Page 50 of Dead Vengeance

“Well, she is being weird, aren’t you, Lacey?” I glare over at her, but her spooky face never moves.

Weird.

Creepy.

“It’s polite to just say hello,” I tell her. “And to not stare.” But she stares on, regardless. “She’ll dissipate eventually,” I assure them. “It’s best to just carry on as if she’s not there.”

“Oh, but I’m not alone…” she rasps in a low, eerie voice.

“What do you mean, you’re not—” Just as I ask the half-question, I catch the second pair of eyes boring into me from the far side of the coffee table. “What the f— Who or what is that?”

“That’s Fred,” comes her husky reveal.

A boy. Maybe ten years old? His ghost fingers slide up onto the table, and he lifts one finger a little, like he’s maybe waving?

“Where the hell did Fred come from?”

“He came from the other side,” she whispers mysteriously.

“I know that,” I reply tolerantly. “You all come from the other side. What I mean is, how the hell did he get here?”

“He’s very dead,” she goes on. “Fell down a well. And there was no one to hear him scream…”

“Okay,” I sigh under my breath. “Then you should get along very well, what with you being a drowning victim.” I address him, “Fred, I’m just a little busy this morning. Can you please pop upstairs with Lacey, and…” It’s on the tip of my tongue to say, ‘And I’ll send you on to your eternal sleep as soon as I get five minutes,’ but I’ve already blown enough of my cover with Liam as it is. “Lacey, please take him upstairs.”

She tilts to the side with an uncanny full-body flop, then slithers down onto the floor. She cracks her limbs audibly, twisting and curling in a way that looks painful as she lurches towards the little boy.

I chance a look at Liam, whose eyes are so wide he looks like he’s just been permanently traumatised, and will never, ever, ever come back from this.

“Lacey!” I snap at her. “Walk properly! We have guests.”

She turns her head around slowly, one hundred and eighty degrees, then breaks into a loud cackle. With that, she jumps up, reverts to a completely normal-looking girl, who grasps Fred’s hand while he too has a laugh about their good joke. “Come, Fred,” she says. “Let’s go find someone more interesting to haunt.” And they skip off through the wall together.

I rest a hand on my hip and let out a long breath. “So that’s… That was Lacey. And Fred.”

Liam finally stops staring at the wall, and with a shaking hand, lifts his tea. “H-how many others do you have?”

His attempted casual delivery is peak adorable.

“I’ll be frank about it.” (No, I won’t.) “I’m not entirely sure. She’s been here… a few years now. But she wasn’t here when I moved in.”

“And when was that?” Liam asks, now, oddly, studying my left hand. I flex it by instinct, flashing the jewel in my ring, and he seems to zero in on the movement, his brow pressing like he’s trying to figure something out.

“Bought it maybe five years ago now. It was a bit of a fixer-upper, but we got the job done.”

“We?” he asks, pausing with the tea at his lips.

“I had a whole team. Of humans, not ghosts. You know, decorators, construction workers, an architect.”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” He sips it, sets it down, glances at Fabian, who’s busy eating a danish. “And then… you moved in?”

“Yes?” What is he trying to get at?

“You just… You moved in?”

“Yessssss…?”

Fabian, watching Liam back now, cracks something that looks suspiciously like a smirk. “Did you move in alone?” he asks me, and Liam’s face switches up to slightly panicked, his eyes flaring at Fabian. But Fabian’s smirk only gets deeper, as if there’s something going on here that I’m not quite catching.