Ghostly: A Paranormal Romantic Comedy (Perks of Being Paranormal Book 1)

Chapter 23

Ida stretched out her hands, wiggling her fingers. They felt foreign, strange, detached. And yet, nothing about them had changed. And nothing about her.

They had failed.

Perry rounded the corner. “Where’s Ida gone to?”

“She’s still here.” Gabriel’s words came out slow, flat—defeated.

Perry’s eyes flicked around, as if he expected to see her somewhere. “But… we did everything right.”

“Apparently not everything.” Ida’s voice broke at the end.

“An object that belongs to the deceased—the music box. An object imbued with her feelings—the locket. The lilies, the garden, the…” Perry turned in a circle. “Ida said everything looks exactly as it did back then!”

“Stop.” Gabriel stared at his hands, spread, palms up, on his knees. “Just stop.”

They did do everything right. Except, Gabriel offered to be the bond at the last minute. He said he cared about her, and she believed her feelings were true; but what if his weren’t strong enough?

“Maybe we forgot to chant something. Stuff like this always has chanting, doesn’t it?” Perry tried.

Gabriel breathed a raspy breath, stood, and walked away.

One hand half-raised, Perry stared after him, then twisted in a robotic move back to the ritual circle. He gaped, but no words came.

Ida fixed her eyes on a faraway point. How could she feel this numb, when she still had no body? Why did she still think she was falling apart?

Gabriel knew. Or suspected, at least. That’s why he wasn’t seeking a solution or guessing what went wrong. He already knew it was their bond, and they couldn’t fix it anymore.

She let out a choke, and another, and the third turned into a hiccuping noise, mixed with whimpering. It had nearly worked. She’d felt it—her body filling up with energy, an intense, glass-shattering vibration coming from the items in the ritual; thousands and thousands of invisible needles prickling her skin—not to hurt her, but to show her how it felt to be alive.

And then the hour struck the proverbial midnight, and all the energy dissipated.

“Ghostie?” Perry’s voice was small, careful. He worried his thumb. “A-are you still here?”

Always. Forever.

“I-I’ll look over the contract again. Actually, I bet Gabriel’s gone to do that! We’ll figure something out. Like, a loophole. We’ll find something.”

The blanket of disappointment smothered any hope. There would be no loopholes, no solutions, not because Ida didn’t believe in Perry or Gabriel, but because she couldn’t. She’d built her hopes too high, and she wasn’t strong enough to take the fall.

“If you’re still here, wait,” Perry said. “I’ll go talk to Gabriel. I’ll be right back.”

“No need.” She lifted and phased through the wall, up into her bedroom—cold, dark, empty. She didn’t care that phasing through walls wasn’t a particularly human thing to do.

It wasn’t as if she was ever going to be human again.

***

Sorrow hung over the house like a cloud of noxious gas. Gabriel was sure some of it was from Ida, but to be honest, he hardly felt anything else over the lead in his chest. He moved from room to room, zombie-like; he didn’t even feel like drinking coffee.

He never thought anything would’ve felt worse than that suspension notice, all those months ago.

He’d sat on his bed and stared into nothing for hours that night. Ida had left him alone, and after the third unanswered knock, Perry seemed to have caught the drift. Gabriel couldn’t bear for either of them to see him—the loser, the destroyer of hope—so soon after the failure. If he could, he’d get away from himself, too. But he was trapped in his body, cursed with a heart that couldn’t stop feeling and memories of disaster that couldn’t stop replaying in his mind.

Perry left town the next day, but made Gabriel promise to call him if he had any news. Ida came to say goodbye to him, then left to haunt the music box again.

And Gabriel sat on the couch, looked upon nothing, and simmered in misery.

This couch—he should be sitting on it with Ida right now, hugging her properly. They’d eat lemon chicken and rice, and he’d watch every inch of her face, every tiny movement, as she tried food for the first time in over a century. They’d watch a movie, and he’d try to find out where she was ticklish, and before they went upstairs, they’d check if the three animal statues in the hallway were perfectly aligned.

He hadn’t planned much beyond that, but one thing was for certain: wherever he went, whatever he did, it would’ve been with her.

Three days after the failure, Gabriel awoke from another restless night and rolled downstairs, still in his pajamas. He nearly jumped as he caught sight of his face in the hallway mirror—messy hair halfway escaped from the bun, beard long past the carefully manicured phase, dark circles under his eyes.

Coffee. Maybe coffee will fix it.

But before he could make another step, someone knocked on the door.

