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Ghost stared unfocused into the distance for a moment. “Fuck, last night was a trip. Thank God for Bishop. He came through when things were looking sketchy and got me out of there.”
My ears perked up. “What happened?”
Ghost shifted in his seat. “I was hanging out with this girl and her friends. They were creative types — into art and literature without being pretentious about it. They seemed harmless, just out for a good time, and she told me she was a professional masseuse, so yeah, that intrigued me.”
I remembered him talking to a girl wearing black lipstick who was loaded up with piercings and tattoos. She was most likely the masseuse. Raising a brow, I asked, “Did you get your happy ending?”
Ghost grunted in reply and then took a big pull of his beer. “One guy, supposedly some well-known sculptor, suggested we take the party back to his uncle’s house. The group was pretty enthusiastic about it, so I just went along with them.”
He gulped down the rest of his beer and then put the empty bottle on the floor by his foot. “I got reamed out by Bishop for that. I guess we weren’t supposed to split up last night? Anyway, he said he had a gut instinct to follow me, but that left you unprotected. My bad, man, but I’m glad Bishop listened to his gut.”
I waved away his concern. “Nobody was paying any attention to me once we got to that club, mate. I was fine.”
Ghost winced. “Yeah, but after Bishop reamed me out, he told me that each one of us is getting our own assigned guy when we go out together.”
I shrugged. The guys at Vector were experts at blending into the background. So far, I hadn’t felt hampered in any way, but I knew Ghost was chafing at being constantly monitored.
“So, I hopped into a car with Aura—“
“Aura?” I chuckled. “That should have been your first red flag.”
His mouth twitched with a faint smile. “My friends call me Ghost, so I’m not about to judge.”
“True,” I agreed.
“We smoked some weed during the car ride, but by the time we pulled up to the uncle’s house, I was feeling a little off.” He ran a hand through his hair.
I sat up as much as I could in a bean bag chair and frowned. “Off? Like how?”
Ghost idly played with a hole in his jeans while he answered. “Like it was more than just weed I was smoking, but it was really subtle at first. I watched them pass around the bowl and everyone smoked from it, so I wasn’t overly concerned. I didn’t have too much time to worry about it because the house we’d pulled up to turned out to be a fucking funeral home.”
“A funeral home?” My mouth dropped open. “Shite, there’s the second red flag.”
Ghost continued, “Ivan, the sculptor dude, told us not to wander around. We had to stick to the back of the house, which was a residence. Apparently, there’d been a wake or a viewing earlier and there was a funeral planned for today. There was a dead body lying in a casket in the next room and no one blinked an eye. Ivan said there were probably several bodies in the house and in the embalming room, so we shouldn’t go exploring.”
I shook my head. “You were partying in a house full of dead bodies? That’s pretty messed up.”
“Yeah, it was a first for me, but no one else seemed to care. I mean, somebody lived there — his uncle, I guess. Life goes on. Parties happen and the dead bodies didn’t seem to mind.”
I raised an eyebrow. This was a weird conversation, but it was Ghost I was talking to. I should be used to it by now. “Okay. So what happened? Why did Bishop have to rescue you?”
Ghost’s leg started bouncing with unleashed energy. He swiped a hand down his face. “Yeah, so I was feeling strange. Drunker than I should have been for what I drank. High, but in a bad way. Definitely paranoid. I was pretty sure they mixed something else in with the pot, but it didn’t feel like anything I’d done before. Not X or acid. My mind was racing. I sat back and pretended to be resting, but I was watching the group like a hawk. Fuck, I’m not positive, but I swear, man ... I think they were swapping out the bowl they were passing around.”
I didn’t like where this story was going. “You think someone was slipping you some drugs to fuck you up?”
Ghost nodded slowly. “I’m not sure. As soon as I was suspicious, I started faking that I was taking a hit every time the bowl came around to me and kept a close eye on what was going down, but the shit I already smoked was kicking in hard. I had a hunch that they were all in on it, but my mind was already fucked up, so who knows?”
I swallowed down the rest of my beer and then studied his face. “So, then you called Bishop and got the fuck out of there?”
Ghost chuckled. “Well, then it gets hazy. The next thing I remember, those fuckers were trying to get me to climb inside a casket. Naked. They were egging me on to do all kinds of weird shit.”
“Fuck, mate.” An uneasy pit formed in my stomach. “That’s not good.”
He wiped his brow as if just thinking about it was making him sweat. “When I saw some guy taking video of me with his phone, I sent out an SOS to Bishop. I had about one working cell left in my brain and thank God I used it. After that, I don’t remember much.”
I jumped to my feet. My arse was killing me from the stupid bean bag chair, and I was too restless to sit any longer. “You dodged a bullet, Ghost. That could have gone sideways to absolute shite really quick.”
Ghost stood too and headed into the kitchen for new bottles of beer. “I could barely stand when Bishop finally got to me. He had to kick open the door because no one was answering it. They weren’t ‘cooperating’ — his words — so he lied and told them that cops were on the way. It gave him enough cover to pull me out of there.”
