“The Slated?”
“Yes, you call them Targets.”
“So you were hired by the same guy—rich, kinda eerily cheerful—but you didn’t get a body?”
“Ghost Escorts don’t get bodies. The fact that we don’t have bodies is to our advantage.”
He was the one at the college campus. It’s the reason he was able to be behind her one second, then yards in front of her the next. “So you can just appear and disappear, just like that?”
“Well, it’s a little harder than that, but once you learn it’s easy.”
“So I’m not supposed to see you?”
“You’re supposed to, but other people aren’t.”
Made sense. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was standing here talking to myself.
“You can see me because you’re an Escort. We can all see each other. Though, I’ve never seen a purple one like you.”
“How’d you know I was purple?” I asked, holding out my arms to make sure I still had my body.
“It’s how we recognize each other. The color of your essence surrounds your body, but only fellow Escorts can see it.”
“You mean like an aura?”
“No. An aura changes colors with your feelings. Your essence never changes.”
I thought about the man surrounded with the ring of red. Turns out I wasn’t crazy. I’d seen another Escort—another killer.
“How many of us are there?”
“I don’t know. There aren’t as many Ghost Escorts as there are Death Escorts.”
“I don’t understand why you’re watching her.”
“When a person is chosen to die—Slated—they basically become property of our boss. He likes to know what his property is up to. You, uh, are taking longer than expected to finish the job, so he sent me here to watch her and make sure nothing was wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong,” I said, my hands balled into fists at my sides. “I don’t like being spied on.”
“I’m not spying on you. I’m spying on her.”
“Are you going to tell him I tried to kill her tonight and failed?”
“Not if you don’t tell him she saw me.”
That’s right. Piper saw him at the college and she wasn’t an Escort. “How come she saw you?”
“I don’t know. That’s never happened before.”
“She’s very perceptive.”
“I noticed,” he said wryly.
I wished I could see him more clearly. He actually didn’t seem like that bad of a guy—for a sorta ghost. It might be nice to have someone I could talk to about all this. But not a friend. I didn’t have those.
“So what’s your name?” I asked.
“Storm.”
