“I can’t,” Derek says. “Can’t see you. Can’t hear you. Doesn’t mean I don’t know exactly where you are and exactly what you’re saying. Now piss off.”
I lay my hand on Derek’s arm. “I’m giving him two minutes.”
Derek’s jaw works, but he only eases back with a curt nod.
I turn to the ghost. “I mean that. Two minutes.” I lift my watch and hit a timer. “Go.”
“It’s my sister. I... I died last night. Not really sure how.” A strained chuckle. “Well, I may not know how—that part’s a blank—but I do know why. I got mixed up in...” He swallows. “Can I have three minutes? Please?”
“Just talk.”
He rocks back on his heels. “It’s just me and my sister. Half sister. She’s thirteen. Our mom died last year. I’ve been trying to take care of my sister—Gina—and I got mixed up in...”
He stuffs his hands into his pockets. “I agreed to move some product. Drugs. A onetime thing. A buddy convinced me it was easy money. As you can see”—he throws up his arms—“not so easy. I got the drugs, and then they disappeared. When I explained, the dealer threatened to go after my sister. I freaked out and... and that’s the last thing I remember.”
The ghost inhales deeply, those habits of life slow to fade.“Now she’s in danger. She was staying at a friend’s house last night. I’ve been haunting the apartment, waiting for her. She came home at lunch and found two guys searching the place. So she ran. They went after her. I followed as long as I could. Then I lost her. Now she’s out there, and they’re hunting for her, thinking she knows where to find the drugs, and I can’t even explain to her what’s going on.”
“You want me to tell the police?” I say. “Explain it tothemso they can find her?”
“Normally, yes. Absolutely. But this dealer gets his drugsfroma cop. Stolen from evidence.”
“So you’re asking me to...”
“Find Gina. Tell her what’s happened. Help her. Please. And tell her I’m sorry. Tell her I’m so, so sorry.”
Derek and I are in our apartment. I told him the ghost’s story on the way up. As for the ghost himself—Justin—I toldhimI’d think about it and took down the information he provided, in case we followed up. I’m afraid that was an excuse, empty words blurted to let me flee like a coward so I didn’t have to tell him no.
Now I’m curled up on the sofa with Derek, my back against him, his arms around me. We aren’t talking. We haven’t talked since I finished the story. I’m holding back the plaintive cry of “We have to dosomething,” and he’s holding back the ugly truth of “There’s nothing we can do.”
No, there’s nothing weshoulddo. That’s the problem. If we couldn’t honestly do anything, we’d just feel bad.Refusingto do anything is so much worse.
Finally, he says, “I’ll let Sean know. His people can look for her.”
Sean Nast is the guy who took us in, who built an entirewilderness community for the Edison Group subjects, where we could grow up in safety. He’s also the one who sends our “parole officers” to check in on us. As the co-CEO of a supernatural Cabal, he has entire security departments at his disposal. He can—and will—send investigators to find this girl.
But when? How long will it take to reorganize missions and dispatch help? Too long for a thirteen-year-old girl with a murderous drug dealer on her tail.
“We can’t get involved,” Derek says. “This is a dealer. A guy who obviously has no problem killing anyone who gets in his way. We’ll tell Maya and Daniel about it.”
I don’t answer. He doesn’t expect me to. While our friends would happily fly from Vancouver to help, we can’t dump this on them.
“We’ll... figure out something,” Derek says.
I nod and push to my feet. “I’ll start the spaghetti.”
He nudges me back down. “I’ve got it. You write down what Justin told you. Get all the details out while you remember them.”
I kiss his cheek. “Thank you.”
He hugs me, murmurs again that we’ll figure something out, and then pads off to the kitchen to start dinner.
Between readings that evening, I look up Justin’s story. That’s the first basic step, and there’s a good chance it’ll be the last. He wouldn’t be the first secret supernatural—living or dead—to try luring us into trouble with a sob story. That’s what I’m hoping for here. That I’ll find no evidence to corroborate his claims and we can leave it at that.
I find the story right away. The body of a young man discovered in the ravines this morning, dead of a gunshot wound.Lacking ID, the police are circulating a sketch and description. It’s Justin. While the police aren’t speculating on the manner of his death, someone in the comments points out that the spot where he was found is known for drug activity. Also, in Toronto, gun-related death usually means organized crime of some variety.
So Justin’s story checks out. I tell Derek. He grunts and keeps working, soldering circuits for a project. That doesn’t mean we’ve dropped it—just that we’re letting it slide for now. Taking time to think this through and make our decision in the morning.
Derek and I have been together since I was fifteen. Thus followed years of impatiently waiting for the day when we could start sleeping together. I don’t mean sex. Even in a community as small as ours, it was easy enough to find private time. What we longed for was the actual “sleeping together.” Not needing to part at the end of the evening. Going to bed together and waking up together and truly feeling like a couple who planned tobetogether for the rest of their lives.
