“You’ll be taking something if I see you creeping around me again.” To prove my point, I shot my hand out toward the darkness where I could see just enough of where he was.
When my hand didn’t go through him, but rather connected, we both froze.
“What the hell?” I muttered. I hadn’t expected that at all. All I was trying to do was scatter around some of the mist that made up his form. It would only annoy him, but it was the only thing that you could really do to a guy with no body. But that was exactly my point. He didn’t have a body…
So how did I just touch him?
“Care to explain how a guy with no body is partially solid?” I asked dryly.
“Nope.”
“Really. I wonder what G.R. would say if he knew he was employing a Ghost Escort who is lacking the actual ghost qualities.”
Another one of those colorful words slipped out and I grinned. This guy was pretty entertaining. “Where’d you learn to cuss like that?”
“I grew up in Brooklyn.”
“I’m from New York, too,” I said, thinking that things from my past just kept coming up tonight.
“Yeah? Well, then you must be good people.”
I was about to make a sarcastic remark, but he started telling me things I wanted to know so I bit back my comments.
“At first, not having a body wasn’t too bad. I mean, without a body, I never really got hungry. I never had to take a bathroom break or worry about taking a shower. I liked watching people when they didn’t know they were being watched—I actually still like that part. You learn a lot about the human population by what they do when no one’s looking.”
He paused and I could feel his gaze, so I nodded. “Go on.”
“But the thing about being a ghost is that no one ever sees you. It’s like you don’t even exist. All my thoughts, my feelings, my opinions… they’re all unheard. Without the mundane things like showering, sleeping, and eating, every day just stretches out before you like a one long endless event. And man, sometimes a dude just wants to eat a slice of pizza.”
“Hear that,” I said, and without thinking I held up my fist for a fist bump. When I realized what I’d done, I went to lower it, but he stopped me by saying, “Wait.”
So I stopped and held my fist in the air.
I watched as a dark shadow, a black shape in the form of a fist came forward and bumped mine. The force of the impact caused some of his form to slip and spread out like smoke, but some of his shape held and I felt the impact.
“Sitting around and watching people all day gets kind of boring. So I started experimenting, seeing if I could figure out a way to make myself solid. It started working. Now when I try, I can hold a cell phone, make a call. Or sometimes if I’m really bored, I can manage to play a game on it for a while. It just started out as something I wanted to see if I could do. I was kind of shocked when it worked… Then it became an obsession. Only, now…” His voice trailed away.
“Now, what?”
“Only now my body doesn’t seem to ever go all the way back to being a ghost. It makes it harder to do my job. Dex saw me. You saw me… If I keep getting caught, word is gonna get back to G.R., and if that happens…”
“You’ll get Recalled.”
“Being a ghost might not be ideal, but it’s better than that.”
“Maybe we can turn this less into a ‘you spy on me’ job and more into a partnership,” I suggested.
“What do you mean?”
“Meaning, I won’t tell G.R. about your, uh, problem and instead of watching me all the time, you can watch the Target and tell me what she says about me when I’m not around. It will give me an edge if I know what she’s thinking, if I know what angle to play.”
“I can get on board that train,” Storm said thoughtfully.
I didn’t point out I wasn’t giving him a choice. “Just don’t get caught. The last thing I need is another person hanging around and messing up my job.”
He snorted. “That blonde is a piece of work, isn’t she?”
Something short of irritation flashed through me. “You’ve been watching Frankie?”
“She’s kind of hard to miss.”
“She’s not part of the job.”
“Seems to me she made herself part of it when she announced to your Target that she was your sister.” He was silent a moment, then laughed. “She told her you’re gay.”
Maybe this “partnership” wasn’t such a good idea. I felt like I was surrounded by idiots.
“I’m not gay,” I growled.
“Hey, dude, it’s cool.”
“Forget it,” I said and turned to walk away. The last thing I needed right now was to be seen having an argument with myself in a darkened corner of the terrace.
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m not sure your Target believed her.”
I swung back around. “Why do you say that?”
“Because right before the blonde came to find you, the Target asked her to have lunch. Then she mentioned she should bring you along.”
Frankie, the little brat, didn’t mention that to me. “Interesting,” I said, feeling suddenly better about tonight. Maybe all the progress I made with the Target hadn’t been lost after all.
“Thanks for the info,” I told Storm.
“Does that mean you won’t say anything to G.R.?”
“No, I won’t. He’s been nothing but a colossal pain in my ass since Dex got around his claim on Piper, so not telling him something he might be interested in is the least I can do to pay him back.”
“Thanks,” Storm said, relieved.
“Don’t thank me just yet. Don’t forget the deal. You keep an eye on my Target.”
“Will do.”
I started to walk away, but then I realized he probably knew something else I needed. “Before I go, I’m gonna need to get an address.”
And just like that, I got what I wanted.
Chapter Ten
“Breakfast - The English word derives from the concept that sleep prevents eating, thus an involuntary fast occurs during sleep; this fast is broken by the first meal.”
Frankie
The incessant knocking on my door far too early the next morning dragged me out of the steamy bathroom and through my chilled apartment. I hated the morning. I hated getting out of bed at some ungodly hour when humans were meant to be sleeping. But noooo, I had to drag my still half-asleep butt into the DMV where the lines never went away and my boss was likely in her office sticking needles in her voodoo dolls that looked exactly like all of us poor unfortunate employees.