Page 40 of Ghosted (The Ravenwood #1)

THIRTY-ONE

Wren is still snoring on my couch while I lie in bed, staring at my ceiling hours later.

I couldn’t fall asleep even if someone knocked me over the head right now.

Not when I know there might be a way I could keep Dean with me permanently.

But is it wrong to want that? When he has the ability to move on and find peace?

The unselfish, helps-all-ghosts-in-need part of me says yes. It’s wrong because he deserves to find that peace. The very selfish other part of me almost doesn’t care. Because losing him would feel like a small death of my own. Like watching a part of me atrophy and disappear.

I’ve never felt this way before. He’s taken possession of my heart and invaded my every thought.

His humor and humanity. The way he achieves the goals he sets for himself.

How much he cares for his family and friends.

The way he decorates his home and office with pictures of those he loves, like he can’t bear to be apart from them.

The way he cares for me and makes me feel seen. How am I supposed to give that up?

You don’t have to, says the selfish part of my brain. I groan and roll to my side, nearly jumping out of my skin when I come nose-to-nose with Dean.

“When did you get here?” I whisper.

“Just now. You were thinking about me extra hard,” he says with a smirk. I roll my eyes and smile at him, unable to deny that he’s right. “You don’t seem happy, though. What’s wrong?” he asks, searching my face.

“Nothing,” I lie, not wanting to tell him about the tether.

At least not until we solve his murder. I want him to know that he’s free to move on first, and I don’t want to add any confusion onto his plate.

Or worse, make him question my willingness to help him.

“Just tired and have a lot on my mind,” I say truthfully.

I can’t tell if he buys it, but he pulls me into him, pressing my nose to his throat so he can run his fingers through my hair.

I don’t fight my heavy lids, closing them while he finger-combs my long hair, gently untangling any knots.

“Sleep, Rae,” he whispers into the crown of my head, tucking me even closer.

I wake to the smell of coffee; good coffee.

Which can only mean that Wren is still here, using the espresso machine she got me for Christmas a few years back.

I never use it because my clumsy attempts at pulling shots don’t compare to anything she could make blindfolded.

I roll over and hear her talking to someone.

I wonder if she’s on the phone, but she hates phone calls, so I doubt it. Especially this early in the morning .

“So, anything new on the murder investigation front?” she asks, just as I round the corner of my partition into the living room and blink in surprise at the scene before me. Dean is sitting on the chair, a safe distance from Wren in the kitchen, but they seem to be… Talking?

“Are you guys talking?” I ask, voice rusty with sleep. I rub my eyes extra hard to see if I’m dreaming, but when they swim back into focus, there they are. Chatting, apparently.

“Yeah. We figured out a way to talk,” Dean says at the same time Wren says, “Yup, I learned how to communicate with Ghost Boy.”

I slump onto a barstool, tying my unruly bedhead into a haphazard knot on the top of my head. “How?” I ask her.

“Well, I can sense auras, and he has one, so I figured if I asked direct questions, he could answer me. He can’t, like, describe a recipe to me in detail, but yes or no questions are pretty easy.

” She hands me a mug filled to the brim with what smells like a vanilla latte, topped off with a little latte art heart. Aww.

Wait…

“Is this a middle finger?” I ask, squinting at the mug.

Her face brightens. “Oh, good, I’m getting better at them. Trying to come up with more discreet ways to say ‘fuck off’ to my least favorite customers.”

“Won’t you get fired for that?”

“Nah, we always hand them their coffee with the lids on. It’s just for me.

Purely for my satisfaction alone, knowing that Brad the accountant gets to drink my large fuck you in his skinny vanilla, oatmilk latte, with whole milk foam, set to scalding temperatures.

” She scowls at the memory of picky Brad, and I laugh into my latte, dispersing the foam middle finger.

“She was asking about my untimely demise. Have you told her you were drugged?” Dean asks, turning in his seat to look at me.

“No, I haven’t,” I answer, making a ‘zip it’ motion as inconspicuously as I can.

“Haven’t what?” Wren asks.

“Nothing,” I say, before taking a sip of my piping hot latte. Wren is very protective. I don’t know what she’d do if she found out.

She scowls at me and folds her arms over her chest. “Tell me.”

“No.”

“Rae.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head.

“Has Dean ever heard about that time in eighth grade when you sh–”

“I was drugged!” I interject. Not wanting her to spill about the time I indeed shat myself. The stomach flu is no joke, and I caught a dodgeball in P.E. right against my stomach when it was already protesting. The kids called me “Dia-Rae-uh” for at least six months. Good times.

“What?” Wren says.

