Chapter 9 #2
Perfect. Seal the room with salt. Man the monitors for as long as you can before getting a few hours of sleep. Make sure everything is recorded.
Jonah
I’m on it!
Octavia shifted again, turning back to me. Her eyes were closed, mouth shielded with the blanket she bunched up in her fist. Octavia’s breaths were frantic and heavy, progressively worse with each second.
“Hey,” I whispered.
Those beautiful lashes fluttered open. She took one more breath before saying, “Hi.”
I laughed at the poor attempt at nonchalance in her tone. “You’re Octavia.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “And…you’re Rae.”
I snorted. “No.”
“No?” Octavia’s voice rose an octave, and she almost laughed. Almost.
“Yes, but I mean, I was trying to ground you.”
“How was randomly saying my name supposed to ground me?”
“It was a reminder.”
“Like I’d ever forget.”
“You’d be surprised what people do when they’re terrified.”
She sniffed, burying herself further under the blanket. “I’m a little shaken. Not terrified.”
“I was going to say, you’re Octavia. You’re here in your living room, lying on a couch with a cup of tea within arm’s reach. And there’s a paranormal investigator, only a few feet away here with you. You are here. Do you feel it?”
Octavia hummed. “I’m here…but I knew that.”
“But do you feel it?” I leaned forward, pushing the recliner down to close some distance between us.
“Your fear serves a purpose, whether that be to you or something outside of your understanding. I don’t know if you have rested enough to let your fear serve you, so I think it’s best if you try to distance yourself from it as much as you can.
“Fair enough…I don’t know how to do that, but maybe…” Octavia closed her eyes.
“Maybe?”
“You could distract me.”
My chest tightened, but I kept my voice steady. “How so?”
“Read to me?” She kept her eyes closed at the request, the corners softly wrinkled. The light from an old green lamp kissed her skin. Octavia looked smaller when she lay between shadows. Less willing to bite my head off at a moment’s notice.
“Read to you?”
“Audiobooks help me sleep and…I like your voice,” she whispered the last part, the words barely making the trek to my ears.
I couldn’t stop my smiling or the small boost to my ego. She sensed the growth of both, opening her eyes to impart a proper, disapproving frown.
“Plenty of people have nice voices,” she said.
“Yes, but you like mine.” I raised a brow. “And you aren’t picking up your phone for plenty of people.”
Octavia sighed but offered no more protest.
“What should I read?” I reached for my phone and opened the browser. I wasn’t an avid reader, but I was sure I could find something online for her.
“Your book.” Octavia pointed behind me to a half-full bookcase.
I pushed myself out of the recliner. It took focus to not limp (I didn’t want her to catch wind and worry about something new all over again). My book was on the bottom shelf. I tugged it out, flipping it open to find tabs and sticky tabs jabbed into pages upon pages.
“You weren’t kidding,” I murmured to myself with a soft laugh as I scanned through the notes. All of them were in her thin handwriting. Each word lightly written in pencil, as if she were preparing to erase her thoughts. Or maybe she figured someone else might want to erase them.
“‘Years of confirmation bias will lead to one thing in the end: a completely and utterly inflated ego,’” I read. “‘I wonder if it’s lucky she’s experienced these things and has come out on top. Or severely unlucky that she lives in a state of illusion.’”
I laughed while Octavia’s nose wrinkled.
“Don’t read the margins,” she said. “It can get mean.”
“No, no.” I shook my head and climbed back into my seat. “I like this. It’s like I get to be in conversation with you but without the filter.”
“I don’t filter…much.”
“That’s true.” I pressed my fingers to her writing, moving them as I read.
“‘I wonder if I’d prefer living in an illusion? Aren’t the happiest people there?
Would that be genuine happiness? Can we even prove what genuine happiness is?
Like ghosts, it’s intangible’—see, you’re so stuck on this intangible aspect.
It’s like you’re caught up in studying one branch when there’s an entire forest.”
“What’s the point of studying the entire forest if I can’t get the branch down?”
“You could spend your whole life studying the branch and not know everything there is to know. The point is to take what you can and move on.”
Octavia yawned and gestured to the book. “Alright, alright. We’ll sit on the steps like Plato and Aristotle later. For now, read. And just your parts. I want to hear it in your voice; maybe then I can understand it better.”
“Maybe.” I smiled when she snuggled back into her blanket.
I itched to move closer so I could feel the warmth of her breath on my skin.
