Something shifted as my white balloon sucked in, just under my skin, and the dead guy bounced off like I was armored. Frigid cold bloomed across my arm and I huffed out another plume of frost. But my subtle bodies stayed intact.
I imagined the sound of Mood Blaster—not the new version, but the classic made by Evelyn. Whub-whub-whub. Something shifted, and I felt a subtle pressure where my crown chakra should be. Not exactly my third eye. But maybe where it existed in my etheric form.
The van still rocked as Boswell repeatedly stomped the brake in his panic—but the portal to the other side, when it appeared, was steady and true. It materialized behind the ghost as a shimmer of light, though I suspected its position was relative, and any angle I viewed it from would show me the same thing. Me. The ghost. And the veil. “You’ll thank me later,” I said, and as my spritzer gave a final, empty hiss, I gathered up my scraps of will, and I shoved.
I’m not sure it would have been enough—the dead guy was just as determined as I was—but, instinctively, Boswell pitched in and helped. Say what you want about the big weirdo, but his sense of self-preservation was sharp. The ethers flexed, hard, as the veil closed around the incensed ghost, and the ghostly presence was swept away to the great bike trail in the sky…or wherever the next leg of his journey might lead.
Afterward, a moment of stillness descended on us where the noises outside seemed far away, and the atmosphere inside the van went calm. Boswell and I looked at each other, and he nodded. I allowed myself to breathe again.
“That’s it,” Sarah declared. “I’m outta here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
AS BOSWELL GAPED in disbelief, Sarah snapped open her seatbelt and hopped out of the rocking van with a moaning Posy Simon cradled against her belly. “Wait,” I said, “you have no car, no phone, no nothing. Where will you go?”
“Anywhere but here.”
Sarah might have claimed she didn’t know what happened in that bedroom, but she knew Sledge better than anyone. She was the key to IDing that ghost—I was sure of it. And once she was in the wind, good luck finding her again. “Listen, I can help you.”
All that earned me was a scoffing noise as she strode off the grassy shoulder and onto the sidewalk, heading for Belmont.
I had a longer stride. Plus I wasn’t wrangling a freaked-out cat. I could have told her I wanted Sledge put away just as much as she did. That without her testimony, he could very well walk, since defense attorneys were eager to get any psychic evidence thrown out. I could have appealed to her sense of duty, or security, or even revenge. But what came out of my mouth was, “I can get you a clean change of clothes.”
And surprisingly enough, it stopped Sarah in her tracks. “Fine. But keep your stinky perfume to yourself.”
Finally—Sarah was on board.
Unfortunately, Boswell wasn’t.
We were only a few dozen yards away, but by time we got back to the van, Boswell was gone. And he’d left in a hurry, with the driver side door open. “He can’t have gotten far,” I said, as curious drivers slowed to gawk from the exit ramp.
Sarah shrugged. “Just leave him and call an Uber.”
It was tempting. But I couldn’t deny that Boswell was not just any medium, but a high-level talent. He was my responsibility. Like it or not. “I’m not leaving without Boswell.”
With an eye-roll, Sarah climbed into the van. Her cat made a plaintive sound.
I slid into the driver’s seat and looked down at the dash. All the numbers were covered in black electrical tape. Because, of course they were. But the keys were still in the ignition and the automatic transmission was easy enough to shove into gear—easier than slamming it into neutral through a vengeful ghost, anyhow. I rolled us off the shoulder and we did a slow circuit of the block. I’d thought Boswell had given us the slip, but Sarah spotted him by an overpass…well, she spotted his shoes, but thankfully he hadn’t shed them in some paranoid attempt at avoiding tracking, and they were still attached.
He was wedged behind a utility box covered in graffiti, muttering to himself. The air reeked of hot asphalt and exhaust.
“Come on out,” I said. “You’ll end up with tetanus before you shake your surveillance.”
“Who cares about surveillance when my van is haunted?”
“Your van’s not haunted. It just rolled through the wrong place at the wrong time. And we took care of the situation. You felt it—I know you did. The spirit’s gone. The van is clean.”
Clean-ish, anyhow.
Boswell was as freaked out as anyone in their right mind would be (oddly enough, though, Sarah wasn’t) but he couldn’t deny that we’d set things right. They say it’s hard to prove the absence of something, but when a haunting is put to rest, a certain quiet equilibrium takes its place. It’s as much thanks as I can hope for sometimes. And I never take it for granted.
Boswell must’ve sensed it too—the quiet after the storm. That’s what I was telling myself. But when I herded him toward the van, he stopped dead in his tracks, pointed to Sarah, and said, “I’m not going anywhere with her! My van was never haunted before—not until she got in!”
“Your van’s not— Look, you drove through a ghost, okay? Nothing to do with Sarah.”
Boswell eyed me like I was utterly stupid. “How could it not be? She’s the ghost in the bedroom.”
Sarah rolled down the window and called over, “What’s the holdup?”
