Chapter 28
Field teams operate in groups of three: two field agents enter the location, and one remains on communications. This rule is only broken when there are limited team members available for a mission, and I avoid it whenever possible.
—Methods of Modern Ghost Hunting: A Tactical Guide to Containing and Vanquishing the Dead by Donald Dellman
I don’t know how much time has passed when DJ slides down onto the floor next to me without a word, placing a mug in my hands.
“Black with sugar, right?” she asks.
The mug has Jeffrey Dahmer’s mugshot on it and the caption, ‘I eat guys like you for breakfast.’ I wish I had the energy to laugh.
“How did you know?” I say. Bob leans over to sniff DJ from where he’s lying curled up in my lap.
“A couple days ago, I noticed some sugar spilled on the counter when I was making coffee. Griffin takes it with cream and no sugar. Donny and Benji drink it black. Nico avoids it altogether, and Zoey’s strictly an energy drink girl, so I figured you must be the new sugar user.
” DJ shrugs. “I gave you one spoon, but I can grab more. You might not be able to keep coffee down right now, so I also brought saltines.”
“You’re the best, and I want to have your babies.”
DJ shudders. “No babies. Please.”
I set the mug down but unwrap a pack of saltines, nibbling the edge of a cracker. “Who buys the mugs in this house?”
“Griff and I have this ongoing war of finding the silliest mugs for each other’s birthdays and holidays,” DJ says. “It’s gotten out of hand.”
Too many funny mugs could never be a problem.
“How’s Ed?” I ask. “Mathis.”
“Sedated at Mercy.” DJ drops her head back against the wall. “He’ll be okay. We barely got out of there before the cops showed up.”
The tension in my shoulders eases. “At least he’ll be okay.”
“Griffin will be okay, too,” DJ continues, and something in her voice makes me look up. “I know it’s ugly, but he’s just going to have a couple crappy days and then be fine.”
Right. Because having a ghost’s hands buried in your chest cavity and then getting shot with rock salt by your trainee is totally fine.
“How are you feeling?” DJ asks.
“Great.” The word barely makes it past my lips when I need to reach for the bucket. DJ gathers my hair as more slime comes up.
She’s so gentle, and the light touch on my neck coaxes a prickle at the corners of my eyes. Suddenly, I’m crying, my tears mixing with the slime and I can’t stop either of them.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out, wiping at my face with my sleeve. “I don’t know why I’m—”
“Don’t apologize.” DJ’s voice is soft. “You’re going through it right now.”
“I don’t usually—” Another sob cuts me off, and I cover my mouth as if I can physically hold it in. “I swear I’m not this pathetic normally.”
“You’re not pathetic.” DJ keeps her hand on my shoulder. “The ectoplasm can mess with your emotions. Amplify them. It can be a real trip.”
I pull my head up, swiping at my eyes. “What?”
“Ghosts are basically pure emotion,” DJ explains.
“That’s what keeps them here, usually. The angrier or more traumatized they were when they died, the more likely they are to stick around, and their ectoplasm carries traces of that emotion.
It gets inside you and amplifies everything you’re already feeling. Dials it up to eleven.”
Oh.
I guess I didn’t reach that part in my required reading yet.
“So this—” I gesture at my face. “This isn’t real?”
“It’s real,” DJ says. “The emotions are yours, but the ectoplasm just makes them louder—harder to control.”
At least there’s an explanation for why I feel like this. Why I keep thinking about Nico coming up here.
The want is so intense that I need to duck my face, because I’m scared DJ can see right through me. The emotions I’m feeling may be real, and there may be a teeny, tiny part of me that wants Nico to come here, but I need to be careful. I don’t want to lose this job by doing something stupid.
“If ghosts are only made of negative emotions, does ectoplasm only heighten negative emotions?” I ask.
“Depends,” DJ explains. “Whatever emotion is strongest in them is what gets cranked up in you. Morrow was driven by his need for Maeve, by this desperate longing to be loved, so if I had to guess, you’re feeling that.”
I wipe my nose on my sleeve, my brain finally catching up. “I was throwing up ectoplasm the morning I came here, but I don’t remember it being this intense.”
