Page 84 of Chasing Your Ghost

“Walk went well, huh?” Noah asked.

“She needs some time alone,” Riley explained before picking up her book and finding the page she’d stopped on.

Surprising her, Noah didn’t make any ugly comments. He simply nodded and reached for his book, opening on the page he’d dog-eared. It was progress, and, especially in light of everything Ella had just confessed, Riley was grateful for it.

22

Riley straightened, her slouch turning into a straight spine. Despite the excitement racing through her veins, she reread the words to make sure she’d read them correctly before she spoke. “Guys, I think I found something.”

Everyone snapped to attention. Even Ella, who’d returned from her walk with splotchy cheeks and puffy eyes and had said little since then, looked excited.

“What is it?” Noah asked, leaping up from where he’d been sitting on the other side of the coffee table. If his body was sore from sitting with nothing but a rug between him and the floor, he didn’t show it as he raced to squeeze between Riley and Chris.

Ella was slower, and Riley caught the way she winced and briefly brushed her fingers over her forehead as she stood up from the armchair. When she’d taken her place behind the couch, Riley pointed at the passage that had caught her attention.

“Though it is rare, it is not unheard of for the spirits of coma patients and those on life support to become untethered from their bodies,” Chris read aloud. “These spirits can easily be confused for the spirits of the dead, though they are, in fact, very much alive. However, if such a spirit desires to move on, their physical body will cease to function as the tether between body and spirit is severed.”

He stopped reading there, the implications of the last sentence hanging over them like a dark storm cloud.

“But look,” Riley said, pointing to a line further down the page and running her finger under the words as she read them. “In two reported cases, one in Minneapolis and another in Atlanta, the spirits of comatose individuals were able to return to their bodies once the medically induced comas they had been placed in were reversed.” She turned her head so that she could see them all.

“Are you saying Asher is in a coma?” Noah asked, his frown not precisely the reaction Riley had been hoping for.

This was the first piece of relevant information that they’d found, and it was proof, shaky as it might have been, that Asher hadn’t died. True, it wasn’t exactly hope-inspiring, but it was confirmation that Asher wasn’t a ghost. To Riley, that was pretty amazing.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, her excitement starting to fade under Noah’s frown and Chris and Ella’s silence. “I know it won’t help us find him, but it means we’re right about him still being alive.”

“It also confirms that if he’d tried to move on, he would have succeeded,” Chris pointed out.

“Do you really think he would have done that?” Ella asked Riley.

She wanted to say absolutely not. She wanted to believe that Asher would never have left without saying goodbye, but the truth was she couldn’t be one hundred percent certain. “Honestly? I don’t know. He’d said goodbye to all of you and his parents. He was ready to move on that night.”

Noah rubbed his hands over his face and sighed. “So, there’s a good chance he did.”

But Ella didn’t look so convinced. “Did he say goodbye to you?” she asked Riley.

Chris and Noah’s attention snapped to her, but they looked more confused by Ella’s question than interested in her answer. Riley supposed she didn’t blame them. She’d known Asher for less than a month. They were his childhood friends. She was just some stranger who happened to be able to see ghosts.

Only, it didn’t feel that way to her. She wasn’t just a random medium. She cared about Asher—far more than she should—and the thought that he’d left without saying a proper goodbye didn’t sit right with her, nor did it sound like something Asher would have done.

“Not properly,” she said. “But he told me before all the drama happened that he’d be leaving,” she felt inclined to add.

“This is a waste of time. We can talk about it all we want, but we won’t know until Ella dreamwalks or Riley sees him again,” Chris said, his frustration coming through in his tone. “What we should be doing is trying to figure out who took him and where.”

His words were met with silence. With Ella unable to track Asher’s body down and with Riley’s, in this case, useless gift, finding out what had happened that night now seemed impossible.

“I’m sure the police already asked this, but did Asher have any enemies?” Riley asked after minutes had passed by without anybody saying anything. “Anyone who held a grudge?”

They all began shaking their heads, and it might have been creepy if they weren’t so out of sync. “No,” Noah said. “Asher never got on anyone’s bad side.”

“No exes that might have been angry after a breakup?” It was unlikely a bad breakup was the cause of all of this, but Riley wanted to make sure they were covering all of their bases.

Ella laughed at that one. “Asher has dated all of one girl, and it wasn’t what you’d call a dramatic split. Besides, she moved to Boston for college.”

Riley gnawed on her lip. “Did he ever mention, I don’t know, seeing something he shouldn’t have? Anything like that?”

“No,” Chris replied, and the others echoed him.

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