day my mom stabbed me eight times, I wasn’t breathing. They managed to revive me, but it was long enough for my gift to come alive. I woke up to dead people everywhere.

  Most people who claim to have seen a ghost will say they saw a flicker of an image or some kind of distortion in a photo. Some will even swear to have felt a ghost touch them. I can’t say for certain if they did or didn’t. All I know is how I see them.

  To me, they are as real and substantial as the living. I see them as well as I see Dan frowning at the online ordering form across from me. Not only do I see them, I feel them as well. Their feelings become my feelings and I’m always so cold. I’ve never been warm since that first day I woke up in the hospital. The cold is as much a part of me now as they are.

  Dr. Olivet picked up on the
fifth ring. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Doc, it’s Mattie.”

  “Mattie, did you get a new number? This isn’t the one I have saved in my contacts.”

  I nod and realize he can’t see me. “Yeah, Dan bought me a new phone for my birthday.”

  “Your birthday is today?” he asks. “If I had known, I’d have sent you a gift.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Doc. I need to talk to you about something Dan and I saw today.”

  “Of course…hold on, did you say Dan saw something?” The shock in his voice pretty much mirrors Dan’s reaction earlier.

  “Yeah, he’s freaked,” I tell the Doc. “I’m not sure it’s a ghost.” I then proceed to fill him in on every encounter we’ve had so far with the thing. “Is it a shade maybe?”

  “No, it’s not a shade, Mattie,” he says quietly. Too quietly. That can’t be at all good.

  “Then what is it?”

  “Where are you right now?” he asks instead of answering my question.

  “I’m at Dan’s place, why? What is that thing, Doc?”

  “Mattie, it sounds like a demon.”

  “A WHAT?” Did he just say demon? No freaking way! That thing knows my name!

  That got Dan’s attention. He stops fussing with the laptop and gives me a questioning look. He so doesn’t want to know.

  “Calm down, Mattie,” Doc tries to soothe me.

  “Don’t tell me to calm down!” I yell into the phone. “It knows my name!”

  “You didn’t tell me that, Mattie. It actually said your name?”

  “Why else would I be freaking out here, Doc?” I ask sarcastically.

  “Squirt, what is Dr. Olivet saying?” Dan leaves his laptop and comes to sit beside me. There is fear and concern waging a war in those gooey brown eyes of his.

  “He says it’s a demon,” I tell him and wince at his reaction. He starts to freak out himself.