Page 36 of My Blind Date is a Ghost

“What?” I ask.

“Could you sense magic when you were a human?” he asks. “I mean, when you were alive before, before you were killed?”

I have to pause and think about it. My life before was so long ago, I have almost forgotten what anything felt like. I walk over to the counter and put the bag down. Sophia gets to work divvying up the goods. Beverly must have planned on having so many people in the shop this morning when she sent me over to Jumpin’ Beans with her order.

“No,” I say after a moment. “Now that you mention it, no, I couldn’t sense magic. I had forgotten that.”

“It seems that being able to sense magic might be another gift you’ve developed in this life,” Jacob says as Sophia hands him an orange cinnamon roll. As good as everything smells, my appetite seems to have fled.

“What’s wrong?” Beckett asks me as he hands me my drink that I just put on the counter and don’t devour like usual.

“I just…wanted to be normal,” I say. “I didn’t expect any of this.” I glance over to the sitting area. I can’t see Sabrina, but I know she’s there. I have the feeling that if I were to concentrate, I could see her. I am noticing such a feeling more and more.

Last night, after dinner, Beckett offered to drive me home, and then he walked me to the door. As we walked, I was certain I saw someone watching us from the woods. I told Beckett about it, and he grabbed a very powerful flashlight from his car. He shinned it in the direction I indicated, but we didn’t see anything. After he left, I went upstairs to my room and looked out the window. I could see…something out there. Which should have been impossible considering how dark it was.

Then, this morning, as I rode into town with Beverly, she almost hit someone. Or, at least, I thought she did. A woman stepped right in front of the car. I screamed and Beverly hit her brakes. But when I looked again, the woman was gone. I later realized that the woman was not dressed for winter, but was wearing a spaghetti-strapped, flowery dress and sandals, like something a woman would have worn in the 1970s.

It seems like an almost crazy thing to say, but I feel more haunted now than I did when I was a ghost.

“There’s no such thing as normal in a place like Mystic Cove,” Sophia says, offering me a donut. I’m not hungry but also famished at the same time. Donuts are so amazing. I don’t know who invented them, but I need to give that person a great big hug.

“You could probably say it’s normal to be abnormal,” Beckett offers. “If anything, I’m the weird one.”

We all laugh at that.

“This is just your new normal,” Beverly says. “There is nothing wrong with you.”

“Thanks, everyone,” I say, but I’m eager to change the subject. “So, what brought you by, Jacob?”

“Let me see the photos you too, Detective,” Jacob says to Beckett. Becket has to lick the sugar off his fingers and wipe his hands before he can find the pictures on his phone and hand them to Jacob. Jacob flips through them, pinching the images to make them bigger, examining every pixel. I tap my foot anxiously. I feel like a patient waiting for bad news from a doctor.

“Well?” Beverly finally asks for me.

“I can’t be sure,” he says. “It looks like someone tried to obscure the mess, but they were in a hurry.”

“They didn’t even bother picking up the bones. And you can clearly see that there were bonfires here and here,” Beckett says, pointing at the images.

“Yes, they did a poor job of hiding that they were there, but they did manage to muck up the ritual.”

“So, you can’t tell what they were up to?” Beverly asks.

“Well, I can get some sense,” he says. “See these lines here?” He shows her the picture, pointing something out. “What does that look like to you?”

Beverly adjusts her glasses to get a better look. “Well, it looks sort of like a binding spell. It’s a pretty weak one, though.”

“Let me see,” Sophia says. Jacob hands her the phone. Sophia might not have had any magic growing up, but she still attended an academy for witches. To make up for her lack of powers, she was the most studious of her class, earning top marks. “Did you find any glass, Detective?”

“No,” Beckett says, taking his phone back.

“Maybe they took it with them,” Sophia mumbles, thinking. Jacob and Beverly also seem deep in thought.

“What?” I ask.

“It’s strange,” Sophia says, “but I have the feeling that whoever did this, they weren’t trying to bring you back to life.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, growing nervous.

“I think they were trying to summon you, yes,” Sophia explains, “but they actually just meant to trap your soul or your essence.”

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