Chapter 30
People misunderstand how salt functions. Some make the mistake of believing a salt circle protects them, but it’s a barrier, nothing more. An entity cannot cross it, but a salt circle will provide no help if the entity is already inside it with you.
—Methods of Modern Ghost Hunting: A Tactical Guide to Containing and Vanquishing the Dead by Donald Dellman
I slam my bedroom door behind me and lean against it, pressing my palms flat against the wood.
What the hell was I thinking?
I drag my hands across my burning cheeks and try to suppress the mortification flooding my system. The problem is that I don’t want Griffin.
I want Nico.
I already knew this. But I didn’t think I wanted Nico so badly that my body would stage a full-on coup when kissing anyone else.
It’s the ectoplasm. I know it is.
But the ectoplasm only amplifies what’s already there.
I slide down the door until I’m sitting on the floor. Bob hurries over from his nest of bundled-up covers, leaning up to pepper my nose with licks. I gather him into my lap.
So what if I’m attracted to Nico? Could anyone blame me? He’s so gorgeous that he doesn’t look real, with those tattoos covering his arms that I want to trace with more than just my fingers, and the way he moves with all that controlled power.
Could there be a world where he wants me, too?
I need to calm down. Nico’s not interested in me. I have to ride this out until my brain chemistry normalizes, and I can look at Nico without wanting to crawl into his lap.
I go to bed but end up tossing and turning because all I see is Nico leaning over Griffin in the van.
Nico running into the apartment. Nico crouched in front of me, telling me to keep my eyes on him as I recounted what happened.
I imagine him in here with me, stroking a hand through my hair, running a hand over my back, running a hand over other places…
I tighten my thighs. My underwear slides against me, and the warmth of my arousal makes everything else feel muddied.
I could take care of this myself. Shove a hand between my legs and deal with the need burning through me, but Bob’s in here, and that’s gross and weird.
Maybe I can distract myself some other way.
Before I knew alcohol could dull my pain, I used to rely on food.
The older couple I lived with for the year after the murders were good people.
They had two biological kids around my age and did everything they could to make me feel welcome, including giving me a small allowance.
I’d spend it on whatever would last the month that could be stored at room temperature.
Sugary cereal that I’d eat dry by the handful.
Huge multipacks of cheap granola bars and chips.
All things that cut up my mouth, now that I think about it.
I still buy those granola bars and stash them nearby in case I need one at night, but I finished the last one yesterday.
Now that I’ve started thinking about food, I can’t get my mind off it. I check my phone to find it’s the oh-so-convenient time of 3:28 AM, but at least it means everyone other than Griffin is in bed. I don’t want to be alone, but I also don’t want to embarrass myself any further.
I go down to the kitchen and come to a clumsy stop.
Nico sits alone at the table, hunched over some papers. His bottom lip is caught between his teeth as he stares down at whatever’s spread across the table, his face a mask of stern concentration. He’s wearing a pair of black glasses. They make him look like Clark Kent in the Superman movies.
He sees me, and he pulls the glasses off his face and places them on the table next to his papers.
“You have glasses?” I ask.
I don’t know why it’s the first thing that comes out of my mouth, or even why that’s surprising to me.
“For reading,” Nico says hoarsely, like this is the first time he’s spoken in hours. “Are you feeling okay?”
I nod. My hands tremble from the intensity of the emotion coursing through me, and I wrap my arms tightly around myself.
Nico knows how ectoplasm works. If I’m standing here vibrating with want, he’s going to figure out why, and that would be humiliating on a level I don’t think I could recover from.
I wonder if the ectoplasm is keeping him up, too.
If I focus, I can hear that faint scratching again.
He looks normal, which either means the contamination is so mild he can ignore it or he’s just that good at controlling himself.
I remember DJ saying he’s never shown interest in anyone.
Maybe the ectoplasm isn’t affecting him, apart from making him nauseated.
“I’m hungry.” I slip past him, giving him a wide berth. Getting too close feels dangerous right now. I grab a box of Pop-Tarts from the pantry—brown sugar ones, because I’m a woman of taste. “You?”
“Fine. Going over the case.”
I drop a Pop-Tart in the toaster and push down the lever, then lean against the counter, facing him. His hair brushes over his forehead, and I have to grip the counter edge to keep from walking over there and pushing it back.