“I’m not at home,” he half-yelled, half-grumbled, and sauntered toward the kitchen.

“Gabriel?” The female voice was surprised and—familiar?

Gabriel rifled through his scattered thoughts. No, not any of the Schuyler Sisters. The reporter? No, her voice had been snide, drenched with honey; very specific, very memorable.

So, since life sucked anyway, and things couldn’t get any worse, he opened the door and winked into the sunny morning.

The blurry shape on the porch gradually came into focus. Gabriel blinked again, not sure he saw right. “Wynona?”

“My god, Gabe.” His ex-client—and lover—looked as perfect as ever: a smooth, slicked ponytail, flawless makeup, powder blue jacket, hanging open to show a designer sweater underneath.

“Wyn,” he breathed, not sure whether he was surprised, shocked, happy, or all of it.

“Can I come in?”

“Huh?”

“Gabriel.” She grabbed his hand. “Are you drunk?” She leaned in. “No, you’re fine. Although I don’t smell coffee on you. That must be it. How long ago was the last cup?”

She was saying words, but his brain wasn’t quite catching up.

“Come on. Let’s get you sorted out.” She entered, took a quick look around, and led him to the couch. “Interesting taste in furniture. Very retro. Ah, there’s the kitchen!” She strode in while Gabriel vegetated on the couch. “What the hell is this? Do you have anything here from this century?”

Slowly, his brain pieced itself together. “The coffee machine is under the big table in the middle.” Good thing he dragged that back in yesterday.

Wynona prepared coffee while Gabriel rubbed his face.

Hold on. Hold. On.

Wynona was here.

“How the fuck did you get here?”

“Ah. There’s the Gabriel I know.” Wynona brought him a cup and sat next to him, legs crossed. “By car.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Hmm.” Her smoky eyes regarded him with a detective-like curiosity. “No complaining about me bringing you coffee?”

“Wynona…”

“I found out. From the news. Which you’re probably aware of.”

He hadn’t checked what that reporter had done, but he could imagine.

“Hell, Gabriel. What’s happened to you? You look like a savage.” Wynona reached out and tucked a lock of his hair behind his ear.

“Just like you said. Hell.”

“Please, don’t be melodramatic. Although, if I had to live in a place like this for half a year… I understand.”

Something dark passed on the edge of his vision. Gabriel flicked his eyes to the hallway. Ida? He couldn’t see her from here, but he couldn’t call out, either—Wynona was already thinking he’d gone mad.

“Gabe.” Wynona sought out his hand. He stared at her french-manicured nails, her slim fingers. She could touch him. And he could touch her. It made him feel sick; both from knowing he’d failed Ida, and from realizing he missed the touch of a woman so much he couldn’t even snatch his hand away.

“You did see the article, right?” Wynona said, her voice taking on a stricter note. When he didn’t respond for a few seconds, she huffed, scrolled on her phone, and slid it over the sofa to him. Big letters read, Vane Affair In Vain?, but under that, strings of words blurred in front of his eyes. When would he finally wake up from this nightmare?

Wynona sighed and took back the phone. “I’m sure she’s only paraphrasing with a lot of artistic freedom, but that doesn’t make it any better for us.”

“Us?”

“You really didn’t read it,” she said, mildly surprised. “She’s painted us as the villains. I’m a ‘shallow, disgruntled housewife’—a housewife, would you believe it!—‘who didn’t find the gardener attractive enough, so she went for her lawyer, instead.’ Your part includes jewels such as, ‘perhaps Mr. Vane is choosing his cases based on the attractiveness of his clients’ behinds’ and”—Wynona took a deep breath, her voice shaking just slightly—“‘He’ll also take payment in sexual favors, if your credit card is running low.’”

Gabriel groaned and rubbed his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t… I…” Where to start? He didn’t mean for any of this to happen? He didn’t mean to lose his cool with Natalie, didn’t mean to get involved with Wyn just because it was fun and he could, he didn’t mean to doom Ida for eternity—

Wynona’s hand landed on his thigh, gentle and reassuring. Surprisingly, her look was soft and free of blame. “It’s not as bad as you think,” she said. “The scandal. There’s still a way.”

“What?”

She leaned in. “Come back with me. We’ll figure this out together.”

Back? To the city? His job—did he still have a job? The concept felt so overwhelming; too much for his brain, still soaked in the protective numbness. “No, I can’t—”

“I know you’re all nestled in here, and you’re going for some kind of ‘one with the nature’ crap, but just think, Gabriel. Think .” She moved the hand to his chest. Warm, soft, alive. It felt foreign—but also good, and Gabriel could barely hold himself back from not asking her to embrace him because he needed a touch, any touch, any consolation.

