Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
EIGHT DAYS AFTER
A cell phone buzzes, and I immediately reach for my nightstand. It’s most likely Dana asking for the updated budget on the SeeSide account, and I haven’t even had my coffee. My hand grasps for the nightstand, for my phone. I grab at air and jolt up in panic.
It’s always on the nightstand.
I blink through the grogginess. My vision clears—and my stomach drops.
I’m not in my comfortable, linen bed. In fact, I’m in the place that’s the exact opposite of comfort: hell.
His apartment closes in on me as all of yesterday—each petrifying piece of it—clicks into place, and the urge to wail is almost overpowering.
One. Mamma. Mia.
Maybe the ghost stuff was a dream.
I glance down at myself, at my hands that look so human. Taking a deep (almost hopeful) breath, I reach for the Food & Wine magazine resting atop his coffee table. My hand moves straight through it, through the table, like slicing through ice … with no resistance.
The air whooshes out of me.
Ghost powers: still intact. Nightmare status: officially confirmed.
Curling my fingers into my palm, I dig my nails in, needing to feel something besides the dread spreading through me like a swarm of angry termites, devouring everything in their path. So much like the morning after Annie died.
Two Mamma Mia.
Waking up in a world without my sister was worse than not waking up at all. At least, that’s what fourteen-year-old Stevie Popovici thought.
Three Mamma Mia.
But twenty-nine-year-old Evie Pope hasn’t lost anything. Not yet.
A phone buzzes and rattles against the wood floor beneath the sofa. It could be mine or Violet’s—one of hundreds in a graveyard of phones beneath his sofa. It wouldn’t surprise me.
I don’t bother checking. Phones are as useless to me as the man who refused to help me.
I glare at the poster above his TV. The ridiculous man smirks back. Who even prints posters of themselves and frames them like this? A vain, selfish, loyalty-optional human. That’s who.
I stick my tongue out at the poster, displaying about as much maturity as the man in it. Must be something in the Vela-oxygenated air.
And it makes me want to deliver on my promise to haunt him and make his life hell.
I eye the door to his bedroom.
Why not?
Ire and determination fueling my movements, I shoot from the sofa and cut across the apartment, trying really hard to not question why I’m wearing the same heels from yesterday, ones I wasn’t wearing when I fell asleep.
Getting an explanation for that is about as likely as Rafael admitting he planned to backstab me from day one.
That would require him to be decent and truthful.
Decent, truthful people don’t deserve hauntings, but this one? Oh, he’s got it coming.
A sense of wicked glee settles over me as I enter his dark bedroom. His king bed dominates the room, a shadowy monolith for nocturnal adventures I try desperately not to imagine. Rafael’s nothing more than a shape sprawled atop it. He’s sleeping like he’s the one in a coma.
This might be the first time since waking up yesterday that I feel a sliver of something besides dread as I close in.
Flipping my hair over my face, I imagine I’m a ghost out of a horror movie and circle around the bed, arms raised above my head and teeth bared. I open my mouth to unleash a ghoulish moan.
But the shapes move. The shadows shift and settle. And I almost finish the process of dying.
Rafael is sprawled across his bed, sheets twisted around him—around his bare and naked body—leaving very little (nothing is little) to the imagination.
I want to simultaneously look and look away as heat sweeps through me, flowing and ebbing.
Rafael mumbles in his sleep and flips over. His backside says Hey, girl.
Ohmygod.
I squeak, half tripping over my legs as I scramble out of his bedroom.
Heart thundering against my ribs, I’m breathing like I’ve sprinted a 5K as impossibly vivid images of Rafael’s toned chest and taut ass play through my mind like a movie reel of abs, thighs, ass.
I count the seconds—which feel like lifetimes—before I decide it’s safe to get out of his apartment and leave the haunting for another time, like when hauntees are wearing lots and lots of layers.
Gaze averted, I slip past his bedroom, out the front door, and down the fifteen flights of stairs to his building.
Outside, I suck in a deep breath of air, hold it for three seconds, and release.
I repeat it several times, and each time I think of dirty diapers, spoiled eggs, and very old, saggy-skinned men.
Too-many breaths later, I finally collect myself.
So much for doing the haunting.
I doubt I’ll ever recover.
