Chapter 21
Sawyer
Morgan pushes me inside. With no-nonsense urgency, she seats me at my dining table.
“First aid?” she demands.
I swallow, still dizzy with panic. My wound proves that what we experienced wasn’t just a ghostly illusion.
The danger was real. I knew Morgan was scared—if you’re not used to earthquakes, they’re really frightening—so I kept it together guiding her under the table in the guesthouse and ensuring we remained safely covered.
The whole time, I was freaking the fuck out myself.
The fact is, Morgan Lane is the only person who’s gotten close to me in years.
The only person with whom I’m starting to feel the first semblance of healing and human connection.
Yes, I’ve resisted it. Yes, I don’t know what it represents in my landscape of grief.
Doesn’t mean it doesn’t make me fucking desperate to ensure nothing happens to her.
I’m relieved I’m the one injured. Not her. One more observation I do not voice out loud.
“I’m fine. It’s nothing,” I insist instead. “Are you bleeding anywhere?”
I should have expected the sternly raised eyebrow Morgan gives me in reply.
I sigh. “Under the sink in my bathroom.”
“Don’t move,” Morgan orders. She runs—like a horror ingenue fleeing the killer runs—up the stairs.
While I wait, hearing her pounding footsteps above me, I inspect my wound. I didn’t even feel the slice running horizontal on my side. I was consumed with fear, scared something might happen to someone else important to me, because Morgan, I’m forced to concede, is important to me.
Scared I was somehow…responsible. Not just haunted but cursed.
I can’t lose her, too. I can’t.
I press my hand to the wound, feeling the sting deepen. My palm comes away red.
Morgan returns, clutching the small metal kit of bandages and Neosporin I keep under my bathroom sink. “Take your shirt off,” she demands.
“Zach told you to say that,” I joke. If I downplay my own injury, I reason stubbornly, maybe I’ll get straighter confirmation from Morgan that she’s okay.
Morgan does not laugh. She does not smile. “I’m not kidding. You’re injured,” she says.
When her voice wavers, I realize she’s worried, too. She hasn’t had to lose someone like I have, which means, for her, the idea is unimaginable, and therefore endless.
She should never have to feel the pain I’ve felt. I want to protect her from it somehow. But I know I can’t, so I settle for doing what Morgan says. I remove my shirt, unable to stop myself from hissing inwardly when the movement stretches my cut, wincing when the fabric rips away from the wound.
Morgan’s eyes flash like she’s personally offended by my pain.
She kneels by my side. Gently, she lifts my elbow so she can inspect the slash under my armpit. I honestly have no memory of when the injury occurred—when I was shielding my face from exploding pottery, I guess.
Morgan pops open my first aid kit. She removes the antiseptic, which she applies to the towel she carried down.
When she presses the moist disinfectant to my cut, I manage to hold in my reaction to the searing stab.
Morgan doesn’t deserve to feel guilty for her medicinal efforts, and every time I wince, the lines deepen in her forehead.
Part of me wants to reach up and smooth them out.
“We should probably go to the emergency room,” she murmurs.
“And say what?” I reply, having more trouble than I should focusing on my injury. “There was an earthquake in my art studio? Oh, and it was caused by our ghost?”
Morgan purses her lips. She sees what I mean. “You could need stitches,” she protests.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding through your towel,” Morgan says. I glance down, finding she is, unfortunately, correct. Crimson is blossoming on the white terry cloth like the morbid imitation of the red flowers she chose for out front.
“Look,” I say. “I haven’t had health insurance since Kennedy died. We’re not going to the hospital.”
Morgan’s expression scrunches with confusion and judgment. “You don’t have health insurance?” she repeats. “What if something had happened to you?”
I don’t reply.
In my silence, Morgan understands.
I didn’t care. If something happened to me, if the universe wanted me closer to Kennedy, well…
On her knees, Morgan straightens. She looks fiercely right into my eyes.
“You’re enrolling tonight,” she says firmly.
Unexpectedly, this, not my side wound, makes my eyes water.
I hold her gaze without blinking. Her hand rests on my bare chest, right over my still-beating heart. I have the errant urge to lift my hand to cover hers. Holding her there. What was it Morgan said in Serving Spirits? Proof of life.
Instead, I nod. “Okay,” I say. “I will. Assuming you stop the bleeding and I make it to then.”
Her lips finally twitch. “Deal.” Returning to my wound, she reluctantly removes the towel. Grimacing, she watches red droplets form on the edges of my skin. “I’m going to…bandage it, I guess,” she says.
“Whatever you want, doctor,” I reply.
