And as the shock wore off—she was not happy.
“What did you do?” her spirit demanded.
Boswell cocked his head. “Did you hear something?”
“What happened?” Jacob asked.
But as I pinched the bridge of my nose, the only reply I could muster was, “Cripes.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
IN THE PAST, I’d experienced the dubious pleasure of being knocked out of my body. As a psychic medium, I remembered the separation, though my mortician friend who’d shared the experience recalled it more like a baffling dream. Maybe it happens more often than people realize, and they chalk it up to an ill-advised midnight snack. Without a high-level psychic medium around to see the split, how would they even know?
“That’s it,” Sarah’s body said, “I’m outta here.”
“Who is that and why does she look like me?” her spirit demanded. “Oh my god, it is me! Am I dead?”
“Jacob, stop her body,” I said—belatedly realizing how messed up it sounded when he and Boswell both gave me a big double-take. I sighed and said, “I’ll take care of her…etheric.”
I’d almost said “her spirit.” But her living ghost was freaked out enough as it was.
Even though Sarah’s etheric body was wearing the same schleppy outfit as her physical body, it looked a lot more like her old Instagram photos. It wasn’t a physical thing. It was the light in her eyes—the blah-ness was gone and she looked like herself again.
Andherselfwas having a major meltdown. “What did you do? I was just standing there with you randos staring at me and suddenly now I’m dead? WTF?”
“I definitely heard a ghostly voice,” Boswell said.
As Jacob took off after Sarah’s body, explaining to her in his calmest tones that she needed to stick around while we figured everything out, Sarah’s emotional ghost was reeling in implications. “I’ll never see the Northern Lights? I’ll never backpack across Europe? I’ll never have my own fragrance? This cannot be happening to me!”
“Calm down for half a second and listen,” I said. “You’re not dead. We just need to reunite you with your body.”
“I knew it,” Boswell pointed at Sarah’s etheric form. “There is something here—and no one can deny that the landlord keeping my security deposit return was entirely unjustified.”
Sarah swung her baffled attention to him. “Isthatthe guy who un-alived me?”
“No one else can see her,” I told Boswell, then turned to Sarah and repeated, “You’re not dead.”
“I will never swim with dolphins!” she wailed.
Boswell said, “See? How could anyone sleep in the same room with all that moaning?”
“You,” I told Boswell, “stop helping. Shut your mouth. And for crying out loud, don’t touch me.”
Boswell gave me a sullen look. I swung around to etheric Sarah. “And you—if you see something that looks like a mystical door, or portal, or interdimensional thingamajig…I don’t carehow hard it pulls. Don’t go through it. Or else the dolphin swimming is off the table for good.”
Sarah knuckled etheric tears from her eyes. “I’ll do my best.”
“Fine. Then let’s go get your body back before it does something we all regret.”
A head poked from Haskel’s back door as we all thundered past on our way out. “Is everything okay? I heard shouting.” From inside his apartment came a familiar haw-haw-haw.
“All good,” I lied through my teeth as we pounded down the balcony stairs. Jacob only had a couple minutes head start, but as we spilled into the alley, he was nowhere to be seen. I got him on the phone. “Where are you?”
“She’s heading for Walgreens.”
“On our way.” I headed for the main drag full-tilt. I outpaced Boswell immediately, but Sarah’s ghost kept up with me easily, probably because she wasn’t obeying any laws of physics. And her body would be breaking its own laws, since bodies were notorious for putting their own needs first, and to hell with everyone else.
I spied Jacob across the parking lot. He’d trapped Sarah in the revolving door—good thinking—but then a self-important rent-a-cop sauntered out and played the knight in shining armor. Jacob released the door, and Sarah’s body hurried into the drug store.
