Page 18 of Ghost Girl

At one point last night, I actually thought their barrage of texts was going to break my phone. It froze for about thirty minutes before finally shutting itself off to cool down and reboot. If I didn’t need it so much, I would have just tossed it out the window for one of the other RVs to run over and be done with it.

A knock at the door pulled my attention from the little metal brick of emotional torture, and I gladly left it behind to let whoever it was in. Mikey stood outside, a lazy grin on his face.

‘You ready to go?’ he asked, but I didn’t know what he was talking about.

‘Go where?’

His smile dimmed, but he kept it mostly in place. ‘You didn’t get the text? I swear I sent it to you.’

I sagged a little at the realisation. ‘I’ve been ignoring my phone.’

Understanding dawned, and his lips thinned in compassion. ‘The Mom-ster at it again?’

I meant to say yes, but all that came out was a grunt.

‘Right, well, we’re taking the equipment for a spin. Heading up and down the highway to see if we can catch any readings along the way.’

I dipped my chin. ‘Got it. Which van are we taking?’

‘Ours,’ Ashe’s preppy voice preceded her before she rounded the rear of my van. ‘Hurry up, dweebs. My wife’s getting impatient.’ Then she spun on her heels and sauntered off back to said wife. I didn’t have a problem with Gloria; in fact, I really liked her, especially how happy she made my best friend. My annoyance was with her general impatience. I’d never met anyone who demanded everyone work ontheirtimeline more than her, and I was raised around some of the most impatient people on this planet.

‘Go on,’ I told Mikey, watching him visibly relax. None of us liked to get on Gloria’s bad side. ‘I’ll catch up. Just need to grab a few things, then I’ll be right there.’

He shuffled away, dragging his feet like he always did in his scuffed-up sneakers. Mikey had been one of my best friends for a long time, but he didn’t like socialising even with me unless he had to. Our friendship was based on quiet, distant support over anything else. I knew he was there for me if I needed him, just as he knew I was here when he needed me. What more could a guy ask for in a friend?

I quickly grabbed my phone and stuffed it into my pocket, shoved on my boots, and snatched up my case full of equipment. We wouldn’t need any of the communication devices for now,especially with Gloria joining us, but we would need my EMF Metres and thermometers. I had multiple kinds to cover all bases, plus my excessively large stash of batteries. We could never have too many batteries. We’d learned the hard way to keep a stash of extras on one of our first hunts. Most of our equipment died, and we lost our shot at capturing evidence of that particular spirit after accidentally scaring them off.

I know, right?Us, scaring off aghost? What most people didn’t realise was that ghosts were pretty darned skittish. It was why catching evidence of them was so difficult, and why so many didn’t believe in their existence. That was the main goal of our team: to record enough evidence that would be impossible to debunk to prove the existence of the paranormal.

So far, we had been lucky. Over the past twelve years, my team and I had gathered enough evidence to back up our claims that we’d garnered international attention. Sure, it was small compared to other avenues of fame, but we were well-known within our field as legitimate and credible. Our hope was to create credibility for our field itself, and this job may just help us to achieve that.

I locked my van behind me, turning on the security to ensure no one tried to break in. There was a lot of expensive equipment in there that I didn’t want to lose. I could replace it if I had to, but it was a pain in the ass.

Ashe, Gloria, and Mikey were already waiting in the RV when I jumped in. I took a seat in the back, locking my case of equipment in the compartment beneath it before strapping in.

‘Finally,’ Gloria snarked. ‘I was beginning to think you were ditching us.’

‘Oh, hush, babe,’ Ashe admonished her wife with a light-hearted smack on the arm. ‘He gets enough nitpicking from his mother. Let the man be.’

Gloria sent Ashe a dirty glare, to which the latter merely grinned back unapologetically. ‘Ex-fucking-scuse me? Who are you married to, me or him?’

Ashe simply shrugged her shoulders and started the engine. ‘I’ll make it up to you tonight with lots of orgasms. I’ll even do that thing with my tongue that you like so much.’

This revolting exchange seemed to mollify Gloria, and she leant over the centre console to press a lingering kiss on Ashe’s cheek. However, before she pulled away, she sank her teeth into the soft flesh and licked a line up the side of her face. ‘I’m holding you to that.’

‘And that’s quite enough of that,’ I said, thoroughly disturbed by the unwanted insight into their sex life.

‘Shut up, man,’ Mikey hissed from the seat on my right. ‘This is the most action I’ve seen in months. Don’t ruin it for me.’

Ashe immediately stomped on the brakes, throwing us all forward before we slammed back into the chairs. My seatbelt dug into my shoulder painfully, so I reached up a hand to pull it away and rub at the bruise that would no doubt be forming. Both women swivelled around to glare at our friend, who was now cowering as far away from them as the small space would allow.

‘This is a no perv zone, Mikey. You gonna shut it, or get out?’ Gloria snarled threateningly.

‘S-sorry,’ he stammered, his face turning an alarming shade of red.

‘Oh, give him a break,’ I teased, a smirk pulling at the corners of my lips. ‘It’s not every day a man gets a front row seat to his biggest fantasy. Let the man dream.’

‘He can dream on his own time,’ Ashe said, but cut the tension with a chuckle. She enjoyed teasing Mikey. He was easy to pick on, so I made sure to be the buffer between the two. Their animosity was usually friendly anyway.

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