“I’m gonna have to ask you to vacate the premises,” he was telling Jacob, one hand on his pepper spray, as I sprinted up.
“I’ll get Sarah,” I told him. “You do damage control.” And I swerved past security and dove through the handicap door. Iskidded to a stop just inside the store, trying to see which aisle she’d gone down, but the shelves were too high. “What do you usually get at Walgreens?” I asked the ghost.
“Mascara, maybe? But only if I can’t get to Sephora.”
Okay—makeup. Where was it now, anyhow? Every time I went to a store thinking I’d just grab one thing quick, the second I walked through the door, I’d realize they’d moved it all around since the last time I was there. And this time was no different.
“The dolphins will be extinct by the time you get your act together!” Apparently ghost Sarah was still keeping up with me just fine. “They’ll all be swimming in cans of tuna.”
“Where the hell is the makeup aisle?”
“To the left, obviously, where the Lancôme display is!”
I ran toward the towering image of a gauzy woman looking off into the distance and making a perfume face, then caught myself before I barreled into a shelf of tester bottles and came out smelling like Florida Water.
“Over there by the nail polish!” Sarah said. I looked around. “By the ba-a-ack,” she whined, as if I couldn’t possibly be more hopeless. “And don’t let it get any of that cheap stuff, it’ll chip off before I’m even done painting my toes.”
The body wasn’t picking out a new color, though. It was grabbing a nail clipper from the display. Sarah’s spirt realized what it was doing just a second after I did, and she let out a horrified gasp.
Her body opened the packaging with her teeth, dropped the wrapper on the floor, clicked the handle into position, and proceeded to snip off a fingernail.
“Stop me!” her ghost bellowed.
If the body got itself arrested for shoplifting, at least I’d know where it was. But I’m sure the office would have a field day with that. And then I remembered that technically I was no longer on her case. Good thing Jacob still had the security guy distracted.
Sarah’s body took little notice of me, as it was focused on giving itself a more practical manicure.
“Why aren’t you doing anything?” her ghost whined.
“Why don’t you get in there and stop it yourself?” I countered.
The notion must not have occurred to her until I said it. The body held up her left hand and considered her newly-clipped nails. Then set to work shortening up the pinky. As it did, the ghost squared her shoulders and charged.
And bounced out the other side.
The body switched hands and started to clip the right.
I made a “keep trying” gesture at the ghost while I tried to figure out how to stall the body. “The store won’t take kindly to you doing your grooming in aisle 7. Why don’t we pay for those and head back home, and you can clip away to your heart’s content? I’ll even throw in an emery board.”
Sarah’s body gave the final finger—appropriately enough, the middle one—a solid clip. “Nah. I’m good.” She dropped the clippers on the floor and walked away.
“Fine,” her ghost yelled at it. “I’ll just get acrylic nails and—where the hell do you think you’re going?”
The body was in no particular hurry, but it was moving with purpose. The spirit and I hustled to keep up with it. “Why did you clip your nails?” I asked it.
Sarah’s body ignored me, but her spirit answered. “Because they’re a total pain, that’s why. But now I’ll be stuck going around with man-hands!”
Dramatic, much? “You don’t have man-hands—now what is it…? Uh-oh.”
As Jacob and Boswell caught up with us, the body was heading for the office supplies. Not a concern if it was hoping to grab a notebook and write a strongly-worded letter. But no such luck. It went right to the scissors.
“Don’t you dare!” Sarah’s ghost hollered. She hurtled toward it and dove in. Reunited, Sarah said, “Ohmigosh!” and dropped the pair of chunky plastic scissors it had grabbed off the rack.
And then the spirit staggered out the other side.
“Why didn’t you stay in there?” I demanded. Neither Jacob nor Boswell asked who I was talking to. Jacob knew me well enough…and apparently Boswell was medium enough to sense it.
“I couldn’t!” the spirit wailed, with ghost tears streaming down her face. “Because the second I got in there, all I could think of was Zach…and how he hit me…and hit me again….”