“People only want a good story,” she said. “They’ll take whatever they’re given, whether it’s bad for you or somebody else. Right now, it’s bad for us.” Her hand slid to his shoulder, and she caressed it. “You know I’ve been doing well with my business? Gearing up for the fashion week in the fall. Two celebrities asked for gowns to wear on the red carpet.”

She leaned on the backrest, extending a hand over it. “Of course, you’d know that if you bothered to message me back.”

“Message you?”

“Yeah. I wrote to you months ago. About how everything was quiet and you could return if you wanted to.” She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you remember?”

Months ago. When was that? When he and Ida were still trying to get the first tasks done? The memory of the contract and Ida ripped through his numbness, bursting in a wave of pain.

“Gabe?” Wynona held his chin and turned him to look at her, eyes shining with worry.

“No, I…” Maybe focusing on her would help. Her voice, her touch. “I never got them.”

“Probably the horrible internet connection in this place.” She scrunched her nose. “Anyway. With the scandal being brought up again and painted in all those disgusting details, it’s damaging both of our reputations. Luckily, there’s a great solution. We get back together.”

“What?”

“Together. Like a couple.” Wynona traced her finger down his arm. “Don’t act like it’s so outrageous. We had good times together. Great times.”

Did something flicker in the hallway again?

“We’d make a proper power couple, admit it. And that way, we don’t have to sacrifice anything. Quite the contrary. We save our careers and we rekindle… our love.”

Gabriel’s stomach churned, not from the coffee. “And how would that make things better?”

“Besides the fact you could finally have what you wanted, the public would get their story. But they’d get a love story.”

A small voice in the back of his mind whispered that maybe, just maybe, this made a pinch of sense.

“It’s what we should’ve done in the first place! Show them we hold real affection for each other. The story of a despicable lawyer and his mistress would turn into a story about star-crossed lovers. My dastardly husband. You, the handsome hero who saved me from a horrible marriage.”

You always wanted to be a hero. A savior.

Not a failure.

She leaned back in. “Don’t deny you want this. I know you. I know you want to go back. And from the way our last night went…” Teasingly, she bit her lower lip.

Something rattled in the hallway. Gabriel shot up. “Wynona, I—”

She caught him by the sleeve. “I’ll let you think about it. I’m staying in a motel in town. Just the exterior gives me the shivers, so please, don’t deliberate too long.” She stood and pecked him on the cheek. “And think smartly.”

Gabriel waited until she left, then checked the deer-hog. “Ida?” No humming. He ran upstairs. “Ida!” He slammed the bedroom door open—and there she was, sitting on the bed, a few ruffles of her skirt sinking into the bedding, as if she couldn’t care about appearing normal.

“There’s no need to explain,” she said. “I heard everything. I saw—”

“You don’t know what you saw.”

“Don’t belittle me.” She stood. “We failed, but that doesn’t mean I’ve suddenly turned blind, or that I don’t know what you want. What you need.”

He stayed frozen to the spot, arms hanging limply.

“I’ll always be like this,” she said. “And this is no life. Literally, for me, but also not for you. While Wynona…” Ida swallowed hard. “I saw how you were with her. All the little touches. She made you happy once.”

“You’ve no idea what makes me happy.”

“Certainly not a ghost you can only fantasize about!” The window rattled. Ida clenched her fists and closed her eyes until the glass stopped shaking. “You can be happy with her. And don’t lie to me and say you wouldn’t be happy back in your old job, your old life.”

“I—”

“Don’t.”

He clamped his mouth shut. He couldn’t deny he loved his career, and that the melancholy of the last few days ever so faintly dissipated when he thought of returning to his former glory.

But not like this. Never like this.

“Why do you think the contract failed?” Ida said quietly.

“Surely you’re not hinting—”

“We weren’t strong enough. Maybe, because of what I am, nobody can connect to me in that way. It’s another trick of the book, like with the first contract. There’s always one condition you can’t fulfill.”

The suggestions—both Wynona’s and Ida’s—made logical sense. Reason tried to fight its way out of the numbness, make him realize he didn’t feel like moving on because he didn’t feel like doing anything at the moment… but it was still so damn hard.

Ida clenched her fists tighter than humanly possible. “I deleted Wynona’s messages.”