I start to stalk down the street, avoiding tourists and locals, needing to channel my mental energy to more productive (and less disturbing) endeavors. A plan. A checklist. A way out of this situation.
A few blocks later, to-do items fall into place—the Revival Checklist:
1. Find Gemma (as my best friend, she has to be able to see me)
2. Research cases similar to mine, figure out what’s wrong with me
3. Consult with professionals
4. Use professional help to fix myself (defibrillators not off the table)
5. Make Rafael regret he ever met me
Thirty minutes later I’m in Wicker Park, walking down Gemma’s street. Her blue-brick duplex is within sight—and so is Gemma. My heart skips at the sight of my best friend, her red hair her signature feature. Gemma Quincy-Kaneko is the closest thing I have to a family.
We met as interns at a public relations firm.
She was a badass former athlete with a personality to match, and I was her polar opposite.
For one reason or another, she decided we were going to be best friends, and the rest is history.
For the last decade, she’s dragged me to bars and events.
Taken me to meet her family. And introduced me to two of my exes and threatened to dismember one of them.
She showed me what family was supposed to be like. Was more motherly than my mother ever was.
When she moved to Media Lab two years ago, she became a buffer between Rafael and me. When she was transferred to his team, she became a source of intel. Not that it’s helped. There isn’t a formula for understanding Rafael.
Seeing Gemma sparks hope.
I run toward her, shouting her name. “Gemma!”
She doesn’t turn.
I shout again, louder. Still nothing. I pick up my pace. As I close the distance, Gemma’s husband, Oliver, joins her on the sidewalk, dragging a suitcase behind him. The trunk of the SUV pops open.
“Gem!” I’m jogging now, but neither of them turns. Not even as I wave my arms wildly and shout their names as if from the top of a mountain. Like a screaming banshee.
They don’t turn.
Disappointment crashes through me as I slow to a stop, breath unsteady and pulse hammering. They’re standing beside the driver’s door, holding hands, oblivious to anything else—me included.
Ollie and Gemma met freshman year of college. He helped her get her grades to a passing level so she could keep her scholarship, and several late nights and study guides later, Gemma passed statistics and Ollie proposed. They were married a year later and have been inseparable since.
“Gem. Ollie,” I say, looking between them. The urge to hug them is overpowering.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come?” Ollie asks.
“No. I’ll be fine,” Gemma says, pressing a kiss to his lips. She brushes his jet-black hair from his forehead before she retreats and slides into the car. “I’ll call as soon as I get there.”
“Where are you going?” I ask, needing to know.
She doesn’t hear me. Not as she pulls on her seat belt and leans out the car window. Not as I get within inches of her face.
“Love you,” Ollie says with a wave.
“Back at you.” She blows him a kiss.
“Gem!” I’m desperate as the Jeep begins to pull away. I march alongside it, face practically glued to the window. “I’m here!” I shout, hoping like hell she’ll hear me.
The car accelerates. I sprint after it—after Gem.
But no matter how many marathons I’ve run, I can’t keep up.
Still, I try because I need her. The distance stretches between us, and I push harder, faster.
No feet hitting concrete. No breath in my lungs.
But somehow I’m moving, maybe floating. New afterlife physics rule: Where there’s obsession, there’s propulsion.
Halfway down the next block, something in me cracks. Not bone or breath—just the kind of hopelessness that hollows you out, that makes running pointless.
I stop and double over, eyes stinging and chest tight.
Gemma’s leaving.
My best friend. My one shot at figuring this out.
I breathe through the tightness in my chest.
And like that, the first item on the Revival Checklist is null and void.
I don’t bother looking toward Ollie as my breathing evens out. He’s probably already inside their house, diving into another of his high-profile legal cases. And I’m out here in the middle of the street, feeling like reanimated roadkill.
Hours later I’m back in my apartment, surrounded by my things and humming ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”
Time to regroup.
This morning was a setback, and I can do setbacks. They’re temporary, even if this one seems a little more permanent. But I’ve tackled tougher obstacles—like surviving the first sixteen years of my life.
All I need is a new new plan. One based on facts and logic.
Fact: I’ve been in a coma for a week, yet it was only yesterday I woke up in Rafael’s apartment.
Fact: Rafael was the last person I was with before the accident, and he is the only person who can see me.
Fact: While he can deny it all he wants, all roads lead to (a fully clothed and completely undesirable) Rafael.