“The stronger the ghost, the more it affects you,” DJ continues. “Morrow’s powerful, and he force-fed you a lot of ectoplasm. You’re going to be feeling this for a while.”
Fan-fucking-tastic.
DJ shifts next to me, pressing her shoulder against mine so solidly that it warms. “It must have been scary, seeing Griffin like that.”
Of course it was scary. The ghost dragged him onto the ceiling.
“I bet it was scary for Griffin, too, seeing that thing come for you. Even being on this mission with you today.”
“What do you mean?”
DJ’s quiet, and I can feel her choosing her words carefully. “He never told you about Bonnie, did he?”
I pick my head up. “You told me she was on the team.”
DJ settles back against the wall, untangling her fingers from my hair and pulling her knees up to her chest.
“She and Griffin had been dating since they were fourteen,” DJ says.
“Bonnie couldn’t see ghosts, but when he joined the team, she moved in here with him.
Donny gave her a job managing the books—eventually, she graduated to running comms for us on field missions.
She was good at it—always knew exactly what to say to calm us down when things went sideways.
” DJ swipes at her eyes with the heel of her hand.
“She didn’t even see that ghost coming.”
The lump in my throat makes it hard to swallow. At least I knew what was happening when the ghost in my car came at me. At least I could see it.
“For the first couple months, Griffin visited her every week,” DJ continues.
“He tried to explain to her who he was, who she was, but she wouldn’t believe him, and even got hysterical.
The nurses thought it was better for her, if he didn’t…
” She trails off, shaking her head. “It’s been six months.
He’s trying to move on, but it’s hard to move on from someone when they’re still here, just… not them anymore.”
My chest aches so badly I press my palm against it, trying to push the feeling back down where it belongs.
“He was going to marry her,” DJ whispers.
The tears come harder now, and I don’t even try to stop them.
“That’s why he and I…” DJ makes a vague gesture between herself and the wall separating us from Griffin’s room. “He asked me to—he wanted to try, you know? To see if he could feel something for someone else.”
“And?”
“I never should have agreed.” DJ’s eyes are shining. “I was trying to help, but he was so broken up about it afterward—cried for, like, an hour. He’s in so much pain, every single day, and I just… I made it worse.”
“You were being a good friend. It wasn’t your fault.” I wipe my tears. “I could never move on from something like that.”
“He’s trying,” DJ says fiercely. “He’s trying to learn what it means to not be with her—which is, I think, why he’s been coming on to you—but it’s really, really hard for him.”
I pull Bob closer, running a hand over his back.
“At least Griffin’s in good company,” DJ says, stretching her legs out in front of her. “This house is basically a monastery. Benji’s ace, Zoey’s married to her computers, and don’t even get me started on Nico.”
“What about Nico?” The words are out before I can think better of them.
“Nico has never even dated anyone.” DJ shakes her head like she can’t quite believe it herself. “He barely leaves the house and only talks to us. The idea of him hooking up with anyone is almost alien. I don’t think he even knows how.”
“Oh,” I say, trying not to sound disappointed, because that’s not what I am. I don’t understand what I feel. Nico’s personal life is none of my business, no matter how fast my heart is pounding at this information.
“I know Griffin wants to move on,” DJ continues, “but he was so destroyed after Bonnie that—Just be careful, okay?”
“I told you already,” I say. “I’m not interested in him.”
“Eden, I’m sorry, but you’ve been sitting outside his bedroom door for two hours. That’s not exactly the behavior of someone who’s ‘not interested.’”
“Just because I’m sitting outside his door doesn’t mean I want to jump his bones.”
“I’m not trying to start a fight,” she says. “I’m just saying… I don’t know what you want from him, but don’t expect anything more than casual. I love him to death, but he’s not in a place where he can handle more than that.”
I want to tell her she’s wrong, but last night I’d pretty much decided it would be a good idea to blow off steam with him.
Tori told me once that sex was just another way to feel nothing, like drinking.
She was right. Sort of. Even when it felt bad, it was better than how bad I usually felt every day, so it did what I needed it to do.
I could use some numbing.
