Page 21 of Jace

“Oh wow,” she said. “We always told ghost stories.”

“You’re in the right place for them,” he said, working his thumbs into the place where her ankle met her foot.

“Ohhh, that’s nice,” she hummed. “What do you mean about being in the right place?”

“Han-2 is supposed to be haunted,” he told her. “There is a strange electromagnetic anomaly surrounding it. Before modern navigation systems, many spaceships crashed here. You have seen some of them in our travels. People believe the souls of the shipwrecked haunt this moon.”

“Do you believe in that stuff?” she asked him. “Ghosts, witches… curses?”

She watched intently for his reaction.

“No,” he said, looking surprised at the question. “I think the very idea is silly.”

She nodded without replying. It was the answer she expected.

“Do you believe in them?” he asked, looking worried that he might have offended her.

“Of course not,” she said, giving him the answer she figured he expected. “It’s just fun to tell scary stories, that’s all. We used to scare each other half to death when we were kids.”

“That sounds terrible,” he said, pulling his hand down to knead the arch of her foot.

“Ohhh,” she sighed. “It wasn’t terrible. It was fun.”

“Tell me one,” he demanded.

“Gosh, I don’t really remember them,” she said.

“It scared you almost to death, and you don’t remember?” he asked, arching a brow.

“Well, there was one about a young man taking his hover car home from work one rainy evening when he saw a beautiful woman crying in the road,” she said.

“Why was she crying?” Jace asked immediately.

“Interesting,” she said.

“What?” he asked.

“Most people would ask What did he do?” she told him. “But I like your question. The man pulled over and asked the girl what was wrong. She said her date had abandoned her there.”

“Dishonorable behavior,” Jace fumed, his hands stilling on her foot. “A man does not leave his mate on the road.”

“His date,” she clarified.

“A date is to find compatibility?” he asked.

“Uh, yes,” she said.

“Then she could have been his mate,” he said triumphantly.

“At any rate, he left her on the side of the road,” Susannah said. “And the young man offered her a ride home. She asked him to drop her off at a pretty, old-fashioned house on the edge of town, so he did.”

“It is good that he returned her safely,” Jace nodded, commencing to rub her foot again. “Perhaps she should have her next date with that young man.”

“Well, the young man thought so too,” Susannah said. “Since he didn’t have her comms, he stopped by her house the next day with a box of Vystian chocolates.”

Jace nodded, as if he thought this was a satisfactory plan.

“But when he knocked on the door, an elderly couple came out,” she said. “And when he asked about the girl, they exchanged a worried look.”

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