The space between us would have to be endured.
Staying in the recliner was a small gulf that was better than the millions of miles sleeping in another room would feel like.
I tucked my good foot underneath my thigh, tugged a throw blanket across my body, and turned to page one.
“‘I come into others’ lives in the middle of their story,’” I started. “‘Right as things get worse.’”
Octavia released a heavy sigh, and the satisfaction of inciting such a response felt like it could fuel me for weeks to come.
I woke up on the recliner with a crick in my neck. The couch in front of me was empty; a faint imprint of Octavia’s body from last night lingered. Sunlight poured through the half-closed blinds, slowly warming the edges of the house.
An illustrated bird clock tweeted, signaling 7 a.m. I smiled a little when a brown bird popped in and out of a tiny door in the middle of the clock.
The scent of bacon floated, clouding the air.
Jonah’s laughter filtered through, coming from the kitchen as well.
There was a soft, unchallenged hum in the air.
I hadn’t woken to something this calm since the academy.
Even if this lull harbored something insidious underneath, I took a deep breath, appreciating Elmwood’s peaceful potential.
I allowed myself a few minutes, fantasizing about sticking one place long enough to experience this quiet peace.
Once my time was up, I shoved off my blanket and tugged on a sweatshirt, checking my phone for any messages. Nico had sent one at 5 a.m.
Nico
Started our drive. Should be there around lunchtime. Keep the ghost warm for us.
I wiped the sand from my eyes. Last night’s events rolled across my brain. I tried to put everything in its proper place, examining the details I may have missed because I had solely directed my worry toward Octavia.
We were dealing with a category five ghost. I hadn’t come across one of those since my time in the Guild.
Our approach would be like any other job: find the source of the turmoil, track down the remains, free it through coaxing or fire.
Straightforward. Simple. And yet, my stomach turned.
I itched to go through last night’s footage, but right before I could get up, my phone rang.
“Hey, girl, how’s it going?” Opal asked. She was out of breath, the roar of a waterfall nearly drowning her out in the background. “Got to license any new plushies at your event? I heard Hem Toys was there.”
I laughed under my breath. “I wish.”
“Aw, that’s too bad. I needed a new one for my collection. The plan was to auction them all off by the end of the year. I’ll be able to afford about a week’s vacation at that bougie resort on the East Coast.”
“I could sign the ones you have.” I got up from my chair and went over to the window, nudging down the blinds with two fingers. The RV stood in the yard, muddied and dripping from rain. Octavia’s truck was parked right beside it with no fresh tire tracks to indicate she’d gone out this morning.
“You’re so generous? See, this is why you’re my favorite”—there was a grunt and a click of a rifle being loaded on her end—“sister.”
“What are you—should I let you go? This sounds like a bad time.”
“I called you,” she said.
I snorted. “I know.”
“Don’t let me go, just hold on for one sec.” Opal muted her end, and I swallowed my scoff.
I’d probably find Octavia in the stable. I needed to check on her and get a pulse on where her head was after last night. Opal got back on the line after I zipped up my boots. They put a little too much pressure on my ankle, but thankfully the swelling wasn’t unbearable.
“What’s going on with you?” Her breathing was back to a slow, steady rhythm.
“I got a job in Colorado.” I opened the front door. A gust of crisp wind breathed on my skin. “On a horse ranch.”
“You adore horses.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “How are you always finding cute jobs? I’m knee-deep in shifter shit, and deer remains.”
“Coyote?”
“Wolf.”
“In Upstate New York?”
“Shifters like road trips as much as anyone else. I’m sure they give them plenty of time to stick their heads out the window.”
I laughed. Opal’s humor derived from our father’s, thanks to her unshakeable admiration and to the extended years she spent under his tutelage.
“Fair enough.” I lingered on the porch, gaze trained on movement outside the stable.
Octavia appeared, dressed in a slouchy pair of denim overalls and a green long sleeve underneath.
She carried two buckets, sloshing water onto the ground every other step.
My gaze hooked on the curve of her waist and how her hips swayed when she walked.
My throat tightened as I recalled the tremor in her hands last night when she clung to me. The wetness on her cheeks as she tried to breathe in after coughing up sand.
“You should know my cute job almost resulted in the death of my client last night,” I said, not removing my eyes from Octavia for one second. She paused at the pen’s gate. One horse—Frog, I believe it was, with his somber step—waited for her on the other side.
Opal’s humor faded. “Damn. How close was the call?”