Page 38 of Ghostlighted
“Of course.” I turned my head toward the corner, my gaze sweeping across the wrought iron palings that marched along the edge of the Manor grounds, and my jaw sagged.
Wait just a freaking minute.
An ember ignited in my middle and I took the steps two at a time to join him. Ireallywished I could touch him because I wanted to grab his hands and dance down the slate walk.
“You said you were frustrated because you don’t know anything about your afterlife, right?”
“We’ve been over this,” he said, his verbal eyeroll accompanied by its physical equivalent. “Multiple times.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I couldn’t fight my grin. “You know whomightknow something about that?”
He crossed his arms. “I’m not in the mood for guessing games, Maz.”
“Humor me, okay?” I crept past him on the balls of my feet, and, just as I hoped, he pivoted to follow until I was facing the porch and he was facing Iris Lane. “Tell me, Avi. Who once lived right across the street from our house?”
“I told you. No guessing ga—” He blinked. “Oh.”
“Exactly! Thaddeus Richdale spent the last half of his life poking at the veil, and I just happen to be employed in organizing the boatload of detritus from his explorations. So what do you think?”
“What do I think about what?”
I grinned, rocking from my toes to my heels. “Come with me. Help me go through Thaddeus’s stuff.”
He pointed to my hand, which still held Oren’s ring. “In case you’ve forgotten, I can’t even pick up my husband’s ring.”
“Yes, but you’re aces with paper.”
His eyebrows shot up. “I… I’m not sure I would say I’ve reachedacesstatus yet.”
“But your paper handling muscles are getting stronger every day, and Thaddeus’s stuff is about eighty percent paper. With the two of us working on it, we’ll be able to sort through the… the dross and find the gold much faster.”
He didn’t completely lose his scowl, but there was a definite twinkle in his eye—unless that was just the porch light shining through from behind him. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll lose your job if you finish too quickly?”
“Nah. I always knew this was a temporary gig, and I’m not drawing it out to soak Saul and the Manor for more money just to line my own pockets.”
“Is this your clever ploy to avoid sorting through it on your own?”
“That’s not it either. I don’tmindgoing through everything. I told you. It’s fascinating. But I’m used to modern search engines and data retrieval protocols, which boxes of dusty papers andmysterious arcane items definitely do not have. If we can get answers sooner, not only will it help the Manor, it’ll help you. And it’ll help the town, too.”
“How do you figure that?”
“In my first few days here, Jerry told me about the annual parade and festival, and how it had gotten cut back and finally canceled because of lack of attendance.” I gestured for Avi to follow me as I trotted up the porch steps. “I think that reduction was a mistake. Instead of going smaller, you should have gone bigger.”
Avi trailed behind me as I opened the door and deftly snagged Gil before he could dodge outside. “I wasn’t exactly in a position to do anything about it at all, considering I was already dead.”
“I meantyouas in the town, not you personally.” I closed the door, and with Gil in my arms, headed into the library and plopped onto the window seat. He sat opposite me. “Paranormal tourism is a huge thing, Avi. There are legend tripping conferences. Self-guided haunted site crawls. Guided tours.”
When I’d been looking at EVP equipment today, I’d found multiple companies promoting them, but they were focused onfindingghosts. If we could reverse engineer the process—from the presence of an actual ghost backward to how the ghost arrived and chose to manifest—we could put Ghost on the paranormal map.
We could save the town.
Chapter Fourteen
From a combination of worry and anticipation, I passed a restless night. When I woke up with Gil curled next to my hip, the sky beyond the bedroom was fading from gray to, well, lighter gray. At this time of year, a month or so from the solstice, that meant that we were barely past five.
Ordinarily, provided Gil wasn’t feeling particularly peckish and insisting on an early breakfast, I’d snatch another hour or so of sleep. But today I knew better than to try. I’d only end up staring at the ceiling with visions of how everything could change, for both better and worse. So, careful not to disturb Gil, I eased out from under the blankets and headed for the bathroom.
Gil was still snuggled in his blanket nest when I emerged after stumbling through my shower and morning grooming routine, observing me out of one slitted eye as I stepped into a pair of sweatpants.