“You should get some rest,” he says. “Your body needs to heal.”
He sounds so caring that I can’t tell if I want to cry or launch myself across the table at him.
“I can’t sleep,” I manage. “The ectoplasm makes everything feel too loud in my head.”
His lips part slightly before closing again.
The toaster pops. I grab the Pop-Tart, hissing as I drop it onto a paper towel.
Nico’s organizing his stacks of folders and tapping the end of one on the table to make the pages flush.
I wonder if he’s doing it for the same reasons I do.
When my depression or anxiety gets too loud, the thing I do to snap out of it is clean.
Sometimes, getting control of my environment makes my nervous system settle and makes me feel more like a person instead of a collection of bad feelings held together by stubbornness.
I did that constantly after my family died. I had no control over my life, over where I’d sleep or who I’d live with or whether they’d actually want me there, but I did have control over how clean my room was.
I fill a glass with water and set it down in front of Nico, laying a hand on the back of the chair across from him. “Can I join you?”
He nods. Gestures to the chair.
I slide into the seat and blow on my pastry before taking a bite.
Sugary filling scalds the roof of my mouth, but I hardly notice because I’m too busy trying to make sense of the papers.
I’m looking at them upside-down, but it’s not hard to tell what they are.
One photo shows an arm with some of its skin peeled off, sitting on a pile of trash bags.
Another shows a meat grinder, its mechanism still gunked up with what I can only assume are the pulverized remains of Arthur Langman.
I use the Pop-Tart to point at the photos. “What are you doing with all these?”
“Trying to make sense of this mess.” He rakes both hands through his hair. “Morrow escaped. We’ve lost our only lead.”
“How are we going to find him?”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Nico says, but he doesn’t sound annoyed. “Morrow knows we’re onto him, even if he doesn’t know we’re ghost hunters. I don’t know what we can do except wait until he resurfaces.”
I never even thought of that. Every ghost we encounter has probably never suspected that ghost hunters exist. Being hit with salt would make them realize that, whoever we are, we know what we’re doing, which makes us dangerous.
Until the ghosts meet us, they must think they’re invincible.
Unstoppable, considering that if a host is caught by the police or killed, the ghost could escape without suspicion and find a new person to possess.
Morrow must be going through a mental trip right now.
There has to be something else we can do.
Waiting until Morrow resurfaces means waiting until he kills again.
Those next victims are out there right now, probably sleeping like every other normal person at this time of night, unaware that some psychopath is going to come into their lives and destroy them.
Is that what the FBI did when hunting for Stanley Daniels? Did they decide to wait and see what he would do next? Is that why I don’t have a family anymore?
“No,” I say. “We need to catch him before he kills again.”
“How?” Nico gestures at the chaos spread across the table. “He could possess anyone. He could go dormant for weeks and resurface across state lines. DJ and Donny tried to track energy signatures from Mathis’s apartment, but that was a dead end.”
“Use me,” I say. “I could go to the apartment. See if I can pick up anything the sensors can’t.”
“You need to recover from today.”
“I won’t sit here with my thumb up my ass if he’s still out there killing people,” I say, and the ferocity in my voice surprises even me.
Nico arches an eyebrow, his lips parting the smallest amount.
I’ve seen him in team leader mode. I’ve seen him joking, but I’ve never seen him look so sleepy and scared.
His emotions are running wild all over his face.
As if he can read my thoughts, he straightens and gives a soft clear of his throat.
“Morrow said he’d be seeing you again soon,” Nico says. “That means you caught his attention. He wants you for a trial.”
I told Nico that in the van. Babbled it out between bouts of vomiting, but I’d been too busy trying to get my puke into the bucket I was holding to process what it meant.
“But…” My brain scrambles for logic. “That doesn’t make sense. There’s nobody—I mean, I don’t have anyone to be pitted against.”
Nico leans back in his chair. “He probably thinks it’s Griffin.”
“I—” The words tangle. “But it’s not like that with Griffin.”
“It’s not?”
“No!”
The word comes out too high-pitched to sound convincing. Nico studies me for a few seconds, his fingers still on the papers. Is he jealous? Or am I imagining it because I want him to care so badly?