Page 79 of She’s a Doll

“How’d you get the battery into the hearing aid?” she asked. “I think it’s fiddly as fuck, and I have fingers. How’d you do it?”

I . . . I didn’t. It already had a battery in it.

She was shaking her head before I’d finished talking. “The battery goes dead if I leave it in when I’m not using it. The one in my drawer never has a battery in it.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say except . . . Are you sure?

She coughed out a laugh. “You know how expensive batteries are? Even if I buy them in bulk, they still set me back a couple of hundred every year, which may not seem like much to some, but I don’t have much, being a minimum wager and all. So yeah, I’m sure.”

The hearing aid from the drawer didn’t have a battery in it. It had been dead when I’d held it against the phone to send a message to Krissy. Which meant . . .

Ghost Lore Fact #2: Ghosts can’t make sound, but they can manipulate the real world. Amended addendum: Ghosts can make sound after all, via this one random woman’s hearing aid technology. Further investigation required.

“Huh,” Nicola said, perhaps hearing my thoughts, perhaps realizing the same thing at the same time.

It should’ve been good news. It was good news. I wasn’t tethered to Nicola. I could, if I could figure out how, use a phone, and maybe other things too. I was free. But for some reason, sitting in the oversize passenger seat, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland sitting like a blanket on my lap, I didn’t feel free. As absurd as it was, I felt like I’d lost something. It wasn’t a big loss, especially not compared to everything else. But I still felt it, small and slicing. I’d so readily accepted that her hearing aids were somehow magical. I thought maybe she had too. More than just a glitch, they were a thread of fate, tying us together⁠—her to me, me to her.

I . . . I didn’t . . . I just sent the one message to Krissy, I said, trying to recenter myself in the conversation. That was . . . um . . . that was all.

“Right,” she muttered. “OK.”

Why? I asked. What’s happened?

She frowned down at the remains of her burger. “I got a message from Ginger last night.”

From Ginger, I repeated dumbly.

“Yeah,” she said, and took another bite. “From Ginger.”

The name triggered a bombardment of memories. Ginger in high school, chewing the inside of her cheek as she stared down at her maths book. Ginger the day I died, eyelids glittering pink and brows creased with worry as I walked out of her party. Ginger standing beside Kyle, smiling at the camera, white all over, and covered in lace like cobwebs.

What does she want?

“To talk.”

About?

“If I had one guess?” Nicola looked at me meaningfully. “She probably wants to know why I went crazy and tried to frame her husband for murder.”

Oh.

“Yeah,” she said, and took another messy bite. “Oh.”

Nicola had said something spooky had happened. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting. A ghost, maybe. One older and wiser than I was. The Yoda to my Luke Skywalker. Or maybe a demon, all fiery, horned, and ready to drag me down to hell. That wouldn’t have been as scary as this. Another person. Another person who could help us. Another person who could hurt us. After Krissy, I wasn’t sure I was ready for another person. After Krissy, I didn’t think I’d ever be ready for another person.

“I want you to be there,” Nicola said. “When I meet her, I want you to be there. But you can’t say a single word. Not one. I don’t care how badly you think I’m fucking up. You can’t say anything. That’s what I need from you, Lu. I need you to trust me. I need you to believe that I know what’s going on here better than you do. Can you do that?”

Time was still moving too slow, slurring her words, dragging her voice down, making the V of birds I could see flying overhead seem just slightly, eerily off. Their wingbeats too slow, their progress too creeping.

The rain had stopped . . .

“Can you do that?” she asked again, frustration leaking into her voice.

Yeah, I said. Yeah, I . . . I’ll try.

“No. No trying. You’re going to listen. I need you to hear this. Whatever she says, I need you to hear it, and then together we decide what we’re going to do next. Got it?”

Got it, I repeated.