Page 54 of Ghost Girl

I watched in morbid horror as she dipped her head, acknowledging my question, but my nerves couldn’t handle any more. I stumbled away from the mirror, threw on whatever clothes I grabbed first, and rushed from the tent.

I needed to find Chance, and I needed to find himnow.

Florence stormed past at that moment, almost running into me as she teetered precariously in her ridiculous heels that were by far the most stupid thing I had seen her wear. They were muddied and were in the process of getting increasingly dirtier as they sank further into the ground.

‘Watch where you’re going,’ she snapped at me in her annoyingly high-pitched, nasally voice. She’d complained about a deviated septum too many times to count, but there wasn’t much septum left to deviate, so I knew it was just her voice.

Before she could storm off in a snit, I grabbed her wrist to keep her from leaving. ‘Hey, wait. Do you know where Chance is? Or maybe Ashe or Mikey?’

She sniffed haughtily like the question offended her and tore her wrist from my grasp. ‘He’s at the house on the other side of the trees.’

I took off at a run and yelled a thank you over my shoulder. I was too far away to hear what she grumbled, but she seemed put out by my actions. Nothing new, but also not my concern.

The trek to Rhodes’ house was longer than I thought, and I was glad I’d slipped on my sneakers even if they were flopping around on my feet, the laces tucked in rather than tied. The ground was uneven, so I put my weight on my toes rather than my heels as I ran, trying to avoid the divots in the grass so I wouldn’t roll an ankle. When I reached the gravel driveway, it wasn’t much better. The rocks spread out beneath my feet almost like I was slipping, but I slowed down now that the house was in view. When I reached the door, I was panting. Sweat plastered my clothes to my skin and my hair to my neck, and I wished I’d had the forethought to tie it back, but there wasn’t any time. Without the mirror, I had no idea if Kali had followed me or not, but I needed to let them know that she wasn’t alive.

Fuck… Kali truly was dead. And she was haunting me.

I began to sweat again when no one answered after I’d knocked multiple times, my anxiety ratcheting up to new heights with each second that ticked by without at least another living person present. I tried not to freak out when my last attempt also went unanswered, but it was too late for that. I had seen a ghost. And not just any ghost, but the spirit of my husband’s missing wife.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

But then I heard it. Male voices. Behind the house.

Chance.

‘Chance!’ I shouted, still breathless enough that I wasn’t sure I was loud enough for him to hear.

‘Hey, guys, did you hear that?’ I heard his friend Mikey ask.

‘Hear what?’ Rhodes asked.

‘I thought I heard Dakota for a second there. Sorry.’

‘You did!’ I shouted again, stumbling around the side of the house to see the three men in the process of setting up some devices whose purpose completely eluded me. His name tumbled out of my mouth again on a terrified whimper.

Shocked to see me, and in such a state, he almost dropped the device he was holding, but scrambled to catch it at the last second before handing it off to Mikey. ‘Dakota? Are you all right? What’s wrong?’

My mouth opened, but the words got stuck in my throat. How was I supposed to tell him Kali was dead?

He was in front of me now, hands on my shoulders to steady me as he bent down to keep our eyes connected.

‘Dakota, what’s wrong? What happened?’

I couldn’t hold it in anymore when I saw the genuine concern in his eyes. Chance was such a good man, one of the best, and we had only just pushed past the barrier that had prevented us from forming any sort of relationship. What I was about to tell him could derail that before we ever got the chance to build a familial relationship, but he deserved to know, dammit.

The words came tumbling out before I could stop them, uncensored and panicked. ‘She was in my tent. I saw her… She bumped into the cot, but there was no one there, and then she was in the mirror. Kali was there, Chance, but she was a ghost.’

His reaction wasn’t what I expected at all. In fact, it was such a drastic difference from what I had expected that I stumbled away from him in confusion. He gazed down at me with knowing eyes, soft eyes. Eyes that spoke of a lifetime of hurt and loss, yet there was a peace in them that terrified me more than anything I had seen today.

‘Chance, what…?’

‘I know she’s dead, Dakota. I mean, it wasn’t hard to figure that out. She’s been missing for seven years. But we already figured out that her spirit is lingering.’ He glanced behind him at where Mikey was instructing Rhodes on how to set up a particular device, his demeanour entirely too calm for the situation at hand.

‘I don’t understand,’ I admitted.

‘We believe she was murdered somewhere nearby, and her spirit is stuck in the area. We’re setting up our gear to try to communicate with her.’

‘But if Rhodes can see her, then why do you need your gear?’ I asked, latching onto that rather than the fact that he was unfazed by Kali’s ghostly status.

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