There’s real steel in her voice, and a gooey feeling spreads through me. When’s the last time someone offered to defend me like that?
“He’s not bothering me,” I say.
“Okay. But just so you know…” DJ leans in closer, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Heishalfway decent in bed.”
I scrunch my brows, my brain taking a second to catch up. “Did you two?—?”
“Once,” she says quickly, holding up a finger. “One time, a couple months ago. We both agreed it was weird and never spoke of it again—it was a dark period for both of us—but objectively speaking, if you’re looking to blow off some steam, the man knows what he’s doing. Solid five stars on Yelp.”
You know, I believe it, but I’m not interested.
Except that’s not exactly true, is it? I would absolutely like to blow off some steam. I could use a distraction from everything happening in my life right now, but Griffin isn’t the one who turns my thoughts into static the moment he walks into a room.
That honor belongs to a certain team leader.
Which is not a thought I should be having. At all. Especially when Nico made it clear this morning that he’d rather send me back to my car than spend five minutes teaching me anything.
But I’m starting to think that we might be working out some kind of truce. He made a joke, after all, and he can’t hate spending time with me that much if he’s making jokes.
I shove the thought down deep where it belongs. Just because Nico made a couple of jokes doesn’t mean that he wants to blow off steam with me. Griffin might, but this is still a job, no matter how unconventional it is, or how casual it seems. And I just started. The last thing I need is to complicate things by hooking up with anyone. I’m just starved for attention. I’m not actually interested.
“I appreciate the recommendation,” I say, shaking my arms out at my sides to stay warm. “But I’m good.”
DJ shrugs. “Just wanted you to have all the information.”
CHAPTER 19
The Whisper Aid is a very safe tool. In three years of field use, it has shown no adverse effects on operators.
—Methods of Modern Ghost Hunting: A Tactical Guide to Containing and Vanquishing the Deadby Donald Dellman
The hospital entrance is teeming with people: nurses rushing through automatic doors, visitors clutching gift bags, patients being wheeled toward waiting cars. As we make our way across the lobby, DJ pulls out an old-timey ear trumpet roughly the size of my closed fist with a skinny tube running from the end.
“The tube plugs into the earpiece,” DJ says, showing me how to attach the tube to a clear port on the earpiece. “Then you aim the cone at the body, and the device amplifies the sound, like a hearing aid.”
“It’s not exactly low profile.”
“No.” She heads toward the elevator bank and presses the button. “And it has to be close to the body to work, which makes this challenging.”
The elevator doors open almost immediately, and we step inside with a tired-looking nurse clutching a coffee cup. I watch the floor numbers tick down, trying to process everything.
“Wait, so—” I keep my voice low. “Why can you hear death echoes but not talk to ghosts?”
DJ glances at the nurse, who’s staring at her phone, then leans closer to me. “Death echoes are residual energy. They’re basically recordings left behind on bodies—like ectoplasm butmade of sound instead of slime. All of us can hear them—with the right tool—just like all of us can see and feel ectoplasm.”
I wonder if normal people can see ectoplasm. What would they think it was? Aloe gel? Frozen hand sanitizer? Congealed lube?
The nurse gets off on the second floor. DJ straightens, shifting from friendly to all-business.
“Okay—game time,” she says. “From here on, I do all the talking. If someone addresses you, answer as briefly as possible. Student researchers are expected to be somewhat socially awkward, so silence works in our favor.”
“Bold of you to assume I’m not socially awkward myself.”
“Good thing you’re not yourself right now.”
True. I used to love acting in middle school for exactly this reason—getting to be someone else for a couple of hours, maybe someone who was better at making friends than I was, and someone other people wanted around. But this is completely different. There’s no script to what we’re doing now, and very real consequences if we mess this up.
My palms are sweating, and I rub them on the front of my skirt as we step out into a hallway. The smell of bodily fluid lingers despite heavy disinfectant. DJ’s heels click against the linoleum with this confident rhythm that makes me straighten my shoulders and try to match her stride instead of tiptoeing like I’m afraid of waking the dead. Which, given where we’re going, might be a reasonable concern.
