I laugh, and she hugs me again, tight enough that it feels like she’s holding me together.
“Did you tell Nico?” I ask.
DJ nods, her head rubbing against mine. “I told him.”
“What did he say?” I ask.
“He said the sigil idea was good,” DJ says. “He wants us to call him as soon as we have an update.”
Oh.
I know he’s exhausted and in pain, but I can’t stop the voice in my head from growing louder, saying he doesn’t want to talk to me. In that bathroom, I stopped being something good and became nothing but a reminder of the worst part of his life.
At 1:26 PM, Henley’s front door opens.
Henley steps out wearing a police uniform, car keys dangling from his hand. He doesn’t look up or look down the street in our direction at all, just gets into his car and drives away.
As soon as Henley’s car rounds the corner, Benji moves.
He slips out of the van and shoves his hands deep into his pockets. All of us stay in the van and watch as he approaches Henley’s house, and he stays totally calm, like he’s a normal guy going on a normal walk down a normal street.
He crouches outside the door and peels up the welcome mat, producing a stick of chalk from his pocket. I remember what Nico said about Benji taking sigils very seriously. I can tell. In only a couple of seconds, Benji has replaced the mat and is walking right back to the van. It must be so much easier when you’re not writing in blood.
With that, we settle in for the long haul. Griffin produces a deck of cards, and he and I play poker. Benji falls asleep against the window with his mouth open. DJ attempts to read a romance book with a shirtless cowboy on the cover, but keeps checking her phone every few minutes, like time might skip ahead if she looks enough.
Zoey’s laptop is perched on the center console, tracking Henley’s cop car as it broadcasts to dispatch. The little blue dot moves in slow loops through the streets, stopping periodically.
I try to quiet my mind enough to listen for the scratching of ectoplasm, or that whispering sound I heard in the abandoned building, but I’m either too exhausted, too far away, or there’s nothing to hear.
“Is it possible Morrow’s just hanging around the house as a ghost?” I ask DJ, who’s given up on her book and is braiding and unbraiding a section of her hair.
“It’s more usual for a ghost to stay near their host,” DJ says. “They like to stay close in the early days to make sure their host doesn’t do anything stupid, like call the cops or check themselves into a psych ward.”
I think about Billy hovering over Nico’s bed, waiting, after Nico tried to kill himself. A dull ache comes over me.
All of us pass around a bag of potato chips as the sun starts to sink toward the horizon. For dinner, Zoey runs out to grab us pizzas, and I feed Bob pieces of kibble by hand. My stump starts to throb the same way it does as it gets closer to evening every night. I nod off for a while on DJ’s shoulder.
Henley’s still gone when I wake up. His shift is scheduled to end in twenty minutes.
Griffin, DJ, and Benji gear up while Zoey and I watch. They spray their clothes with salt water, and the mineral smell fills the van, along with the sound of the thin iron plates inside their jumpsuits clinking together. Each of them straps a leatherpouch to their belt, which holds a glass jar for easy access and an attachable vacuum that sucks the ghost into the jar. I reached the equipment section in the field guide not long before Donny was taken—the big ghost vac on wheels is the most powerful and effective vacuum to suck the ghost into the containment jar, but it can be too cumbersome to bring into the field, so Donny engineered smaller ones. They aren’t as strong, but can still get the job done.
DJ, Griffin, and Benji each pocket a gag soaked in salt water. They pass around a Poland Spring bottle. I know it’s filled with salt water, but watching them all take turns drinking reminds me of how Tori and I used to pass a water bottle of vodka back and forth in her room before sneaking out of the house. Imagining them all pre-gaming a ghost hunt is funny.
DJ thumbs through a leather tome as big as my head and then slips it into her pack.
“Are those where the scary Latin chants are written?” I ask.
DJ tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, giving a half-laugh. “Donny was a big believer in the power of chanting—I don’t know how much it helps the extraction process, but it doesn’t hurt. For an entity as strong as the Game Master, we’ll need all the help we can get.”
The mention of Donny brings the energy down. With Nico and me going missing, I doubt any of them have had time to grieve his loss properly.
Griffin checks his watch every few minutes. DJ fidgets with the goggles on her forehead.
It’s 10:15 PM when Benji finally straightens, adjusting the binoculars pressed to his face. “He’s here.”
I crowd around the window with DJ and Benji in time to see Henley’s car pull in. The headlights sweep across the front of the house before they cut out.
Henley walks up the driveway. I hold my breath, waiting for him to reach the front door.
