As it turns out, ghosts don't usually mind being asked about their status in the living world — it's attention, and for most of them, they've been running short of that for years — but the living tend to kind of… freak out.
I'd done the best I could to be careful when coming to and going from my house, but it only took one or two of them to track me down and then spread the word. Consequently, my bedroom at times now had more ghosts in it than a hospital, cemetery, and funeral home combined. Fun.
As soon as I hit the hallway, someone noticed me, and the whispers that I'd been able to ignore in the kitchen started to rise in volume until they hit what could only be described as a clamor. Five or so ghosts were crowded into the hall in a half-assed kind of line that started at my bedroom doorway and crossed in front of the bathroom.
Doing my best to project a calm that was in complete contrast to the sweaty nervousness I was feeling, I ignored the voices and the hands reaching out to grasp me.
“Will, please—”
“I need you to tell them—”
“—you help us?”
“—stop him from selling the house?”
No one tried to pin me down — that was good — and I managed to slip through into my bedroom. I shut the door, catching someone's fingers between it and the frame. An indignant and surprised yelp followed.
Yeah, some of them were still trying to adjust to the idea of having physicality around me. That was actually a good thing. It meant they weren't as likely to try physical coercion or violence to get what they wanted… yet.
In my room, the ghost situation was worse — probably ten of them — but at least I recognized most of them as people from the list Alona had begun assembling for me a few months ago. They knew I'd been working on helping them. They'd seen Grandpa B., one of their former fellow haunters, go into the light, and I'd told them about how Liesel and Eric had finally found their peace last month. So they wouldn't get too pushy… most likely.
“Any luck?” a ghost in a poodle skirt asked hopefully, her ponytail swinging as she got off the foot of the bed to greet me. A bunch of faces turned toward me expectantly, including that of a vaguely familiar-looking woman wearing a tight blue business suit, her dark red hair in a fancy twist. She actually pushed her way forward from the back to hear my response.
They all thought I was looking for Alona. It was, again, a story I'd been forced to come up with on the fly to explain her absence and my diminished ability to help them. There were too many of them, and without Alona, I couldn't get as much done. Not to mention the time suck that researching anything and everything to try to separate Alona from Lily had turned out to be.
Leaning back against the door, I shook my head. An audible groan went up from them at once, as if they'd rehearsed it. And I suppose, in a way, they had. They were showing up here two or three times a week now, with the same question, and I was always forced to give the same answer.
Telling them the truth would have been a mess. If other ghosts knew what Alona had been able to do — taking on a body, possessing it, for lack of a better term — there might be a run of them trying to do the same on anyone they found who seemed to be in an unconscious or comatose state. And that was the last thing we needed. Most of them probably wouldn't succeed… or not for very long, at least. It took a great deal of power, apparently, to do what Alona was doing. A red-level spirit or above, according to the classification system the Order used. Still, we weren't entirely sure of the effects these attempts might have on the living, nor did we want a rash of five-minute-long possessions, which would, frankly, be creepy as hell.
So as far as anyone in the spirit world was concerned, Alona had taken off for locations unknown after we'd had a fight. That last part, at least, didn't require much of an imagination stretch.
The poodle-skirt girl shook her head, ponytail bobbing with the movement. “You should have apologized right away,” she said disapprovingly.
“How do you know I was the one in the wrong?” I asked, offended in spite of the fact that we were talking about an argument that had never happened.
“Please.” She rolled her eyes and flounced over to perch at the foot of my bed again.
“I keep telling you, she's gone.” Evan, the creepy janitor dude from my former high school, spoke up, smashing his mop down impatiently into the bucket/wringer that was always with him. “Disappeared, poof, vamoosed. She doesn't respond when you summon her. She's not here at her time of death.” He shook his head. “The bond is broken. She ain't coming back.”
Which was all true, but not the direction I wanted this conversation to go. I held my hands up and tried soothing. “We don't know what—”
“No, I think we do.” He jabbed a finger in my direction. “And you need to start focusing on what's important, not chasing after your piece of ghosty tail.” He smirked.
