Page 67 of The Fantastic Fluke

“You should tell her,” my father’s snide voice hit me for the first time in not-nearly-long-enough. “You’ve fallen in lust with a ghost who came to teach you evil magic. Maybe she’s one of them, and she’ll put you out of everyone’s misery.”

Never in the history of our relationship had I wished so strongly that my father was still alive.

So I could punch him in the damn face.

I set my sandwich down on the counter, hands trembling and breath shaky. I couldn’t look at the man. If I did, I’d explode. I’d yell about how Beez, not he, had been the one to hold me while I cried about missing my mother. How Beez’s parents had been the ones who tried to explain the birds and the bees to me—or as her mother had called it, “the birds and the bees, but probably mostly birds and no bees, but definitely no Beez.”

Beez and her family had been my family in a way he never had been, and never could be. It was hard enough for me to trust after Alan. That he would try to take Beez away from me was too damn much.

Fluke dropped his sandwich on the counter, unfinished, grabbing Beez’s attention and mine. He let his feet fall to the floor, turned, and barked, loud and irritated.

“Um. Is he okay?” Beez asked, concerned rather than annoyed at his decibel level. Well, what could she say? Beez was usually the loudest person present; she couldn’t hold it against someone else.

My father was glaring at Fluke but didn’t speak to him. He’d never had much respect for the entire concept of familiars. He didn’t think of them as the intelligent extension of a mage, so much as dirty wild animals. Looking back up at me, he demanded, “Shut the thing up. It’s going to annoy the customers.”

I shook my head and turned to Beez. “He’s fine. He’s just sick of my father’s ghost acting like he still owns the place.”

She whipped back around and stared at me. “Your—you’re still trying to distract me from this Gideon thing, aren’t you?”

“Is it working?”

“Your father is really a ghost?” She glanced over at where Fluke was still growling at the man and nodded as though that answered her question. “Of course he is. That explains so much. I always figured you’d tell me if there were ghosts hanging around, but you said there weren’t many. Babe, have you been letting that asshole harass you for weeks, without saying anything to anyone?”

I patted the counter to get Fluke’s attention, and when he turned to look at me, I pointed to the sandwich. “Forget about him, foxy. It’s lunch time. Gideon’s right, and he’s an asshole.” I looked up and met my father’s eye. “I’m going to call Dr. Almasi tomorrow morning and ask her about how to banish a ghost permanently. The dead cross over for a reason. It’s where they belong. So cross.”

He spun around and marched off. I was seeing more of the man’s back than I’d ever seen when he was alive, and frankly, I was fine with that. Better than his icy glaring face.

“Gideon again?” Beez asked softly as Fluke padded back over to the counter and hopped up to finish his lunch.

I sighed and wiped a hand down my face. “Another ghost. They really are as rare as I said, but there are two right now.”

“And you didn’t tell me this because...”

Fluke made a noise deep in his throat that sounded like agreement, so I shot him a glare. “It’s been a weird couple of weeks. Plus, you’re trying to finish your thesis. You don’t need my stress on top of yours.”

She crossed her arms at me. “Don’t you dare, Sage McKinley. You’re my best friend, and I don’t care how important my thesis is, people are always more important than paper. I am always here to hear about the ghost of your father harassing you. And Gideon, who distracts you from Mr. Toast Stealer here. Sexy ghost?”

I wanted to deny it, since she had that sly smile she always got when she was about to pump me for info on my love life, but Gideon was a ghost. Sure, we’d had sex, but there was no rational way for her to know that, let alone believe it.

So instead of wild denials, I just dropped my head to stare at the counter, nodding. Sexy ghost who would be gone soon. Sexy ghost who was technically already gone.

Fuck my entire life.

I glanced up and around the shop, but there was no sign of him.

What if hewasalready gone? I’d learned so much. How much did he have to teach me before it was my responsibility to finish training myself? It had to take a lot of energy for the convergence to sustain a ghost. It probably wanted to send him back to wherever it kept him when he wasn’t teaching.

And wasn’t that just sick? Holding a dead man in a kind of stasis, refusing to let him move on, so he could serve your purpose? Maybe Jonathon McKinley was right, and the convergence, and arcane magic, were selfish and wrong.

Black spots filled my field of vision, and there was a soft voice in my ear. “—with me, Sage. In, one two three four. Out, one two three four. That’s right. Breathe with me.”

Beez was wrapped around me, her front to my back, arms around my chest. Fluke was curled around our legs, whining nervously.

“Sexy ghost,” I whispered. “Who’s leaving me. Just like everyone.”

Her arms tightened a fraction, but not enough to constrict the airflow. “Not me, baby. I’m never, ever leaving you. Nobody can make me, no matter what.” When my breathing had gone back to a normal rhythm, she sighed. “It’s been a long time since you had one that bad.”

Years. It had been years since I’d had a panic attack like that. “He might already be gone,” I whispered to her. “We got in a fight and he left.”

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