I clear my throat. “I was drugged. On accident. Okay, well, I guess it was a little on purpose, but it wasn’t Dean’s fault. He didn’t know there were drugs in the coffee. He was just trying to be sweet?—”

“Rae. Stop. Back up. What do you mean you were drugged? And what does this have to do with Dean?” Wren asks, placing a concerned hand on my shoulder .

I take a breath to gather my thoughts. “Okay. We went to his office last weekend to see if we could shake any more memories loose. When we were there, he made me a cup of coffee. He wanted me to try his favorite, so that's what he made me. Anyway, long story short, someone had put GHB into the type of coffee that Dean likes because no one else in his office drinks it, so it was a guarantee that he’d be the one to have it. I was unlucky enough to get one of the three pods left that had been tampered with.”

“This was last weekend?” she clarifies.

I nod. “Yeah. I passed out on his couch and didn’t wake up until the next day. I had to rush out so I could get to work and grab all those auction items. It was terrible. I had the worst headache all day.”

Her scowl deepens. “The day when you came into Brewed Awakening to grab the gift basket? That day?” I nod, and she smacks my arm. “How could you not tell me that?”

I wince, more at being called out than the sting on my arm from Wren’s assault. “Sorry, it just didn’t seem like a great time to announce that. Especially since you were feeling particularly murderous with Julian.”

“Who’s Julian?” Dean asks.

“I can sense your question, ghost. He is the bane of my existence. The rotten ground from which nothing will grow. The drought, the plague, the blight that ruins everything,” Wren says, getting surprisingly poetic.

“You seem to think about this guy a lot,” Dean says with a smug grin.

Wren’s eyes narrow to slits. I jump in to keep the fragile peace, “Anyway, yes. I was drugged, which heavily implies that Dean was drugged before he died. ”

“Are you okay?” she asks, expression softening.

“Yes, I’m surprisingly fine. I think I’m not freaking out because it was an accident more than anything. Although I probably won’t be having caramel-flavored coffee anytime soon,” I say, hoping to reassure her.

She nods and asks, “How long did it take to kick in?”

“I don’t know, maybe thirty minutes?”

Wren turns to look in Dean’s direction. “Did you only have the one cup of coffee that day?”

He looks up at the ceiling, brow furrowing as he tries to remember. “Ummm. No. I had at least two other cups of coffee,” he says, looking at me.

I relay his answer and then ask him, “Do you always have a cup of coffee before you drive home?”

“I do, usually. Especially when we’ve been working a lot. Someone must have switched out the coffee pods later in the day.” He looks at me and visibly swallows. It’s looking more and more like this person is someone he knows.

“I’m going to call Jack,” I state, pulling my phone out of my pocket.

“Thanks again for the update, Rae. I’ll call you when I have something,” Jack says before hanging up.

He agreed that it had to be someone in the office who drugged Dean (and me).

So, he’s going to look back at security footage from that day to see if someone slipped in to replace them without the secretary noticing.

The security footage only shows the very entrance of the office, so he won’t be able to make out the break room.

At least it will narrow down who was there in the late afternoon before Dean drank his coffee.

“I have to get going. I need to go home and shower before my next shift. Please tell me important things, okay? Like being drugged, for instance,” Wren says from the chair opposite my couch, eyebrow raised to the sky.

“Yes, Mom. I promise,” I say, crossing my heart with my finger. I lean back against the couch and stretch my neck, feeling my impending thirtieth birthday creeping in with every creak and groan of my joints.

“You better,” she states, standing and heading for the door.

Once she’s gone, I sigh and say to Dean, “Well this sucks. It has to be a coworker unless someone snuck in.”

Dean nods. “Yeah. And other than my dad and I, the only people in the office that day were our secretary, five senior associates, and two of our paralegals. Minus James, one of the paralegals, I’ve known each of them for years.

I just can’t fathom why any of them would do this.

I considered them all friends for the most part.

Marco, my best friend, ended up moving away with his wife a couple years back, so I really relied on my office friendships for socializing.

I thought we were all close. I feel so betrayed and violated. ”

He pauses to look down at his hands and collect himself, and then continues, “And I doubt anyone would have snuck in. Courtney is like a guard dog, she takes her job very seriously. She doesn’t let anything or anyone past her without her approval.

She even insists on coming in and working the weekends that we all need to be there, too.

The woman hardly takes a bathroom break. ”

I reach out and place a hand on his shoulder. He leans into it and sort of falls into a hug, gathering me close so he can bury his face in my loose hair. “I’m sorry,” I say quietly, not knowing what else to say or how I can fix this.

“Yeah, me too,” he mumbles into my hair. I reach up and stroke the back of his neck, wishing there was a way to siphon some of his pain away.