Page 39 of Ghosted (The Ravenwood #1)

THIRTY

Wren kicks her combat-boot-clad feet up on my coffee table and sighs, closing her eyes. She just finished her closing shift at Brewed Awakening and didn’t feel like making the drive home. This happens about once a month when her insomnia catches up with her.

I only have two days to go until the Night Before All Hallows Eve Ball and an overflowing to-do list to complete.

I originally tried to get her to come up to my place without me, but she wouldn’t hear it.

“Ew no, you workaholic,” were her exact words, actually.

And then she proceeded to drag me out of the store, barely giving me enough time to lock up, and tossed a frozen vegetarian pizza into my toaster oven.

Now here we are, both so tired that neither of us has gotten up and pulled the pizza out of the still-dinging oven. I close my eyes, vowing that in just one more minute, I’ll get up and pull the pizza out so it doesn’t burn.

“Okay well, this is where I intervene,” Dean says.

I open my eyes and look over the back of the couch to see him pulling the pizza out of the oven with his bare hands.

“Can’t have you dying in a house fire caused by an overcooked pizza.

That’s just sad.” He slides the pie onto my countertop and turns off my toaster oven.

Wren wrinkles her nose and rubs the goosebumps on her arms. “Ugh. Ghost boy is here, isn’t he?”

Dean snorts. “Ghost boy? I guess I can rock with that. It sounds like some sort of superhero.” He places his fists on his hips and adopts a “Superman” stance, humming a theme I vaguely recognize.

“Okay, I knew you guys were still hanging out, what with the whole murder and everything, but does he have to be here now?” Wren asks, shooting daggers in his general direction.

“Geez, what’s her deal?” Dean asks, dropping his fists and flitting across the room to sit in the chair.

“She’s not a huge fan of ghosts,” I explain.

“She can read auras, and it’s very unsettling to see an aura but not a person.

It’s like when you try to tune an old TV and get to a channel that doesn’t have a good signal, so it’s all broken up and fuzzy.

Her mind tries to make the picture clearer, but it can’t. ”

“Gives me a damn headache,” Wren grumbles, standing and heading to the kitchen. I hear the shing! of her pulling my pizza cutter out and decide to risk her bad mood for a slice of pizza.

“Can you tell her I’m sorry?” Dean asks me. “I can go now. I just didn’t want you to burn your pizza.” He presses his mouth into a line. If I’m not mistaken, I would say that charismatic, people-person Dean is nervous about meeting my sister.

I relay what he said to her, and she sighs, cutting into the pizza with vigor. “I don’t want you to leave, Ghost Boy. If you’re banging my sister, I have to get used to you.”

I choke on my spit and eke out, “Wren!”

Dean titters, shoulders shaking until it evolves into a full-blown laugh. I guess I should have seen this coming when I confided in her yesterday. I run my hand down my face to cover my smile. These two people of mine are ridiculous.

“What? Am I not allowed to talk about it? Is ghost sex taboo?” Wren asks, a mischievous smile curling her lips.

I sigh from deep in my weary bones. “We are not going to talk about sex with my—With Dean,” I stumble out. I almost called him my boyfriend, but attaching labels is the last thing we need right now.

Wren senses the turn in my mood, so she hands me a plate with a couple of pieces of pizza. “Fine. Let’s eat. Dean, you can stay, but don’t get close to me, please. It makes everything go a little haywire in my brain.”

“Got it,” Dean says, settling further in the chair. I nod at Wren to let her know that Dean understands.

“So, you pulled out this pizza, huh?” Wren asks Dean, before taking a massive bite.

She hardly chews before she continues, “That’s weird, right?

” She looks to me for confirmation, and I shrug.

“Your ghosts usually don’t have that much control.

Like sure, they can move things sometimes, but to move around the world like a solid, flesh and bones person is unheard of. ”

I take a bite before I reply, “Yeah, it’s a little odd.

But I think Dean has more determination than most to stick around and get good at things.

And maybe it’s his frequent proximity to me.

I know I’m like a homing beacon for spirits, so maybe I juice them up a bit too.

It’s not like I would know the effects, because most spirits only stick around for a week or so at most. He and Rebecca are my two longest-running visitors. ”

“How is Rebecca anyway?” Dean asks.

“She’s doing okay, I think. It’s been a while since she checked in, so maybe she finally moved on.

It had to get old eventually, getting revenge on her ex.

Even the most vengeful person has to get bored with that someday.

Especially if you know you have something better waiting for you on the other side. ”

“Why aren’t you getting revenge on people who’ve wronged you?” Wren asks, looking towards Dean. Despite the conversation, I’m grateful to her for the way she’s trying to engage him, even though I know it makes her wildly uncomfortable.

Dean crosses his sweatpants-clad legs at the ankles in front of him.

“I guess I’m not a very vengeful person.

The only one I’d want to get revenge on is whoever killed me, but since we’re still figuring that out, I’d rather hang out with Rae.

She’s much more interesting than anyone I've known before anyway.”

I tell her what he said a bit sheepishly.

I’m trying and failing to come up with a better way for them to communicate.

As is, I don’t mind being a translator, but it makes for stilted conversation.

I guess writing would be good, but his handwriting is barely legible in this form anyway.

Plus, it would be hard to concentrate on a conversation while he was using my hand the way Leo did.

Just another problem to solve on my to-do list.

“Rae is amazing and the best person I know,” Wren says, glaring in Dean’s direction.

