Page 58 of Unalive On Air

Peter glances around the empty room.

“Open it up!”

“Open it . . . how?” he says.

How I wish the person who was best at possessions hadn’t died before this tech existed. I do some quick mental calculations. If Peter were still alive, he’d be in his eighties.

Without being ageist, it explains a lot.

“Tell him there’s a latch in the front that he needs to slide across to open it,” I say. Stove repeats.

Peter finds the latch and prises open my twelve hundred and ninety-nine pound ninety-nine pence lapt—

“Not too far! Holy shit!” I scream.

Stove makes a seagull screeching sound, and Peter stops his motions a millisecond before snapping my computer in two. He then tells the magician to rest it on the table in an L shape. “Press the on button!”

“This one?” Peter pushes Franny’s finger onto the power key, and the screen whirls to life. “Ooh.”

“I don’t know why he’s being so ridiculous about this,” Camille says, with an air of impatience that fits sickeningly well with their Francophone accent. “He’s seen laptops before. Plenty of guests bring them out in the communal areas.”

Jeanie tears her eyes from the screen. “Ah, but Cam, this is the first time we, as ghosts, have ever had control of one. The possibilities.”

“It’s asking for a password,” Peter says, yells in fact, as though we’re the ones who can’t hear him.

“Ready?” I ask Stove. He nods. Okay, here goes any semblance of mysterious suave I may have held. “It’s capital C, then lower case u, s, t, a, r, d, capital C, lower case r, e, a, m, s, a, r, e, k, i, n, g, exclamation mark two six four.”

“Custard Creams are king?” Trystan says, hiding his smirk behind a surreptitious nose scratch.

My dead cheeks blush. “I really like biscuits,” I say to my feet.

“What’s the significance of two six four?” Pixie asks.

Ahhhh, man. “That’s the total number of episodes of Murder She Wrote.”

“Cute,” Camille says.

“You say cute, I say cringe,” I whisper.

I didn’t think it was possible for me to get any more embarrassed, but as Peter taps the enter key and the password is accepted, I remember with horrifying clarity the image I’d saved as my desktop wallpaper.

Pretty sure I’m about to die all over again.

Jeanie tilts her head to the side. “Goodness me.”

“Is that . . .” Pixie frowns at the screen. “Is that supposed to be Sherlock Holmes bathing John Watson in a clawfoot tub beside the fireplace?”

“It’s fan art,” I say meekly.

“You drew this?” Jeanie asks. “It’s very . . . suggestive.”

“No, I’m nowhere near this talented.” Oh my Jesus. “I downloaded it from a website that . . . has a lot of stories about characters, not just Sherlock and Watson, having relationships with . . . other characters that are sometimes outside of their canon.” I don’t know why I’m trying to defend all of this, but if I can’t shut my mouth soon, the hole I’m digging for myself will be bigger than The Paragon.

“What the fuck does canon mean?” Stove says. “And what website did you download it from?”

“Huh?” Peter says, having heard Stove’s voice.

“Wait a second . . .” Jeanie draws closer to the screen. “What’s that poking out of the water? A mushroom?” She gasps. “Is that Watson’s—”