AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Swearing, she set off down the track, in the direction he'd headed. Surely she should see him up ahead soon...
She considered getting out her phone and using the flashlight function, but the sky was already lightening with the approaching dawn, and any moment now, it would rise in the east and blind her.
"Harlow, where are you?" she shouted.
No answer.
She made it all the way up to the Mount Brown lookout, calling every few minutes, but even from that high point, she couldn't see him. He'd vanished into thin air.
If he hadn't been a ghost she'd imagined in the first place.
She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at that thought.
He'd been so knowledgeable about the early colony – more than anyone she'd ever met, except for some of the academics at uni. She couldn't have conjured up a more helpful hallucination. Where her subconscious had gotten the idea for the horns and wings, though, or the muscles...maybe that had come from the demon summoning ritual at the cemetery with the other girls. Yes, that would be her excuse and she was sticking to it.
Well, you knew it was time for bed if the sun was up, and your helpful demon ghost hallucination had disappeared with the dawn. Maybe Callie's spell had worked and they had summoned something after all, though not what they'd been aiming for. Instead of a protector for Alethea, she'd gotten a know-it-all history buff for a night.
Was it wrong to wish to have him for one more night? Harlow had definitely been hotter than any of her professors or tutors...
Shaking her head, Octavia headed back to the car. She called Harlow's name a few times, halfheartedly, but he still didn't appear, so she climbed back into the car and drove home.
EIGHT
"Eeee!" Rory's otherworldly screech was way too loud to have come from such a small person. "Don't let it touch me!"
Tacey sounded much more reasonable. "It's just a cricket. It won't hurt you."
"But it might jump on me!"
"Okay, I'll just go get the bug spray..."
"No! You can't kill it! You have to catch bugs and put them outside, Mrs K said. It's better for the environment!"
For a six-year-old who adored a show about a bounty hunter, she sure didn't like killing things.
"Okay...so, if I can get it to hop into this cup..."
Aww, Tacey was the sweetest mum. Their own mother would have used the spray and flushed the corpse down the loo by now, but between the sounds of the plastic cup hitting various surfaces and Rory's cries of, "Get it! Catch it, Mummy! Oh, you missed! Catch it!" it sounded like they were going to save the bug's life whether it wanted to be saved or not. Just as long as the cat didn't see it – one crunch and it'd be dead.
Maybe Octavia should help...
The trill of Tacey's phone drew Octavia to the kitchen instead.
The caller ID said it was Bruce from the backpackers.
Octavia's blood ran cold. The backpackers next to the café? Shit, if something bad had happened to the café, it would break Tacey. So she answered the call.
"Hello?"
"Hi, this is Bruce. I manage the backpackers next door to the Shut Up Café. One of the guys staying here heard glass breaking, but it wasn't here, and I saw the café door open, even though it's closed, so I called the police and they're over there now and..."
"I'll be right there. Thanks, Bruce," Octavia said, snatching up her car keys.
She considered telling Tacey, but there was no way she'd hear over Rory's shrieks, and Octavia could handle this. She prayed that the universe would somehow help her handle this.
She sped all the way to the café, and considered it a miracle that the first police she saw were the ones standing on the footpath outside.
"What's happened?" Octavia asked.