DJ pushes herself to her feet. “Anyway, you come get me if you need anything, okay?”
By the time I finally stop vomiting as much, I’m so drained of strength that I’m careful to stand up extremely slowly so as not to accidentally re-trigger the nausea.
I chug an entire bottle of water and nap for an hour, then drag myself to the bathroom, where I spend twenty minutes in the shower scrubbing ectoplasm from my hair and skin.
I brush my teeth three times, then gargle with mouthwash so long my eyes water.
A dull throbbing still lingers in my head, but DJ brings me two Tylenol tabs and those help.
I’m climbing into bed when I hear a hacking cough from the other side of the wall.
I pause, listening. I can hear the bedsprings creak through the wall as Griffin shifts. There’s a thud, and more coughing that sounds like he’s coughing his literal lungs out.
Should I go over there? Check on him?
“Nico!” Griffin bellows, his voice passing easily through the thin wall dividing our rooms. “Get your ass over here!”
My entire body locks up. I’ve never heard Griffin sound like that before. He’s always so easygoing, but right now, he sounds like he wants to murder someone with his bare hands.
“NICO!”
In a couple of seconds, I hear a door slam down the hall, followed by footsteps running past my closed door.
“What’s wrong?” Nico’s voice is low and controlled. “You all right?”
“You never should have sent me in there alone with her.” Griffin’s words come out sounding strangled, like he’s forcing them through his teeth.
Oh.
The walls are thin enough that I can hear everything, and I know I should stop listening, should give them privacy, but my body won’t move from where I’m perched on the edge of my bed.
“Donny made the call,” Nico says, and there’s steel underneath the calm.
“I don’t give a fuck whose call it was!” Something crashes against the wall hard enough to make my door rattle. “She could’ve died. She just started—she doesn’t know what she’s doing—”
“You’d be dead right now if it weren’t for her,” Nico says. “She held her own.”
“It was the same,” Griffin says.
“Look at me,” Nico says. “It wasn’t the same.”
“Don’t tell me it wasn’t—”
“Eden’s fine,” Nico says. “This wasn’t the same.”
“I can’t do this again,” Griffin says. “I can’t watch someone else—”
“Focus on my voice,” Nico says, and his commanding tone calms my racing heart. “Count backward from ten with me. Can you do that?”
“You motherfucker.”
“Can you do that?” Nico doesn’t sound rattled. “Ten.”
Griffin joins in, sounding reluctant, but by the time they hit one, he doesn’t sound so angry anymore.
“I know it feels the same, but Eden will learn to handle herself,” Nico says. “You need to learn how not to react like this every time something goes wrong, or I’m going to pull you from the field.”
Silence drags on for a long time. Then there’s a crash like glass shattering against a wall, and I jump. Griffin’s door bangs open. Angry footsteps pound down the stairs, and I hear the front door slam.
Calmer footsteps move down the hallway. The shadow of feet darkens the thin strip of light under my door.
“Eden,” Nico says. “Don’t go after him. He needs to cool down.”
I say nothing. I won’t confirm I was eavesdropping, though I don’t think it counts as eavesdropping when the walls are that thin.
“He’s contaminated,” Nico says. “Just like you are. His emotions are amplified, and neither of you will be yourselves until the ectoplasm works its way out of your systems.”
This time, that same commanding tone makes my chest flare with anger at being told what to do, but the anger feels more intense than usual. It’s hot and suffocating and makes my skin feel too tight, like I’ll actually need to peel it off my body if I have to sit here alone for one more second.
That’s the ectoplasm talking, but knowing that doesn’t make the anxiety gouging holes in my chest feel any less painful.
Griffin is out there hurting, and I’m sitting here doing nothing.
If he’s panicking because of what happened, maybe seeing me and seeing that both of us are fine will help him feel better.
I wait until I hear Nico go back to his room before I grab my hoodie off the floor. Bob lifts his head from where he’s curled on my pillow, watching me put it on with those bug eyes. I gently lower him onto the floor so he doesn’t hurt himself trying to jump off the bed as soon as I’m gone.
“Please don’t bark,” I say before kissing him on the head. “I’ll be right back.”