Page 130 of Love at First Fright

He climbed to his feet, brushed grass from his shorts. His hand shook slightly as he adjusted the PolterPulse on his belt.

“Right. We need to dig up her bones.”

“What?”

“It’ll be the easiest way to talk to her. Force a manifestation. Make her deal with us directly instead of working through the other spirits.”

“But that is very much against the handbook! There’s literally a rule about this. Rule two forty-three. Do not attempt to dig up cursed remains.”

Brad waved a dismissive hand. “The rules are more like guidelines.”

“You’ve been citing rules at me since we got here! ‘Rule fifty-two, Charlie. There’s a rule for everything, Charlie.’”

“That’s different.”

“How is it different?”

Brad’s hand landed on my shoulder. Squeezed. Warm, heavy, proprietary.

Bat’s face twisted into the very picture of thunder. He drifted lower, eyes fixed on Brad’s hand.

“Listen, mate. I’m ExorSquad’s best Spirit Extraction Specialist. Gerald trusts me to make the right call in any situation. And I’m telling you—we need those bones.”

I wriggled out from under his grip, stepping sideways before Bat could do something spectacularly stupid like pick up that rock he was eyeing up and brain Brad with it.

“The handbook says we need a licensed occult archaeologist,” I said firmly.

“Where exactly do you propose we find one of those? Yellow Pages?”

Brad wasn’t going to let this drop. I’d lost this battle.

“Right. Shovels,” he said. “We’ll need proper ones, not gardening trowels.”

I followed him across the lawn, secretly hopeful. Surely the Lancasters wouldn’t have proper digging equipment just lying around. We’d need to drive into town, buy some, and I could stock up on more snacks.

Bat drifted alongside me. “He’s really going to do this?”

“Apparently,” I whispered.

“Right, because desecrating a witch’s grave—that’s not gonna backfire at all.”

Brad veered towards a small structure half hidden behind an overgrown hedge. A garden shed. Weathered wood, peeling paint, door hanging slightly askew on rusted hinges.

He yanked it open.

Inside, amongst the horrible number of cobwebs and garden detritus, stood three shovels in varying states of decay. Brad selected two of the sturdiest, tested their weight, nodded with satisfaction.

“These’ll do.”

So much for my snack run.

“Right. I’m going to go change. Meet you back at the tree.”

Brad thrust one of the shovels at me. I immediately dropped it, kicking it over with my foot to check for spiders. Brad laughed, then strode off towards the manor, leaving me alone in the garden with Bat.

I stared down at the tool. How deep had they buried Margery Darke? Six feet? More? Less? My arms already ached at the thought. I’d never dug anything larger than a hole for a fence post, and that had been in Emily’s back garden, supervised by her husband, Reuben, who kept correcting my technique.

“This is a terrible idea,” Bat said.