Page 58 of A Step You Shouldn't Take

I’d already committed to the military by then, and I ended up sending half of my wages home to support the two of them, not that Mom ever offered any thanks. She seemed to view the income as a right since we’d “driven away” the asshole she married. Do you understand why I never spoke to her now? As soon as I got out of the army, Emma had moved to live with me, and nothing had given me greater pleasure than cancelling the standing order to my so-called mother.

“That’s terrible,” Kim said. “Not that your father left town, but that he never had to answer for his actions.”

“Do you believe in karma?”

“Honestly? I don’t know, but I hope it exists. Do you?”

“Yeah, I do. I like to think he realised the error of his ways.” Then I had another thought that left me cold. If Kim was right, my father’s ghost was stuck in Emma’s old bedroom, and the chances were, another little girl was sleeping in there at night. “Back to ghosts for a second. You said people’s spirits stay where they died. Is there any way to get rid of them?”

“Well, it’s not all people, just those who died at the hands of another. Can you imagine how crowded it would be if every single soul stayed on earth? And as far as I know, souls get recycled, so there’d be a shortage. Although the world’s population’s going up, so I guess new ones must get created somehow. I only got snippets of information from my mom, so I have no idea.”

Died at the hands of another? Well, shit. Daddy dearest was definitely still around, then.

“But they’re here forever? The ghosts?”

Kim sighed. “Not exactly. That’s where I’m supposed to come in.”

“You’re gonna have to elaborate.”

“Okay, so if you think the ghost thing was insane…”

She hesitated and glanced across at me as if she wasn’t sure whether she should tell me the next part.

“Go on.”

“Promise you won’t call the men in white coats.”

“I promise.”

“We’re supposed to work with the ghosts to solve their murders, and when we banish the black souls by killing the killers ourselves, it frees the tethered spirits to continue to the afterlife.” She snuck another glance. “Now do you think I’m looney tunes?”

Truthfully? I was still absorbing that latest revelation. She was supposed to kill me to free my father? What was she gonna do? Beat me over the head with a bouquet?

“You said ‘we.’ Who else does this?”

“I have no idea. Mom said there are four of us, but I’ve never met the others, and she didn’t either. The Electi. That’s what we’re called. In Latin, it means ‘the chosen,’ plural, but I think some Roman made that up because we’ve been around for longer than that. Apparently.” She fingered the gold necklace she wore. “This is part of the puzzle. The others each have a piece, and they fit together.”

Looney tunes didn’t even begin to cover this. The ghost thing I could kind of accept, but the idea that Kim was some sort of avenging angel?

“How did your mom know this?”

“Grandma told her.”

“And your grandma also…”

“Yes.”

“Did your mom ever, you know, test the theory out?”

“No! She couldn’t even squash a bug. She used to catch them in an upside-down drinking glass and put them outside.”

“So it could all be made up?”

“It’s…not.”

She whispered the last word, and I began to get a bad, bad feeling.

“Kim… Didyoutest it out?”

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