Page 116 of Love at First Fright

“Well,” Charlie said slowly. “That answers my other question.”

I wanted to disappear again. Wanted to sink through the floor and keep falling until I hit the Earth’s core and stayed there forever.

“What question?” The word came out as a miserable groan. “How long do lonely ghosts who haven’t been touched in decades last in bed?”

He chuckled. “No. About whether you could actually come or not.”

I scowled at him, crossing my arms. At some point during my descent or ascent through the manor, my clothes had reformed. Black T-shirt. Ripped jeans. Converses. The full armour of my eternal aesthetic locked back into place. Sigh.

“You’ll be pleased to know that ectospunk evaporates,” I muttered. “Within like, twenty seconds, usually. Sometimes more like thirty if it’s particularly… substantial.”

Charlie’s smirk widened. “Well, that makes for easy cleanup.”

“I’m glad you’re finding this so funny,” I snapped.

Charlie laughed harder, wiping the last glistening traces of ectoplasm from his cheek. His ridiculous Spider-Man pyjama bottoms did absolutely nothing to hide the very obvious bulge straining against the fabric. Red and blue spiders. And beneath all that cotton, evidence that he’d very much been enjoying what had just—almost—happened.

Guilt crashed through me.

I’d just given him a facial he didn’t ask for, then literally vanished into thin air. Left him lying there, hard and wanting, while I panicked my way through the floorboards like some sort of perverted poltergeist.

And now I wouldn’t even be able to get him off. Whatever emergency energy reserves I’d tapped into earlier had been thoroughly depleted.

I threw myself onto the bed. Tried to grab a pillow to shove over my face. My fingers passed straight through it. I grasped again. This time I caught hold of the fabric—barely—but lifting it required a monumental effort. Like bench-pressing a piano. Or dragging my consciousness through concrete.

Eventually, I managed to get the pillow to cover my face, though it fell through me, essentially burying me in feathers.

“Listen, I’m so sorry to do this to you,” I groaned into my feathery fortress, “but I’m all out of juice.”

“You mean ghost jizz? I think one taste is enough for now, as delicious as it was. And cold. Like ice cream.”

I made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh or a sob. Hard to tell at that point. “No, I mean energy. To touch you. Suck you off.”

The admission tasted like defeat. Like every other time I’d failed to deliver. Failed to be enough. Failed to be the person someone needed me to be.

Charlie very easily wrenched the pillow away from my face. His expression had softened. Glasses back on, those baby-blue eyes gazed down at me with something that looked distressingly like affection.

“It’s okay, Bat.”

“It’s really not.” I turned my head away, staring at those cobwebs in the corner of the room again instead. Once I had energy back, I’d float up to wipe them away so they didn’t creep Charlie out. “You don’t understand how fucking desperate I am to touch you. Make you feel good. And I can’t do anything except lie here like a useless—”

“Bat.”

“—pathetic excuse for a dead person who can’t even manage basic sexual—”

“Bat.”

I shut up. Reluctantly met his eyes again.

Charlie smiled. “I have another idea anyway. One that’s almost as good.”

“What?” Suspicion crept into my voice. “Please don’t say séance. Or Ouija board. Because I draw the line at spelling out dirty talk one letter at a time.”

He laughed, then reached for his bag in the corner. Slid out a long, thin, shiny metal rectangle. A laptop computer. I’d seen plenty of them over the years—the people who moved in always had them, and the renovations team often hunched over them too.

“TV,” Charlie announced, holding it up like a prize.

“TV?” I blinked at the device. “That’s a laptop. I’m not a complete idiot.”