A ringing buzzed in my ears as the room swayed, my knees weakening from the chaos unfolding around me. My breathing turned hollow. My palms were sweating.
Too many people. Too many voices.
“Quiet!” I shouted, slapping my hands over my ears to erase the noise.
The ghost, Jonah, Monday, the officers, Earl, they all studied me from where they froze with piercing scrutiny. Even the shouts outside dimmed by my voice. My palms dropped from my ears.
“Take it outside,” I announced. “Let me do my job in here.” What I really wanted was to see if I could get through to the ghost. The spirits came first. Theyalwayscame first.
“Yeah,” Monday added.
I looked over at her. “You too, Monday.”
“Wait, what?”
Either I had to admit how strange I indeed was, or I’d have to leave the ghost of this man here to fend for himself, to be lost and unsure of what had happened to him. Because I had this gift, I’d always felt it was my responsibility to help them, talk them through it.
Some spirits wanted nothing more than to make sure their death was avenged. Others wanted to watch karma play their part in a slow and torturous manner because it was worse and more fun that way since their pain tethered them here, allowing them to stick around and watch. But watching turned them into the maddening and crazed kind of spirits—the ones who could never find peace.
“Please,” I stated in a calmer voice. “I just need a minute.”
The officer took Earl out of the room and down the steps where the angry town’s people awaited him, Jonah and Monday close behind. As the door was closing behind them, I caught a glimpse of Julian, who was standing in front of Beck, and my heart skipped inside my chest. Julian lifted his eyes to mine just as the door shut, closing me inside alone with a dead body, a ghost, and the aftermath of a harrowing incident.
I sucked in a breath and turned my attention to the ghost in the corner of the room. “What’s your name?”
“What happened to me? How is it that I’m standing here? Put me back in! I’m fine! You make this go away.” His enlarged eyes looked over his hands, his shirt, grasping at himself frantically. “Fix me!”
“I can’t, you’re already dead,” I said slowly, hoping to soothe his energy. They had never physically hurt me before, and I didn’t know if it was at all possible. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“I-I-can’t remember,” he stuttered, then his stutter turned into a roar, and he banged his palm repeatedly against the side of his head. “Why can’t I remember?!”
“Because you haven’t accepted what’s happened to you yet. You need to accept it, then your memories will come back.”
“How do you know this? Who are you?”
“Fallon. Fallon Grimaldi.”You’re a Grimaldi, Marietta had always told me, and I didn’t know why I’d said Grimaldi at that moment, but it felt right, as if it would answer all the burning questions inside him. I was aGrimaldi. A girl who could see and talk to ghosts. A girl whose father was a witch, and a mother I still knew nothing about.
Yes, I was a Morgan, but I was a Grimaldi, too, and maybe that meant something.
I didn’t know how much time had passed as I watched his expression twist into different phases, almost as if he was trying to accept, trying to remember. He stared at the walls, the door, and the floor like the room was speaking to him.
“Jury.” Then he looked at me. “My name is Jury Smith.”
I nodded, keeping silent to not break his train of thought.
“I was out of it … I don’t know how I ended up there, but I was so mad. I came here to confront him about something, and he was just as surprised to see me. But it had to be about something. There was another man.” His eyes darted behind him to the door. “He … he jumped me from behind!” He looked at his hand, and his face transformed as if a light went off with a memory. “I was holding something in my hand, but it was knocked to the ground.” His eyes slid to the couch.
I followed his gaze to the couch and looked underneath. There was a knife, but there was no blood anywhere near or on the body or around the living room. The knife couldn’t have been used.
“His face,” he continued, “I’d never seen something so … so …”
“Scary?” I asked on my knees beside the couch, my heart slamming inside my chest as I looked up at the ghost who held a world of terror in his deadened eyes. His jaw slammed shut, and he shook his head vehemently, gripping the ends of his hair. “What did you see?” I probed further.
“Would you believe me if I told you a clown is hiding in there? In that face of his?” he asked, coming from the dark corner of the room with wrinkles in his drooping forehead. “The clown, it choked me with one hand. I couldn’t breathe.” The ghost clawed at the shirt covering his stomach, lifting it and exposing his hairy gut. “He stabbed me! I remember the pain in my lungs!” We both lowered our gaze and examined his stomach as he twisted in place, but there were no lacerations or knife wounds. The ghost dropped his shirt, his body shaking. Then he looked up at me through strange pale eyes. “But I felt it. It fucking stabbed me.”
“It? Do you mean Earl? Beck?” My stomach dropped.Julian?
“No!” he screamed. “THE CLOWN!”
