“Youarebeing a hypocrite. There’s no game about it.” I said. “You’re just annoyed that I’m right.” I may have also smirked.
She sighed, nostrils flaring.
Chiara D’Angelo hated losing. Almost as much as she hated cleaning and talking quietly. Competitive to the core was Chiara.
“You shouldn’t be spying on me, Jack. Even lofty British lords know that.”
Touché
I waited for her to follow up her observation with some scathing quip. Instead, she simply sat back, body melting into the couch.
Blast. Something was definitely afoot. “Chiara, could you please explain what is wrong?”
She sighed while locking eyes with me. “I don’t think this is working out as we had hoped.” She waved a hand back and forth between us, her nose crinkling into a cute squinch.
“Pardon? What do you mean, ‘not working out’?” I leaned forward with my elbows on the armrests of the chair, knee bouncing, chest inexplicably tight. “We are researching and trying to solve the riddle of my current state of existence. Things only ‘work out’ once we find an answer.”
My ghost-like state was odd, even among ghosts, I supposed.
The story of how I became a ghost went something like this—
Boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl.
Girl betrays boy and, in a moment of crazed anguish, boy gets sucked into a shadow world where he languishes for two hundred years before being partially brought back into the world of the living via an ancient, cursed object—
Or something like that.
So maybe Chiara wasn’t the only one with emotional neuroses when dealing with the opposite sex.
As I became a ghost without actually dying, we assumed there might be a way to bring my body fully into this world. Or, at the very least, push me entirely into the next.
Some days I wasn’t sure which option I preferred.
I was staying with Chiara because she was the professional researcher in the family and had agreed to help find a solution.
“Sure we’re researching your situation,” Chiara began, “but lately, it seems like you’re more preoccupied with my personal life than solving your own problems. You hover and constantly question my decisions. It’s not healthy for either of us.”
I lowered my eyebrows at her.
“And I refuse to allow your Lord Knight stare to intimidate me,” Chiara continued.
“Pardon?”
“You know, that deep, scowly look that is half inbred snootiness and half constipation.”
She mimed said look by forcing her eyebrows into a uni-brow and puckering her lips. She looked like an angry hedgehog. It was adorable and not the least bit intimidating.
“A lady should not speak of bodily functions,” I intoned, mostly because I felt like being a twit.
“Since when am I a lady?” Chiara scoffed.
“You are the daughter and sister of an earl. In British peerage terms, that would make you Lady Chiara.” I shook my head, continuing to indulge in whatever constituted my Lord Knight stare.
That agitated fluttering constricted my chest. I channeled the energy into my knee, bouncing it up and down.
A beat of silence.
Chiara glared at me, clearly not amused.
