Page 38 of The Wishing Game

"You know, like an encyclopedia."

"Of course not!" she says, horrified. "To have all that information in one place would be extremely dangerous. Every kind viciously defends its secrets."

"Then how do you know stuff about them? How do you even know they hate each other?"

"Oh, you just observe who kills whom, how they do it and why they do it. That should give you a general idea," she explains matter-of-factly.

I open my mouth to say something, only to snap it shut when I realize I'm rather speechless.

The underworld sounds...awesome—not.

On the stage, Inu and Inara materialize an odd-looking board that is mirrored on the screen in the back too. One by one, the teams go up to the stage and, using a small needle, they prick their fingers and let a drop of their blood fall onto the canvas of the board. Each time, the blood flows around, filling some invisible crevices until they transform into numbers—that, if I'm not mistaken, are coordinates.

When it's our turn, I offer my blood, but Thea doesn't allow me, pushing me behind her as she takes the needle and stabs her pinky. The red liquid stains the canvas, traveling around until it settles into a combination of numbers and letters.

40°45'22″N 73°59'17″W

"Congratulations, this is your location," Inu says, transcribing the coordinates onto a piece of paper and handing it to us. Before Thea can grab it, her brother does, barely acknowledging Inu.

"You're so rude sometimes, Cer," Thea grumbles in annoyance. And just as I've come to expect from him, he doesn't answer back.

When all the teams have received their locations, Inu and Inara finally announce the theme of the first trial.

"At every one of the locations you've received, you'll encounter a spirit that refuses to cross over to the afterlife. Your job is to do whatever it takes to convince it to leave this world and continue its incarnation cycle. Each spirit will be different. They will have different motivations and different reasons for why they are still stuck in this world. You need to help them cut their ties so they can move on."

Of course ghosts would be real too. And our job is not only to find one and interact with it, but somehow convince it to stop being a ghost?

I'd laugh if the situation weren't so dire. This is exactly the scenario I would picture in a bad movie. Nikki and I used to have this oddly cute tradition on Fridays. We'd find the worst-rated movie and watch it. Most often, it was something involving the supernatural and they all featured very bad special effects.

My lips tip up in a melancholic smile as I remember cuddling with him on the couch and laying my head on his chest, the thud of his heart the sweetest melody. He'd hold me in his arms and soothe me with his gentle voice whenever a jump scare would pop up on the screen. We'd be initially taken aback, but then we'd laugh it off.

But my smile quickly falls as one of our conversations suddenly echoes in my mind.

"If I were a ghost, I'd never leave your side," he joked as we watched a movie. "I'd haunt you for an eternity."

I smiled lazily at him, taking his words as jest.

"But then you'd never have peace," I countered, thinking about the movie's idea of an afterlife where souls go to either Heaven or Hell.

"You are the only peace I seek," he whispered.

Back then, I never thought I'd be a moment without him, or that life would be so cruel to take him away from me so young. Back then, I thought it was the two of us against the world, in our little world, and no one could ever intrude on that.

But I was wrong.

I was wrong to take everything for granted.

Yet here I am, being given a second chance.

Every breath I take, the world I live in changes irrevocably, and with it my perception of what's real and what's not—of what's good or bad. Every second, I feel as if my sanity is under threat by all this new fantastical information foraging its way into my brain. But the truth is, my sanity's been slipping away from me from the moment I heard that last love confession on my Nikki's lips. When he died, I died too. That I was still alive was a cosmical farce—or so I thought.

I have another chance. Against all odds, I have another chance to see my love again. And it doesn't matter if this game is just another farcical collection of absurdities. It doesn't matter if I can make sense of it or not. As long as I get him back, I'm willing to do anything.

A gong sound echoes through the entire building, startling me from my musings.

"It's midnight. You have until midnight a week from now to resolve your cases. If not, you will fail. Those who succeed will receive an invitation to the next phase of the game."

"Wait, what happens if we fail?" I ask in a low voice. Had they even mentioned it? They'd only told us what happened if we diedinthe game.

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