Page 56 of Ghostlighted
“Why should I bother? You won’t even take the royalties for the old books. There hardly seems any point to writing more of them.”
“The point is that writing is your calling. You keep saying we don’t know how this works and you’re right. But you could be around for a long time, Avi. Maybe longer than I will.”
He flinched. “I… never thought of that.”
“Can you really face eternity with nothing at all to do? Won’t that get tedious?” I paused, struck by a thought. “Come to think of it, maybe that’s why ghosts act out over time. Pure, unadulterated boredom.” I forced myself away from that tangent and met his gaze squarely, because this wasimportant. “Please, Avi. It’s been ten years. Don’t you have new stories to tell? Don’t you want other people to read them?”
Avi’s shoulders rose and fell. “I… I’d like that. I think. But maybe not as Jake Fields. A new pen name. A new genre. Then you could publish them as yourself and?—”
“Nope. I’ll be your assistant, but I won’t take credit for your work. Publication details can wait, but I’m sure Taryn can help with that. It’ll give her another chance to conspire with your agent. What this”—I tapped the box with two fingers—“will do, what Ihopeit will do, is enable yourprocessagain. To give you a reason to bepresent,even if I’m not around. But it’s totally your call. If you don’t want to?—”
“No! I’d like to try. But I also need to get used to the idea, you know?”
“Sure. I get it. In the meantime, if you need a reason to hang out when I’m not here?” I pointed to Gil. “Keeping Gil company is clearly a priority. At least to him.”
Avi chuckled. “Far be it from me to disappoint Gil.”
“Exactly. Now let’s see what’s in this box, shall we?” I opened the drawer I had mentally labeledmiscellaneous sharp thingiesand brandished the box knife. “Behold. The right tool for the job.”
I slit the tape on the top of the box and folded the flaps aside, giving silent thanks that the company used bubble wrap ratherthan foam peanuts as packing material. When I lifted out the top sheet, Gil practically teleported to the countertop.
I grinned at Avi. “Check this out.”
I let the bubble wrap drift to the floor, and Gil jumped onto it immediately, batting the bubbles with his claws partly extended. When he managed to pop one, his tail lashed, and he leaped backward before zooming across the kitchen floor, barely skittering to a stop next to the dishwasher. Then he lowered his belly to the ground and crept forward until he was a foot from the bubble wrap, his rear end wiggling before he pounced.
As I unpacked the box, Avi watched Gil go through the same routine again and again.
“Does he do this often?”
I shrugged as I lifted the voice-to-text recorder out of the box and set it carefully on the counter. “What can I say? Some cats go bonkers for catnip. Gil has a thing for bubble wrap.” I glanced down at him as he popped another bubble and zipped across the room. “Although he never says no to catnip either.”
After unpacking the EVP portal and setting the faraday bags aside, I stored the rest of the bubble wrap with the reusable shopping bags and set the box on the floor. Gil froze in the act of murdering another plastic bubble and leaped inside to peer out at us from the gap between the top flaps.
“That’s him set for the next hour or so.” I nudged the red and black boxes toward Avi. “This is the recorder and a device that’s supposed to extend its reach and scan for radio frequencies. If we can identify your, um, hertz, then we can use this to increase the draw.”
Avi leaned forward, resting his elbows two inches above the countertop. “How does it work?”
“Good question. Let’s find out.”
Unlike my dad, who’d considered any new gadget a direct challenge to figure out—he’d always started by smelling theobject, for some reason—I always read instruction manuals, even though the spelling and syntax errors in many of them made me cringe. Dad enjoyed the journey of discovery, no matter how long it took or how many detours he followed, but if I’d gone to the trouble of buying something, I wanted to be able to use it properly as soon as possible.
I opened the recorder’s box and a flimsy paperback booklet thicker thanThe Manual of Styledropped out. “Uh… This might be more complicated than I thought.”
Avi laughed. “Does the other one have an instructional tome as well?”
I peeked inside the portal box. “Yep.”
“You have to go back to work soon, right?”
“I don’thaveto, but I probably should. I ran across a promising lead this morning, and I’d like to follow up.”
“Then how about this? Since paper is on my short list of manipulable items, leave the manuals here. I’ll read them and brief you on them tonight.” He frowned. “No. Not tonight. You have a date with Ricky, don’t you?”
I smacked my forehead. “Crap. You’re right.”
He dropped his chin and gave me a severe look from over his glasses. “That’s not the attitude you should have when you’re granted the opportunity to spend time with your boo.”
“My boo?” I snorted. “Was that ghost humor?”
