Still making my head hurt.
Dressed in the fancy suit and expensive shoes he’d worn to tonight’s event, he looked like an image from a transparent black-and-white photograph, mostly gray, all bright color drained from him in death except for one feature.
His eyes.
Vivid blue irises glowed with life.
It was an odd ghostly trait, one I’d never found an explanation for in all the research I’d done on the afterlife.
Sighing, I set my pitchfork on the floor and sat on the arm of the couch to think through the situation.
I knew how this worked. He wasn’t going to go away until I helped him cross over. It was the ghostly way.
But maybe there was a chance I could pawn him off. In a rush, I said, “You should go see Delia. She loves ghosts. Ghosts are her best friends. She’ll help you. I’ll call, tell her you’re coming.”
Standing up, my head hurt something fierce as I started for the phone in the kitchen. He cut me off, his vaporous being zipping in front of me, making me stop short so I wouldn’t walk right through him.
Blessed. Be.
Moaning again, he pointed insistently at me.
Taking a step back, I dropped my head in my hands and tried to figure a way out of this mess.
After a minute of racking my brain, I couldn’t come up with any kind of solution other than to help the man.
The ghost.
Whatever.
Anxious, I paced the pine floorboards. Dylan and I had only just finished installing them the week before. They were gorgeous, reclaimed from an old Mississippi schoolhouse.
“First things first, we need some rules. You,” I said jabbing a finger in his direction, “need to keep at least a ten-foot distance from me at all times. Fifteen feet would be even better. I can feel the way you died, and I cannot even explain to you the massive headache I have right no—” Wincing, I cut myself off. “I’m sorry. I’m guessing you can imagine.”
Though, really, his headache had ended when he died. Mine would last as long as he was near me. The greater the space between us the less pain I would feel.
He glanced around as if judging distances, then floated backward.
The headache eased.
“Thank you.” I continued to pace and tick off rules. “No coming into my bedroom unless it’s an emergency, and the bathroom is off-limits at all times, understand?”
He nodded. Yes.
“Try not to freak out the cats too much.”
He nodded again.
“Try not to freak me out too much.”
Dark eyebrows dipped and he moaned, then frowned.
“You can’t talk,” I said. “You can moan, hum, whistle, but not talk.”
Pointing at me, he lifted his shoulders into a questioning shrug.
“How do I know all this?” I asked, interpreting.
Yes.
“Experience.” I gave him a brief rundown on my abilities and the ghostpocalypse.
Frowning, he gestured to himself then to a clock.
“Why can I see you now? Before midnight?”
He nodded.
“I have no idea.” Throwing out the most random idea I could come up with, I hypothesized. “Maybe there is some sort of glitch in the ghostly portal for people who die an unnatural death hours before Halloween?”
If so, someone needed to fix that.
ASAP.
Pointing to himself again, he shrugged.
“What happens to you now?” I guessed.
Yes.
“Well, we need to figure out what’s keeping you here. Once we do, and your soul is at peace, then you can cross over. But we’re on the clock. You have only until eleven fifty-nine on November second.” I explained about the portal and panic slid into his eyes. “So the sooner we can resolve this matter the better.”
The hard part was usually understanding why a ghost was still around. When it came to Haywood, I thought it was fairly obvious.
“You didn’t see who hit you with that candlestick, did you?” I asked.
Shaking his head, he mimicked walking along, la-di-da. Then he suddenly crumpled to the floor.
I bet he had been excellent at charades.
“It was Patricia who had the candlestick in her hand while leaning over your body on the landing. Do you think she did it?”
Shrugging, he motioned like a cat clawing and hissed. “Hiiissss.”
That’s right. He’d said earlier that she hadn’t liked him. Cattiness, he’d said in describing her interactions with him.
Breaking into a smile, he hissed again as though exceedingly proud to be able to create the sound he’d intended. He hissed again and again.
Groaning, I said, “Please stop that. Remember the rule about freaking me out?”
He pouted.
“Can you think of any reason she’d want you dead?”
Me, I could see. Him? Not so much.
He floated left. He floated right. I realized it was his form of pacing. After a moment, he shrugged.
It would be nice to know what caused her to turn on him all those years ago . . . but whatever it was, it seemed unlikely she’d wait decades to seek revenge. “Can you think of a reason anyone would want you dead?”
His eyes lit and he nodded vigorously.