Morgan lifts a playful eyebrow, pink rising in her cheeks. Was it the doctor or the whatever you want that flustered her? I refuse to ponder the answer.
She reaches into the kit, where she finds cotton gauze and spooled bandages. The bandage makes its sticky crunching sound when Morgan pulls up the end. Morgan packs my wound, then proceeds clumsily to hold the gauze in place while she wraps my torso in the bandage.
“I’m sorry if my hands are cold,” she says.
My reply comes out a whisper. “They’re not.”
Morgan continues her work, maneuvering the bandage to constrict my cut. Her ministrations draw her head close to my chest, her hands brushing my side, her floral scent everywhere. I feel everything a thousand times more sharply than the pottery that slashed me.
I haven’t been this close to someone in five years. And Morgan isn’t just someone. I need a distraction, or I’ll find myself dizzy for reasons having nothing to do with my injury.
Right on cue, Zach materializes over Morgan’s shoulder.
While he hasn’t fully recovered, when he observes what’s happening in my kitchen, the sight seems to sober him into solidity. His dangerous shimmering edges relax. His opacity returns.
“Shit. I’m sorry, dude,” he says with his usual earnestness. “We really need to find out what’s going on with me. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
I notice Morgan’s shoulders relax nearly imperceptibly, as if she also welcomes our paranormal chaperone. “Have you remembered anything more about your life since we found out who you were?” she asks Zach.
The ghost stares outside, despondently watching the faint motion of the wind chimes. “Nothing useful. Just flashes from my childhood. Learning how to surf. When I bought my van.”
Morgan cinches my bandage tight. I wince. “Sorry,” she murmurs guiltily.
“You’re fine,” I say.
She glances up. Our eyes lock.
I need extra bandages, I consider requesting. Wrapped more slowly.
Morgan quickly pulls her gaze from mine. I fight to keep my chest from heaving with each breath. “We got the first clue about your life when we were in the garage and you saw the water heater,” she reasons with determination. “We just need to find more stimuli that could reveal buried memories.”
“Stimuli?” Zach repeats.
“Like cues,” I say. In the same moment, Morgan’s nails lightly scratch the sensitive skin of my side while she cuts and secures the bandage.
When Kennedy died, every good thing hurt. Every pretty sunset, every delicious piece of pizza, every interesting local museum exhibit I noticed on social media. Every joy pierced me with the reminder of who wasn’t there to enjoy them with me. Every moment of happiness was a sugarcoated poison pill.
This is…the opposite. The pain of Morgan’s contact with my skin is a relief. I’d forgotten what being touched felt like, and when she removes her hands, finished, I realize how much I missed it.
“Wait,” I say suddenly.
Zach and Morgan look at me. I’d forgotten what being touched felt like. I follow the inspiration from my own forgotten memories.
“We can parade things in front of Zach for eternity, and still we might not find the right memory. But they’re in him. We know they’re in his subconscious somewhere,” I say. “What if we don’t try to bring the memories out of his subconscious but instead try to tap into his subconscious directly?”
Morgan sits back on her heels, intrigued, if skeptical. “You’re not seriously suggesting we hypnotize a ghost, are you?”
I shrug. Honestly, I had not envisioned the methodology yet. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but—”
Morgan’s eyes light up. “What about a Ouija board?”
“You don’t need a Ouija board to communicate with me,” Zach protests. “I’m right here.”
Morgan shakes her head. “No. What if you put your hands on the console and see if there are any letters that…call out to your subconscious?”
Zach frowns, unconvinced. Then his eyes flit to my side, like he knows he can’t dash our only hope. “I mean, I’ll try anything,” he concedes.
Morgan looks at me. “There was one in the ghost bar. We can go right now. Or wait—” She interrupts herself. She runs upstairs.
When she returns, she’s holding my only black T-shirt, the shade chosen to mask stains if my bandages leak. Her eyes dip, lowering to my bare chest.
“We can go when you get dressed,” she says.
I’ve kept in shape over the past years. Working out is solitary, occupies hours of my creativity-deprived days, and substitutes muscle pain for pain everywhere else. Morgan seems to notice. In a startled shock, I realize she’s checking me out.
It’s another feeling I’d forgotten I missed. It’s…nice, which is confusing.
I suspect I would agree to anything she proposed in order to end the strange charge I’ve realized is very much between us.
I pull on the shirt. “Let’s go.”
“You’re not going to get those goofy-ass ghost cakes, right?” Zach sniffs. “My culture is not your confection.”
Morgan rolls her eyes on our way out the door. “You’re a ghost, Zach. It’s not your culture.”
“We prefer Apparition American,” Zach replies.