Page 95 of Ghostly
“An object that belongs to the deceased—the music box. An object imbued with her feelings—the locket. The lilies, the garden, the…” Perry turned in a circle. “Ida said everything looks exactly as it did back then!”
“Stop.” Gabriel stared at his hands, spread, palms up, on his knees. “Just stop.”
Theydiddo everything right. Except, Gabriel offered to be the bond at the last minute. He said he cared about her, and she believed her feelings were true; but what if his weren’t strong enough?
“Maybe we forgot to chant something. Stuff like this always has chanting, doesn’t it?” Perry tried.
Gabriel breathed a raspy breath, stood, and walked away.
One hand half-raised, Perry stared after him, then twisted in a robotic move back to the ritual circle. He gaped, but no words came.
Ida fixed her eyes on a faraway point. How could she feel this numb, when she still had no body? Why did she still think she was falling apart?
Gabriel knew. Or suspected, at least. That’s why he wasn’t seeking a solution or guessing what went wrong. He already knew it was their bond, and they couldn’t fix it anymore.
She let out a choke, and another, and the third turned into a hiccuping noise, mixed with whimpering. It had nearly worked. She’d felt it—her body filling up with energy, an intense, glass-shattering vibration coming from the items in the ritual; thousands and thousands of invisible needles prickling her skin—not to hurt her, but to show her how it felt to be alive.
And then the hour struck the proverbial midnight, and all the energy dissipated.
“Ghostie?” Perry’s voice was small, careful. He worried his thumb. “A-are you still here?”
Always. Forever.
“I-I’ll look over the contract again. Actually, I bet Gabriel’s gone to do that! We’ll figure something out. Like, a loophole. We’ll findsomething.”
The blanket of disappointment smothered any hope. There would be no loopholes, no solutions, not because Ida didn’t believe in Perry orGabriel, but because she couldn’t. She’d built her hopes too high, and she wasn’t strong enough to take the fall.
“If you’re still here, wait,” Perry said. “I’ll go talk to Gabriel. I’ll be right back.”
“No need.” She lifted and phased through the wall, up into her bedroom—cold, dark, empty. She didn’t care that phasing through walls wasn’t a particularly human thing to do.
It wasn’t as if she was ever going to be human again.
***
Sorrow hung over the house like a cloud of noxious gas. Gabriel was sure some of it was from Ida, but to be honest, he hardly felt anything else over the lead in his chest. He moved from room to room, zombie-like; he didn’t even feel like drinking coffee.
He never thought anything would’ve felt worse than that suspension notice, all those months ago.
He’d sat on his bed and stared into nothing for hours that night. Ida had left him alone, and after the third unanswered knock, Perry seemed to have caught the drift. Gabriel couldn’t bear for either of them to see him—the loser, the destroyer of hope—so soon after the failure. If he could, he’d get away from himself, too. But he was trapped in his body, cursed with a heart that couldn’t stop feeling and memories of disaster that couldn’t stop replaying in his mind.
Perry left town the next day, but made Gabriel promise to call him if he had any news. Ida came to say goodbye to him, then left to haunt the music box again.
And Gabriel sat on the couch, looked upon nothing, and simmered in misery.
This couch—he should be sitting on it with Ida right now, hugging her properly. They’d eat lemon chicken and rice, and he’d watch every inch of her face, every tiny movement, as she tried food for the first time in over a century. They’d watch a movie, and he’d try to find out where she was ticklish, and before they went upstairs, they’d check if the three animal statues in the hallway were perfectly aligned.
He hadn’t planned much beyond that, but one thing was for certain: wherever he went, whatever he did, it would’ve been with her.
Three days after the failure, Gabriel awoke from another restless night and rolled downstairs, still in his pajamas. He nearly jumped as he caught sight of his face in the hallway mirror—messy hair halfway escaped from the bun, beard long past thecarefully manicuredphase, dark circles under his eyes.
Coffee. Maybe coffee will fix it.
But before he could make another step, someone knocked on the door.
“I’m not at home,” he half-yelled, half-grumbled, and sauntered toward the kitchen.
“Gabriel?” The female voice was surprised and—familiar?
