Page 3 of Ghost Girl

‘Have you heard from her?’ she asked. ‘I know you keep in touch. She must have texted you orsomething,’ she begged, hands fisted in my shirt that was already wrinkled from the journey.

My head shake felt like I’d rammed a battering ram right into her stomach. Her legs gave out, and I whipped my arms out to hold her up.

‘This isn’t like her,’ she muttered, though I didn’t think she was actually talking to me, more like speaking her thoughts out loud. ‘She wouldn’t just up and disappear like this. Something bad has happened. I can feel it.’

It was wrong of me to agree, but I couldn’t help myself. The words were ripped from my throat without my permission, the universe demanding the truth, even without the evidence. ‘I feel it, too.’

And when I practically dragged us both inside the house and saw my brother’s face for the first time since he’d called, I could see the truth written there, too.

In the following months, any hope we tried to hang onto was purged, burned from our very souls each time our search efforts came up empty. Eventually, the police stopped looking for her alive and moved her case to the homicide unit. And then her case just went cold. It didn’t matter how many times we begged or pleaded, we were no longer looking forher.We were looking for herbody.

Kali was gone, and she wasn’t coming back.

Chapter 1

Kali

He was back.

And he wasn’t alone.

The girl was limp as he dragged her unconscious form out of the trunk, throwing her over his shoulder like a sack of rotten potatoes rather than a human being. An innocent woman who had never once asked to cross paths with the evil that was my husband.

Or was itex-husband now? ‘Til death do us part, right?

My untethered form glided behind him, and I enjoyed the chill my presence sent down his spine. I watched as the little hairs at the base of his neck rose, fascinated, yet frustrated that it was all I could manage. I couldn’t influence the living world the way I did when I was alive, no longer able to touch and manipulate my surroundings, but that chill was a hard-won victory. A few months ago, I couldn’t even manage that, but I’d been practising.

I’d take the win wherever I could get it.

I didn’t know how long it would take me until I could actually start to make enough progress to go forward with my plans. I wasn’t even sure if my plans would be possible to enact, let alonecarry out, but that was the only thing keeping me going. The waiting. The planning. The practising. It was all for one purpose.

Vengeance.

I was going to make him pay for all the horrors he had inflicted on so many unwitting innocents. I was going to make him suffer for his crimes, for the lives he’s so selfishly taken. And I was going to make sure the world saw him for the devil he truly was.

His mask was near perfect. I had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. He was the ideal man, and I’d been soproudto call him mine. My wonderful, loving, hardworking, compassionate husband.

But it was all a lie.

Every word. Every promise. Every touch. Every kiss. All of it was a carefully cultivated façade that I had been so willing to believe. Thateveryonebelieved.

There was no sign of that man now. His sunny smile I had loved so much, the one that crinkled in the corners of his eyes and revealed a single dimple in his right cheek, was replaced by a blank, cold stare. There was nothing human about it. No emotion. Not even anticipation of the horrendous act he was about to commit. Just…nothing.

Nothing but the darkness that swirled inside him like a living, breathing, malignant entity.

His name brought a stab of dark humour into my existence. The irony in it was no longer lost on me. It was like his parents foreshadowed his true personality before he was even born. Blake meant black, just like his soul. Withered and rotten, not a glimmer of light to be seen.

A scourge in our midst that had remained hidden so well we hadn’t even realised it was sucking our souls right out of us and then giving it a fucking hug.

If my body wasn’t decomposing beneath the dirt he’d shovelled on top of it, I would have tried to bleach every inch ofmyself clean, strip every layer of skin from my body that he could have possibly touched.

Not for the first time since I’d died was I grateful that our attempts to have a child were unsuccessful. I didn’t even want to imagine…

The door to the basement squeaked open on rusty hinges, the sound creepy and foreboding, just like in every horror movie ever made. The ones I used to love watching, especially with his brother, Chance, came to visit, his obsession with all things ghostly and paranormal ensuring he only picked the best, most realistic movies. It was because of him that I wasn’t surprised that I’d come back as a ghost. He hunted them, after all, and published his evidence for the world to see. Not that everyone believed it, though no one had been able to debunk him, much to their frustration. Chance was the real deal.

I wondered if his obsession with death and the unknown was an indication that he was just like Blake, but there was no way for me to find out. Not unless he showed up here one day, which didn’t seem likely. He hadn’t so far, and I’d been dead for quite some time now. I didn’t know exactly how long. Time moved differently for me than it had when I was alive. I didn’t age. There was nowhere for me to be. I simply existed, floating in the aether of the veil of death.

I wasn’t alone, either. The souls of the other girls Blake had killed and buried here haunted this place just as I did, though their focus remained on staying as far away from the man who had murdered them. Scared, even in death, like he could somehow still hurt them.

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