Page 79 of Chasing Your Ghost

“You sure?”

Ella shrugged. “I grind my teeth at night, and on top of the pain in my jaw, it gives me headaches,” she explained with a wave of her hand. “It’s gotten bad since Asher went missing, but it’s much worse when I dreamwalk. This is nothing.”

Riley frowned. That sounded horrible. “If you have to take two Tylenol for nothing, what do you need to take after a night of dreamwalking?”

“Oh, I save the really strong pills for those mornings,” Ella replied with a devious grin. “But with Noah here, I might end up taking one or two of them today.”

“Are you calling my stepbrother a pain in the ass?”

Ella nodded. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

Riley’s lips curled up. “Fair enough.”

“You know we can hear you, right?” Noah shouted from the living room.

Ella’s eyes widened, and she smothered her laugh with her hand, but Riley didn’t bother. She let her chuckle ring out.

“Thanks for standing up for me, Riley,” Noah said with a pout when they returned to the living room with the coffee. “I see where your loyalties lie.”

Riley lifted her shoulders in a shrug after depositing his and Chris’s coffees on coasters, glad to see he wasn’t truly upset. “I mean if the shoe fits…”

He picked up the bottle of painkillers Ella had left on the coffee table and threw them at her. Riley caught them and lifted an eyebrow in question.

“Since I’m such a pain in the ass, I’m sure you’ll need those soon if you don’t already,” he explained.

Before Riley could react to his joke, Ella plucked the Tylenol from her hands. “I don’t think so.”

“What? Too selfish to share?” Noah asked her.

Ella rolled her eyes. “Not at all. I just think she’ll need something stronger to deal with you all day.”

Noah opened his mouth, a snarky retort most likely about to fall off his tongue, but Riley jumped in before he could get a word out. “Why don’t we get to it?”

Riley’s hopes had already taken a beating after another evening and morning without Asher reappearing. And Ella’s group text that she’d failed to dreamwalk during the night meant they were all feeling the weight of their unanswered questions and the fear of Asher possibly having passed over. Even though the books could be nothing but nonsense, they were the only things keeping Riley from crumpling into a hopeless heap.

They were the only things that had gotten her out of bed that morning, and they were the only things that kept her thoughts from spiraling into despair. And from the looks of it, despite the jokes and barbs that had been flying around, Ella, Noah, and Chris were close to being pulled under too.

???

Riley closed the book she’d been reading with a groan. “How did someone manage to make ghosts sound so fricking complicated? I feel like I’m reading a physics textbook.”

“Join the club,” Chris muttered. He finished reading the sentence he was on and then closed his book as well. He tossed it onto the couch next to him and covered his face with his hands, tipping his head backward and slumping further into the cushion behind him. “Isn’t there a Ghosts for Dummies book I could read instead?” he asked, his words muffled by his hands.

“Let’s take a quick break,” Noah suggested. He put his book on the coffee table before stretching his arms above his head. “Montgomery,” he said more loudly when Ella’s eyes continued to speed across her tablet screen.

Her body jerked, and she lifted her blinking eyes from the screen as though she’d been pulled out of a trance. “Hmm?”

“We’re taking a break,” he explained. “Some coffee would be nice.”

Riley blew out a frustrated breath from her nose. “What my charming stepbrother means to say is, please could he have some more coffee.”

Ella’s lips pressed together but nodded. “Anyone else want some?”

“Me, please,” Riley asked, and Chris echoed her words. “Can I help?”

The brunette shook her head while she stood up from the blue armchair she’d been curled up on. “No, don’t worry.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to be a bit nicer,” Riley whispered to her stepbrother when Ella had gone through to the kitchen. “She’s not the heartless monster you thought she was, so why are you still being a jerk?”

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