“You…” He shook his head.

“It wasn’t intentional. They popped up when I was researching on your laptop. She said…” Her voice trembled. “She said she missed you, couldn’t stop thinking about you. That she was all yours. And I got upset and crashed the website and deleted the messages.”

“But you remembered them. You could’ve told me.” Cold fury rose through the sorrow.

“I know. But we were in the middle of the first contract and I didn’t want you to leave.” Ida’s voice was near squealing. “That’s why you have to leave now. It was all wrong. Me keeping you here, the contracts—all of it was a damn waste of time. And of your life.”

If he hadn’t been so overwhelmed by the slew of emotions, made worse after days of trying to feel nothing, and an instinctive reaction at Ida’s admission— she lied, how could she have lied, when she knew how much his life meant to him—Gabriel might have deliberated more. Maybe he’d sit down and think it through. But he was tired of sitting down and tossing the same old thoughts around his head: failure, Ida being miserable, him being miserable, everyone giving up, failure, failure, failure…

When he was confronted with the scandal and the suspension back in October, he moped around for a few days, too. But he picked himself up and built something new. Maybe it was time to do that again; only the new would be the old, and a hurting part of him didn’t want to leave this new thing he’d built.

“I need some time,” he said to Ida. “I’ll be back later.”

“Go.” She faced away, toward the window. “And I mean it. Go.”

So he carefully shut the door, grabbed the keys to his car, and went.

***

Hours later, Ida was toying with the locket she’d brought to the living room. Up, down, up, down, up, it went through the air.

Steps outside announced Gabriel’s return. Panicked, she zipped into a book, and emerged after a minute when she didn’t sense activity in the living room.

She hid around corners and popped in and out of various objects to avoid Gabriel as he went around the house, packing. He hauled the coffee machine out of the kitchen. He spent a good hour in the bedroom, finally bringing down two suitcases. He took his laptop out of the living room.

It looked strangely empty, bare, without it on the coffee table.

With everything packed up, Gabriel paused in the hallway. Ida leaned on the other side of the wall in the living room.

He’s leaving.She told him to do so, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

You’ll get through it. Over him. You have all the time in the world to doso.

All the time in the world sounded very scary and lonely again.

“Ida,” Gabriel spoke, but didn’t make a move. “I know you’re around here somewhere. Don’t worry, I won’t bother you.” His keys jingled. “As you probably gathered, I’m leaving. I’m going back to the city.”

With Wynona.

He must’ve spent the last few hours with her, thinking about his new life. How he could’ve had it months ago, if it weren’t for Ida. Silly, scheming little ghost.

“My rent runs out in a week. I took care of everything. A crew will come by to put the kitchen and dining room back into place. The landlady said they can keep the garden as it is, so… you’ll have that.”

Wonderful. She needed more memories of how her garden used to look. More memories of Gabriel.

“I just wanted to say goodbye. So I guess… this is goodbye.”

The front door creaked.

“Wait!” Ida channeled her energy to grab the locket, and glided to the hallway. But as she stood in front of him, she didn’t know where to start.

Or how to end this.

“Ida.” The single word was filled with emotion, with promise of explanations, reassurances, forgiveness. But Gabriel went for none of those— especially not the last one.

That was fine. She needed him to leave, even if she didn’t want him to. “I wanted to give you this.” She approached, extending her hand with the locket. “This is the first one I created. The one that made Perry behave…”

The cheerful memory warmed her and, for the moment, made her feel lighter. Regardless of how this ended, no one could take away the past few months, and she’d forever be grateful to Gabriel for them.

“When I created it,” she continued, halting every few words, “I was thinking of you. Of the good times we had together. It’s a good amulet. And because it’s connected to you, it won’t affect you in the same way it did Perry. It’ll only make you happy.”

Why did he have to stare at her like his heart was breaking with every word she said?

“I’m not any worse because of you,” she said, her voice breaking. “I’m still like this, immaterial, invisible to everyone else. But because of you, this part of my ghostly life has been better.”

The locket shook as she lost control; just in time, Gabriel intercepted it.

“Thank you.” His hand remained raised for a few moments more, until he took a step back.

“Thank you.”

Gabriel looked to the side, squeezed his eyes shut, then faced her again.

“Goodbye, Ida.”

Every force in her screamed not to let him go; that once he was out of this house, he was out of reach, forever. But her legs wouldn’t budge, and strands of darkness snaked around her, snatching the happy memories. Gabriel left and the door clicked close, shutting out the last bits of light.