Page 107 of Unalive On Air

“It’s a very strange time,” Helga agrees. She’s been wearing a subtle smile since she arrived in the room. “I knew Gary would get to the bottom of this.”

Jazz opens her mouth to speak, but her words are drowned out by Trystan clapping his hands together and announcing his departure.

“Right. Coming, Josh? Don’t want to be here when anything gets figured out. Don’t want to accidentally . . .”

I shoot him a wink.

“Ah, don’t tell me you’re buying into this unfinished business horseshit as well?” Camille says, but Pixie gives the boys a thumbs‑up as they leave.

Everyone else finds a spot around the rug to sit cross-legged. Okay, haven’t done that since I was a kid, but it’s worth a try. Now that I’m an expert in sitting and all.

Yeah, cross-legged is stupidly hard.

“So . . . I simply talk to Gary?” Jazz says to Helga. They’re kneeling opposite each other, the Ouija board between their knees.

“I guess so. I chat to my husband a lot. I don’t know if he ever hears me, though,” Helga says.

“Maybe we’ll find out today,” Jazz says.

She clears her throat and lifts her head so that she’s directing her focus to the top half of the room, even though we’re all on the carpet at her eye level. Or lower, in Stove’s case, since he’s decided to lie out on his tummy, rest his face on his hands, and kick his feet up in the air behind him.

“Hi, Gary,” Jazz says after a monumental pause. “Wow, this is weird. Okay, here goes. My name is Jazmin Zhou and I work for Cornwall Police based in the Helzephron station. I . . .” She shakes her head. “I’ve been listening to your podcasts, and I have to say, I really didn’t think ghosts could produce anything like that.”

It’s very clear from the way she keeps glancing over at Helga, the frequent pauses she takes, and the slight smirk she wears on one corner of her mouth, that Jazz doesn’t believe in any of this ghost shit.

It’s hard to work out whether she thinks Helga is pranking her, or someone else. I get it, I’d be sceptical too. That she even turned up with a Ouija board is a damn sight better than I would’ve done.

“Nevertheless,” she says anyway. “It’s been very entertaining and enlightening. In your email, you mentioned quite a few other deaths. We have made a note of the names, and we’re very interested to find out what happened with those too, but for now I’m mostly concerned with . . . your death, Gary, and Jean Johnson’s.”

She looks at Helga, who nods encouragingly. They place a finger each on the planchette.

“Gary, are you here?” Helga says much more confidently than Jazz was speaking a moment ago.

“Ope, I’m up!” Pixie scoots closer to the board and slides her fingertips between the women’s. She grunts as she pushes the planchette to the “yes” tile.

“Bro!” Jazz says, pulling her hands away, panicking, and placing them back. “That’s . . .”

They reset it to the centre.

“Are there others with you?” Helga asks.

Pixie moves it to “yes” again.

Jazz gasps. “You’re moving that?” Her eyes dart about the space.

Helga shakes her head. “Not me,” she whispers, then raises her voice. “How many others are with you?”

“Does she mean right now, or in total? Because if she means in total . . . well, I actually don’t know how many ghosts there are in this hotel. There’s a lot. One can never really be sure,” Jeanie says.

“Just tell them five,” Peter says, and Pixie moves it to the number five. “There are five others besides Gary in this room. If she meant total number of ghosts, she should have said so. In a yes-no game, you need to be more deliberate with your words.”

Trystan’s not here, so I have no one to share a secret “let’s talk about this twerp later” look with. Instead, my eyes meet Camille’s, which is a bad decision since Camille had been staring at the magician as though he’d just guffed, eyebrows knotted, lip curled, teeth slightly bared.

I snort with laughter. All eyes flick to me.

“Is Peter Roskelly with you?” Helga asks, oblivious to what’s occurring with the ghosts.

Pixie looks at Pete. “Want me to tell her? I could move it to the ‘maybe’ bit. Not done ‘maybe’ before.”