Chapter 3 #3
“Until he was possessed by the ghost of William Caine. Caine strangled four women in the eighties. He had a stroke in prison three weeks ago, and death hasn’t slowed him down much.”
Hold on. “The ghost of a serial killer tried to kill me?”
He nods. “He murdered another girl four days ago across town, and we tracked him.”
I need something to lean on, but there’s just empty asphalt stretching in every direction. Why her and not me? Why do I always walk away when everyone else dies? What makes me so special that I get to keep breathing while everyone else doesn’t?
Change the subject. “Do you, like, hunt these ghosts for a living?”
“I know how it sounds, but those entities possess innocent people like Marcus. Make them do things they’d never… We try to stop that from happening to anyone else.”
“And there are enough of these things to keep you busy?”
“I’m not retiring anytime soon.”
“So, Ted Bundy could still be out there killing people, and nobody knows about it?”
“Bundy never came back, as far as I know.” He tilts his head, considering. “Others have.”
“You catch any ghosts I’d recognize?”
“Donny has John Wayne Gacy in storage.”
It’s like the tiny person manning the control panel in my brain falls over and dies. “You’re serious?”
“Deadly.”
“Unfortunate choice of words.”
He shrugs, but the corner of his mouth tightens like he’s fighting a smile.
“Every entity is anchored to an object from the living world,” he says.
“Could be anything. Jewelry. A weapon. Destroy the anchor, and the ghost gets pulled into whatever comes after death, but the problem is, some of these anchors are impossible to track down, so we keep the entities in storage until we can find them.”
“I can’t believe you have the killer clown sitting in a jar somewhere.”
“The jars are temporary transportation to our containment facility, but yes. His essence is contained.”
“What about Jeffrey Dahmer? Did he ever become a ghost?”
“Nope. Though we did track down a cannibal who possessed an electrician a few years back. There were two heads in his fridge by the time we got to him.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Could’ve been worse,” he says. “At least he didn’t possess a chef.”
I grin, even though the movement makes my neck ache. “Did you just make a cannibalism joke?”
He presses his lips together. “Too dark?”
“Considering a dead guy almost killed me last night, my tolerance for dark is pretty high right now.”
I can feel the tension in my shoulders unwinding. Joking about it like this makes me feel less insane.
“The police don’t know what they’re dealing with in cases like this,” he says. “They blame the hosts. Lock them up for murders they were forced to commit while something else was driving them.”
It’s like the ground pulls away under my feet, leaving me suspended for a moment. “Shit.”
His eyes sharpen on me. “What?”
“I talked to a cop last night,” I say. “I told him what happened—well, not the ghost part, but I told him about the man attacking me. Did I screw things up for him? For Marcus?”
“The cops won’t connect your report to Marcus unless you gave them something specific,” he says.
“I told the cop I was attacked here,” I say. “Does that count?”
“There are no working cameras with this area in view,” he says. “So we’re good.”
I swallow hard, wincing at the burn. “What will happen to Marcus?”
“He’ll probably write it off as a bad dream, assuming he doesn’t dig too deep into his memories, but he’ll remember eventually, and when he does… he’ll remember everything.”
My brain conjures up pictures I don’t want to see: a random girl across town with her whole life ahead of her, and then a harmless accountant father of two approaching her with dead eyes and someone else’s hands…
“How do you know if a person is being possessed?” I ask.
“It’s hard to tell,” he says, “but if it’s early enough, there are physical symptoms. Slurred speech. Overexaggerated movements.”
“So, like, any drunk or high person?”
He gives a considering nod. “As I said, it can be hard to tell.”
Great. Fantastic. I force a trembling breath in through my teeth. Focus on something real. The cold air biting through the tough canvas of Dad’s jacket. The glare of the morning sun. The way my body is begging me to just sit down for five minutes. I’m not there. I’m here.
“Your throat,” he says, and it takes me a second to realize we’re not talking about murder and ghosts anymore. “How bad is it?”
“Still letting me breathe, which I have you to thank for.”
He nods, and his eyes do this slow sweep over my face that makes my skin feel like it’s warming from the inside out. I don’t need a mirror to know I look like death warmed over, but the way he’s looking at me doesn’t feel judgmental.
I glance around the parking lot because I need to look at something other than his face. “So, where’s your grandpa?”
“Getting coffee.” He pauses. “And he’s really not my grandpa. He’s my boss.”
I figured as much. I was just trying to be funny, but that comment wasn’t actually funny, so I don’t know what I was doing.
“I’m going to buy some salt,” I say, gesturing toward Walmart before I can make any other stupid attempts at humor. My voice is getting raspier by the second, and I need to stop talking before I lose the ability to talk at all. “My dog is probably wondering why I’m taking so long.”
“Is he the jealous type?”
“Why? You worried he’s going to come bite your ankles?”
“I’m hoping he doesn’t think I’m a threat to you, or I would be. He looked ready to take on the world for you last night.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve always said if anyone were to do anything to me while he was around, he couldn’t do much, but I’d have a very loud death.”
I glance back at my car, where Bob has indeed pressed his tiny face as close to the window as his cone will allow, his black button eyes fixed on us with what can only be described as profound hatred.
“Well, I’m going to go back to him,” I say. “Thanks for answering my questions.”
I’m turning to leave when his voice stops me.
“I’m Nico.”
I turn back around, and there’s this moment where we’re just looking at each other, and I hope my face isn’t turning as red as it feels it is.
“Just Nico?” I ask.
“I’ve got a last name,” he says. “But to you, it’s just Nico.”
Okay… is it weird for him not to give me a last name, or is it weird for me to ask what his is? I think I’m overthinking it. “I’m Eden.”
“Just Eden?”
“To you.” I nod toward my car, where Bob is pressing his entire body against the window like he’s trying to phase through the glass to get to me. “That’s Bob.”
“I wasn’t expecting such a big personality to have such a normal name.”
“His previous owner called him Shithead.”
He crinkles his nose. “That’s creative.”
“Oh yeah, the asshole was a real prize. He used to hit Bob for barking too much. One day I saw Bob shivering alone outside in the rain, so I stole him. I’ve had him for a year.”
Nico looks over at Bob, and something in his expression softens. “He’s brave for such a small dog.”
I know he’s complimenting my dog, but Bob doesn’t get many compliments, so I feel my smile growing. “Yeah, well, sometimes the smallest things fight the hardest.”
Nico’s gaze comes back to me, and he gives me a real smile that gathers at the corners of his eyes. “I can see that.”
So much heat floods into my face that I must turn the color of a stop sign. I’m standing here, gaping at him like a complete moron, when a gravelly voice cuts through the morning air:
“I’ll be damned. Is that Eden Callahan?”