Page 13 of Ghost With the Most
“Absolutely,” she crowed, cradling the bag like it was our saving grace… and it just might be. “Artie the mortician owed me a favour. He’s both nosy and disturbingly into labeling personal artifacts like he’s curating a haunted museum. We don’t question his methods.”
“Because we fear them,” I muttered, taking the bag. The phone inside was sleek, cold, and deader than its owner. The screen was cracked across the middle, a spiderweb of possibility. “Password protected, of course.”
Zelda had just whipped a charging cable out of her tiny purse and plugged the phone in when Beau materialized in the doorway like an answer to a question I hadn’t asked aloud. He leaned against the frame, arms folded, the usual smirk curling one corner of his mouth like a promise or a warning.
“You rang?” he drawled, voice all honey and mischief as the phone blinked to life and all three of us looked at it.
Zelda lit up like a spell gone right. “Can you unlock it?”
Beau floated closer, peering at the phone like it had once insulted his mother. “Damned if I remember. It was either my anniversary date, or my dog’s birthday... or possibly something sexy. I had a very liberal definition of ‘security.’”
I sighed. “Try just… touching it.”
He obligingly extended a hand. His ghostly fingers passed straight through the screen, triggering absolutely nothing.
“Well that was helpful,” I muttered.
Zelda tapped a finger against her lip, eyes narrowed in thought. Then she brightened. Which was never a comforting sign.
“Ghosts have energy fields, right?” she said. “What if we could make him more visible?”
“I am extremely visible,” Beau said indignantly, smoothing his exquisite vintage lapels.
“More corporeal,” Zelda clarified. “Just long enough to trick the phone’s facial recognition. It can’t unlock if you look like a fog machine with cheekbones!”
He tilted his head. “Worth a shot.”
Zelda dropped to her knees beside her handbag and began pulling out what looked like the contents of a magical drag queen’s dressing room: a compact mirror, a small bottle of shimmer spray, and a stick of enchanted chalk that smelled faintly of citrus and mischief.
Unease began to bubble in my stomach. “I swear, if you’re about to bedazzle him?—”
“Trust the process.” She directed Beau to stand against the blank wall, where the candlelight painted flickering shadows and everything smelled vaguely of wallpaper glue and tension.
Beau gave a dramatic bow and positioned himself like he was posing for a magazine cover about brooding in the afterlife. Zelda spritzed the shimmer spray glitter suspended in something vaguely lemon-scented, and drew a quick, intricate sigil in chalk across the floor at his feet. She snapped the compact open like a stage magician and whispered a few sharp words under her breath.
The effect was instant.
Light shimmered across Beau’s form like moonlight on dark water. For a moment, he sharpened. His features solidified, a faint gleam of light caught in his eyes. His shadow appeared on the wall behind him, faint but there.
“Now!” Zelda barked, tossing the phone to me like a grenade.
I caught it, heart in my throat, and held it up.
The phone scanned.
A chime.
Click.
Unlocked.
We all froze.
Beau blinked at the screen, mildly impressed. “Well damn. Look at me. I’m tech-savvy and dead. That’s range.”
Zelda fist-pumped. “I am so putting this in my résumé.”
I stared down at the screen, heart thudding. Notifications, call logs, texts. Breadcrumbs. Before anything else could mess us up, I went straight into the phone settings and removed the password protection.
