I considered the question. “We haven’t heard of any strange supernatural events going on. If Ruth had, she would have mentioned it to me.”
“Right.” He walked his fingers across a bookcase. “So what if two souls wasn’t the end goal.”
“You’re saying he needs more?”
“Possibly. If two souls are good, why not have three?”
“Why not have four?” I said.
“But what would you do with all of them?”
I ran my palm over a line of hardback books. “If two souls made it easier for someone to see you, what could you do with three?”
Roan snapped his fingers. “You could be more than seen.”
“What are you talking about?”
Excited now, Roan dragged me to a studded leather chair and sat me down. He paced from one wall to the other, raking his fingers through his hair the whole time.
“Think about it, Blissful. Two souls would make a spirit powerful, but what if three or more could almost cheat death? It couldn’t completely do that, but what if having more souls meant that you were nearly alive, or at least alive enough that people could see you, that you could interact with them, that you could, for all intents and purposes, walk the earth again as if you were flesh and blood. What if, the more souls you had, the more you believed that you were flesh and blood and the better you could actually trick others?”
I sewed his words into a picture inside my head. “You’re saying that you could pass for a living, breathing person. In fact, you would pass so well that you might not even know that you were a spirit. You might forget yourself.”
“Right,” Roan surmised. “Do you think it’s possible?”
I didn’t know what I thought anymore. If you’d have asked me a week ago if I’d wind up locked in a house, I would have deemed it impossible.
Well, not too impossible now, was it?
Roan took me by the hands and pulled me from the chair. “That’s what he wants—to become as close to living as he was before. But what will he do once he’s achieved his goal?”
That was the million-dollar question. What worried me was that not only would my father be human-like again, but he would also be powerful, so powerful that he would have spirit abilities at his fingertips. He could move objects, slide through doors, vanish.
What was the one thing my father wanted?
Then it came to me—to return to the Ghost Team and run it, but make it really work by seeking out troublesome spirits.
My stomach weakened. The more spirits he found, the more souls he could absorb and the more powerful he would become.
“Roan,” I said, my voice hoarse. “I know what he wants.”
“You do?”
I nodded. “And we have to stop him.”
Chapter 16
Irushed from the library with Roan following. My plan was to get Zelda’s helmet, yank that sucker on and start blasting radio waves straight to my father, demanding that he come forward.
With the ghost gift that Lucky had given me, the ability to hold one spirit, I should be able to cage my dad long enough for either Roan or me to figure out how to take his soul, or for Lucky to come and yank back his soul from my dad.
This was not the happy family reunion that I had planned on when I signed up for this job.
As I raced down the hall, Roan took my hand and pulled me to a stop.
“What is it?” I was unable to keep the frantic timbre from my voice. “Did something happen?” The wry smile on his face irked me. “Seriously? What’s going on?”
He pointed above us to a plastic sprig of mistletoe held by a creepy elf. “If you can’t stop to kiss, what can you stop for?”