“So if you ever hurt her, I will find a way to resurrect you so I can kill you again myself.” Dean audibly swallows from across the room, which makes Wren grin menacingly.

“Good. I can feel your fear. You should be afraid. But also, make her happy. Or else.” She takes a massive bite of pizza, her scary-sister duties over.

Dean shivers and says, “Your sister is very intimidating.”

I laugh. “Yes, she is.”

After we finished our dinner, Dean decided to go check on his family. He wanted to give us a little alone time and figured it was time to see them. I appreciate that he wants to give us space and let me know he won’t be watching.

“Wanna see something cool?” I ask Wren. She’s hardly left her position on my couch other than to remove her shoes and toss them to the floor with a heavy thud.

Wren doesn’t bother with a fully-formed verbal response, grunting a vague agreement instead. I pull open the deep bottom drawer in my desk and carefully extract the grimoire.

“What is that ?” Wren asks, sitting up straighter to get a better look once I perch next to her. I swipe my hand over the cover gently and tilt the ancient book her way.

“It’s a grimoire. Carlos at The Cracked Spine donated it for the auction.”

“Did he donate it to get rid of a hundred-year curse?” Wren asks skeptically.

“No,” I say and then frown. “Or at least, I hope not. I haven’t felt particularly cursed.

” I shake my head after thinking about it some more.

“Nah. Carlos is cool. He just thought a grimoire would be a good auction item for an occult and oddities shop, and I can’t say he missed the mark.

Besides, I’ve skimmed through it, and it seems fairly tame.

It’s mostly herbal remedies and light magic rituals. ”

Wren looks slightly disappointed. She flops back and yawns so wide, her molars peek out. “So it’s just a dusty old book about plants and like, protecting your energy?”

I hug the book to my chest as if it could be offended by her words. “You don’t think it’s cool? I thought we might find something useful in here for us.”

Wren tilts her head back and forth and then nods in agreement. “Okay, worth a shot. Where’s the section that’ll help us?” She sits up again and leans forward.

“I haven’t been able to go through the whole thing yet. I keep getting interrupted,” I say, feeling a blush crawl up my cheeks as I remember the last interruption—Dean bending me over the vanity and kneeling behind me…

“Earth to Rae,” Wren says, snapping her fingers in my face. “Also ew. Please stop thinking about what you’re thinking about.”

I clear my throat. “Anyway. I made it through about half the book. It takes a while because the writing is kind of hard to make out. I’ve been reading the first sentence or two on each page to see what they’re about.”

“Mm. Well, I’m gonna nap. Wake me if you find anything useful,” Wren says, throwing herself to the side and curling up in a tiny ball.

Within minutes, she’s lightly snoring, clutching a throw pillow to her chest. Despite her insomnia, when her body wants to power off, it’s an instant ordeal.

She only gets like this when she’s had long bouts of sleepless nights.

Her body forces her to rest whether she wants to or not.

I sigh to myself. I’d hoped we would get a chance to catch up and that she’d be interested in helping me with the book. I should have known, though. Wren has never been interested in reading, and a grimoire is no exception.

I yank part of the throw blanket Wren is using toward myself and begin skimming the rest of the book. Eventually, I get to a section titled “Spirits and Communications,” and feel like I might be getting somewhere. I scan excitedly through the pages, looking for anything that could be of use.

Disappointment washes over me in a wave when I get to the end of the short section.

I hadn’t found anything that I didn’t already know.

It’s mostly about how you can communicate with the dead using different objects like divining rods and rune stones.

I flip through nearly to the end of the book, skimming over different uses for animal bones and crystals, when I come across a section titled “Diary Entry.” It’s dated as September 12, 1820, so I finally have an idea of how old this book is.

I feel a little bad reading someone’s diary, even if that someone is long dead.

Although I guess for me, dead doesn’t always mean gone.

My curiosity gets the best of me, and I read through a very detailed account of this person going on a trip to visit an estranged aunt in Maryland.

She’s unmarried, so her older brother has to accompany her.

After many mishaps, they finally get to Maryland and the grimoire owner discovers that her aunt practices the occult as well.

She is baffled because her father was a preacher, so to have an aunt who practices was shocking.

At first, she hides her affinity for the natural world.

Apparently, plants sing to her in different resonances, essentially communicating with her.

Ah, that explains all the plant talk.

One midsummer day, her aunt found her coaxing a bush of blackberries to ripen and be sweeter, and instead of scolding her (or worse), her aunt revealed her own secrets. She could speak to the dead. Like me.

I start skimming faster, and find myself growing frustrated with the spidery, crowded print. This is the only account of an actual medium that I’ve ever read. I’m not saying everyone else who claims to be one is lying, but if you have a show on TLC, it’s questionable at best.

Over the rest of the summer, her aunt reveals all sorts of family secrets. Her late husband had passed from some disease with a horrible fever. But that wasn’t the end of the line for them. He came back to her as a spirit and stayed with her for decades.

Decades?

I try not to get too excited by the prospect, but I can’t help the way my thoughts turn to Dean.

The aunt said she created a tether for her husband by doing what sounds like astral projection to me.

The account isn’t too detailed, which is frustrating, but I had no idea this was possible.

But from what I can tell, the aunt astral projected into the ether and found a way to bind his soul to hers.

They lived quite happily, despite the fact that she was the only one who could see him. Suddenly, her aunt’s isolation made sense. She was living her best life with the love of her life; and nothing, not even death, could separate them.

I sit back and blink my bleary eyes, suddenly feeling more conflicted than ever.