Page 35 of A Very No Strings Halloween
I laugh. I love how this girl isn’t hesitant about anything. “Just ask it, huh?”
“Well, you’ll probably have to do a séance.”
“Like, hire a medium?”
“No, you can use a Ouija board! We did it at my friend Shoshanna’s sleepover once, and we contacted the spirit of a man who died in her building. It was kind of creepy but also cool.”
“And you believe you actually contacted a spirit? You don’t think anyone was messing around?”
“Oh, it was real. If any of us were messing around we would have pretended to conjure up a hot dead guy. This one was old and kind of mean, but not in a scary way. He was just really mad that his apartment, the one Shoshanna lives in, had been totally gutted. And that the Rebels traded his favorite player.”
Billy’s back behind the bar, and this gets his attention. “If he was a Rebels fan, then he was not to be trusted. There’s no ghost at that house, just bad wiring.” A guy nearby starts to tell Piper that he also used a Ouija board at a party once, but Billy holds his finger up to his face. “You are not a part of this conversation, Scooby-Doo. Move along.”
“Well.” Piper shrugs. “You should figure it out one way or another before you move in, right? Donna wouldn’t have brought it up if she wasn’t really wondering about it.”
This girl is eerily astute.
“Can’t hurt to have a séance,” she tells me. “Just don’t do it alone. You aren’t supposed to do it with less than two people, so make sure Billy’s with you.And do it on the night of a full moon if you can. Or on Halloween or November first, because that’s Samhain and that’s when the barriers between the physical and spiritual worlds break down. Oh, and keep a lot of salt handy in case you contact a demon.” She laughs. “I learned that fromSupernatural. I don’t know if it really helps to protect you, but I would do literally anything Dean Winchester told me to do.”
“I don’t like the sound of that guy either,” Billy says. “But he has a cool name.”
“Oh, also,” Piper adds, tapping her chin. “There’s always a chance one of you might get possessed by the spirit during the séance, butdon’tworry, it’s only temporary. You’ll need to draw a pentagram on the floor, with chalk, and make a protective circle before you start—to banish any negative entities.” She says this like she’s explaining how to use a hairdryer or something. “If you give me your number, I’ll text you everything you need to know!”
“Okay.” I tune out Billy, who’s telling all the guys around us to back off while Piper and I get our phones out. The truth is I’ve been around dying and dead people for years as part of my job. I know what they tell me and I know that I’ve felt it when people’s spirits pass out of their bodies. I don’t know how else to explain what happens. I don’t go around thinking about what happens to spirits that don’t move on tosome great beyond because I’m too busy trying to keep people comfortable while they’re alive.
But what if that’s what happened to Lars? Or his wife? What if they need my help? If he trusted me enough to leave me this property that meant so much to him, then I owe it to him to at least make sure I’m doing all I can for him. Or for her. I just hope it’s Lars and not his wife, because from the way he described her she sounded kind of melodramatic.Anda redhead. Which is a terrible combination.
And after seeing how protective Billy is of Piper, he’s the only person I’d want around if I actually do a séance…
So far, being a homeowner isn’t nearly as fun as I thought it would be.
NINE
Piper
Dear Super-Secret Diary,
You will never guess where I am RN. Okay, I’ll tell you! I’m on a plane, from Boston back to New York. As a very mature unaccompanied minor! First class! There’s a guy on this flight who looks like a young Jensen Ackles. His dimples are a ten. His butt is a TEN. But he also has a girlfriend with him who is a ten… Sad trombone. Still, I had the most amazing trip, and I will write about most of it in my other journal, because, tragically, the true story of my trip to Harvard is PG-13 enough for my snooping mom to read about. My aunt’s husband’s cousin turned out to be a very responsible one-day guardian in his own way. I can’t tell if Declan will be relieved or annoyed to learn this, LOL. I truly thought that Billy would be the one guy in my extended family who wouldn’t do his best to ensure that I remain a virgin for the rest of my life.
And yet he did his best.
At least his best was fun. What was really fun, though, was meeting the future Mrs. Boston. LOL. I have a total girl crush on her, but it was so cute to watch her and Billy and how they’d watch each other when they thought the other wasn’t looking—but I was looking. I have a new OTP, and I still have a swoony contact high from being around them. I am totally inspired, and that is why I have to write about it immediately!!!
Good Will Ghost Hunting
Everyone in his family had a theory as to why William O’Sullivan was still single. The Cannavale and the Cassidy and the O’Sullivan men all had one thing in common—amazing butts. And most of them had something else in common now too—amazing wives. All except for Billy. The theory among most of his relatives was that he was too busy having fun to have a girlfriend.
For Billy O’Sullivan was not just good at having fun—he was a wicked awesome genius when it came to shenanigans. To him it was an art, a science, and a way of life. He was always coming up with new equations for fun. If there was a seemingly unsolvable party problem, Billycould solve it.
Everyone’s getting tired and morose?Crank up the air-conditioning and the Meat Loaf songs!
Rental company didn’t deliver the bouncy castle?We’re goin’ to Walmart to get a big tent and a large inflatable bed—gather all the pillows you can find!
He knew all the equations, and he’d write them on his mirror in erasable pen when he couldn’t sleep:Guinness plus whiskey plus Cannavale cousins plus Nolan plus Chumbawamba equals multiple unaccounted for hours and hundreds of question marks the next day.
Thanksgiving plus toilet plus firecracker equals urban legend.
But ironically, he did not understand the most important equation of all:Billy plus Donna equals true love forevah and evah.Because he did not realize that he loved her and that she loved him. He had no idea how romantic he actually was. He was, in fact, troubled by what he perceived as a lack of romantic instincts.Oh, will I, William O’Sullivan, ever get my HEA? Will I?he found himself wondering. “Have I wasted too much of my life partyin’? And will I nevah find myself a bride because of this?” He’d become haunted by these questions, one might say.
