Page 608 of Flirting with Darkness

Had she really just called him galoot?

She did not say it like an insult, but in his world, it would have been one.

Perhaps it meant something different here?

He decided to treat it as if it were not an insult. After all, neither of them had reacted, and he would hope his wife would defend him in the case of an overt attack, even by a friend.

He decided to pretend she had said nothing at all.

“You’re right about the clothes,” Rachel added next, motioning towards Ghost. “Are you taking him back to the house? Or were you going to head to the auction from here? You’re going to get a lot of questions if you let him wander around town in that.”

She aimed that finger at Ghost’s long wool coat.

The woman with the blue eyes sighed, slinging her arm through his.

She leaned her weight into his body, molding her entire form to his, and again, he fought not to react.

For a few seconds, she seemed to think.

“We don’t have time to go back to the house,” she decided after a pause. “I guess I’ll have to take him shopping.” Looking up at his face, she sighed, but all Ghost saw was affection in that look. “He needs new clothes anyway,” she added to Rachel. “He keeps leaving his in other time periods. He’s emptied half his closet that way.”

Rachel grunted a laugh.

Ghost didn’t speak.

He simply fought to get his balance back, even as he absorbed every word they said.

He had to figure this out, he reminded himself.

He couldn’t stay here.

This woman wasn’t his wife. She belonged to another Ghost, someone who likely wouldn’t take kindly to this Ghost moving in on his marriage.

He had to figure this out.

He had to figure it out before the other “him” returned from wherever he’d been.

He had to figure out how to fix this.

17

REMAIN CALM

She did exactly as she said she would do.

She took him shopping.

Ghost nearly jumped out of his skin when she first brought him down to the street.

Vehicles darted back and forth along roads that were not made of dirt, but of something else. To his eyes, it looked like compressed stone or sand with strange lines painted on it.

He fought not to react.

He fought to appear calm, but he could feel her puzzlement with him, her confusion around the way he was behaving. He could also feel her trying to be patient with it, perhaps even some worry that he had hit his head, like the doctor had feared.

Before they left Rachel and her strange physician’s office, she had put him in some strange, loud, terrifying machine. She made him stay inside it for a seemingly endless amount of time before proclaiming him “undamaged” and sending them both on their way.

The loud, clanking sounds had nearly caused him to freak out for real.

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