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“That’s not—”
I plugged my ears. “This is me ignoring you. Learn from it. The more you push. The more I’ll ignore. Go away.”
I couldn’t hear his sigh because my ears were presently stuffed, but I saw it. Frustration edged into his face and with a firm shake of his head, he winked out of existence.
“Good.” Blowing out a loud breath, I dropped my hands. “He’s gone.” I shook out my hands to shed the anger raging through me. Good grief, couldn’t the ghost back off? While normally, I probably would’ve felt bad for him, I was honestly at my end. I could not handle anything more. As it was, with the serious throb to my head, my limit had been reached on crazy-ass adventures.
When I turned from the spot Sammy vanished from, Kipp was giving me a curious look. “Who was that?”
“A damn ghost who will not leave me alone.” I snorted. “Honest to god, as if I don’t have enough trouble as it is.”
Kipp chuckled. “Follows you everywhere you go, huh?”
Yeah, it did and it still annoyed me. Sure, I didn’t mind helping ghosts, but on my terms, not theirs. I had created rules they needed to follow for that very reason. The top rule: don’t bug me, which they tended to never adhere to. “It never stops,” I grumbled.
Kipp crossed his arms, giving me his focused cop-look. “Do you think maybe you should listen to him?”
“No friggin’ way,” I snapped. “Every time I listen to ghosts…” I gave him a pointed look to prove my point. He’d done the same thing to me, not to say that I minded it with him. “I get thrown into a new adventure that ends up being entirely dangerous.”
At the pain in Kipp’s eyes, I realized the harshness in my voice, and softened my tone. “Listen, I helped Victoria—another ghost—and I will help him. But we need to finish this first with you. I think for once I can be selfish, don’t you?”
Kipp brushed his icy finger across my cheek and smiled softly. “You’re right. You can.”
“Great. Then we agree.”
With that nonsense over, I turned back to the book, eyeing the spider to ensure it stayed put, which it thankfully did. I flipped the page open to Nettie’s picture and used my flashlight to scan over her photo as Kipp stepped in next to me.
His icy presence brought forth goose bumps on my arms, making me shiver, even if I welcomed that sensation a thousand times over. Him, close to me like this, was a good thing. But noticing it made me even more aware of how connected I was to the Netherworld and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Without my ties to the Netherworld, I wouldn’t have met Kipp, but it freaked me out to know I could cross into a mystical world.
To say I was conflicted was the understatement of the century, but also something I had to get a grip on at another time.
When I went to turn the page, Kipp reached for my arm, which obviously only sent a freezing cold wisp up my arm. “Hold up a sec. Let me see her.”
I laid the cover flat again, angling my light down to the picture. Kipp leaned down and looked closely at the photo before his eyes widened. “That’s the woman I met in the Netherworld.”
“Pardon me?” I gasped.
“I’m sure of it.” He finally looked at me with a measured expression. “Remember when I told you I talked to a woman and she explained things to me, well…that…” he pointed at the picture, “is her.”
I inhaled sharply in surprise, scenting the dust and mold around me, and rubbed my nose. “Why would she stay in the Netherworld, all this time?”
He lifted a lazy shoulder. “Didn’t think to ask her, since I was a bit shell-shocked at being on Mars.”
“Right, guess you would be.” I glanced back at the picture, mulling it over. “I suppose you wouldn’t have known who she was anyway.” I glanced sideways at him. “It doesn’t make sense that she wouldn’t cross over.” Then a slow horror crept over me as I realized another alternative. “Do you think she’s trapped there?”
“I have no idea.” Kipp sighed, long and deep. “She never said she was and she also didn’t seem frightened.”
Part of me seriously worried she could be trapped. That because she had traveled there when she shouldn’t have, when she died she got stuck, or something. What else could be the reason for staying there and for as long as she had? “Well, what did she say to you?”
Kipp’s gaze swept back over her picture again before it returned to mine. “She told me where I was and what was going on.”
“Like a guide?” Alexander asked.
Kipp nodded. “That’s what I took her to be, yes.”
I remembered what I’d read in her diary about how she felt as if she belonged there and I could only assume maybe she’d chosen to stay, but why on earth would anyone want to stay there?
Meaning, her being stuck in the Netherworld seemed more accurate. Both were entirely plausible, but something about all this seemed amiss. To Kipp, I asked, “How do you recognize her?”
