Page 104 of Looking for Love in All the Haunted Places
Specter-Reggie’s face went slack, and it made Lucky shiver—from anticipation.
32
Experiment #2 / Status: Ongoing
Topic: Communication
Lucky quietly paused for a moment to perform her self-assessment before continuing. “Is it okay if I call you Hennessee? Do you have a different name?”
“My name is Reggie.” It sounded anything but sure.
Lucky frowned. “Who made you?”
“Our parents. Why would you ask such a stupid question? We look alike.”
“You stole my brother’s face. He looks like me.”
“I was born first.”
“Purely by circumstance,” she said, changing tactics to play along. “I can’t actively remember, but I feel like you pushed me out of the way. My memories might go back that far, though. Can you see that? Do I have a memory of the day I was born?”
“Yes.” Specter-Reggie asked, “Would you like to know the first person you read?”
“Interesting.” That was Hennessee answering. It had to be. Sheneeded to keep it on this topic to know for sure. “I remember that,” she lied.
“You do not. You remember the first resident of your memory palace. Me.”
Shit. It flipped back to Reggie—Hennessee didn’t have a reading. What was going on? Why couldn’t it stay focused?
“Who was the first person I ever read, then?”
“Our mother.”
That was a direct question. It wouldn’t have answered if it wasn’t true. Luckydidhave that memory somewhere.
Reggie wouldn’t know that. She didn’t even know that.
Hennessee appeared to be oscillating between staying in character as Specter-Reggie and speaking as itself. A hybrid state.
“Why aren’t you using that other voice?” she asked carefully. Wary. “The super deep voice I heard inside my head. That was you, wasn’t it? The real you?”
Specter-Reggie’s eyes met hers, shining with mischief so blatant it made her shiver again—and not in a good way. “Because it scares you when almost nothing does.”
That voice had made an unforgettable debut on the list of things that unnerved Lucky to the bone. The ghost formerly trapped in her memory palace, being possessed by it, had been Lucky’s biggest fear. She wished that Hennessee had asked before deleting it, but she wasn’t sorry it was gone, and in the time since, the house had obeyed her wishes. All of her other readings remained untouched, even the ones that caused her a great deal of pain. But why did the house do that in the first place? It didn’t make a lick of sense…
Unless the house thought it was helping her by deleting it andnever meant to replace the ghost with its voice, but it had. And now it refused to use it. Interesting.
Lucky realized she might’ve been wrong before. “If you don’t want me to be scared, what do you want?”
“I want anormalsister.” Specter-Reggie…frowned, face clearly folding in frustration. “No.”
“No what?” She held her breath.
“I want—I want—” Its eyes darted from side to side, searching but not seeing. “I want anormalsister.No.”
Was it…struggling? What was it trying to say? She turned toward it, brimming with determination. “You’re not my brother. You are not Reggie. Be you, Hennessee. Who are you?”
“No.” It shook its head. “No.”
