She turned her attention back to Poppy, being helped onto the raft by Hayes. It wobbled a little as Hadley, dressed as Jenny from BLACKPINK, hugged her, and wobbled again when Poppy bent down to wrap her arms around Wren in a behind-you hug.
“Hey, you,” Wren said, patting her arm. “I’m so glad you could make it, and you look amazing, as per normal.” Poppy was always a contender for the Best Costume awards at the Halloween festival in October.
Poppy settled down beside her, and Hadley immediately sat down on her other side. Dane reached behind them and used his long arms to pull out Poppy’s bent wings, so they rested behind Wren, Poppy and Hadley.
Poppy leaned forward to look past her to Dane. “Hey, Hot Doc,” she said, laughing. She nudged Wren in the ribs. “That’s what she calls you anyway.”
The problem with best friends was that they had no problem embarrassing you. “Jeez, Pops.”
Dane ignored her comment and smiled at Poppy. “Hey back, pretty fairy.”
Poppy laughed, amused, her dark blue eyes now black. “So, I hear you are taking over old Dr. Morris’s practice.”
Dane pushed up the sleeves of his coat and raked back his hair. “I’d rather?—”
“—shove a scalpel in my eye,” Wren finished for him. “Dane thinks he can actually say no to Luna,” she told Poppy, teasing him.
The truth was that she thought that if anyone could defy her godmother, it was the man next to her. Because he was so calm, so stoic, few people realized you could only push him so far. Dane only did what Dane wanted to do.
Poppy clucked her tongue. “Nobody has managed it yet,” she told Dane, sounding completely serious. “You do know that she’s a witch, right?”
Wren rolled her eyes. “She’s not a witch, Pops. Or, if she is, she’s Witch-lite.” She turned back to look at Dane. “Poppy is on Team True Believer.”
From behind them, Hayes groaned. “It’s a testament to our long friendship that I allow you on my non-believer raft, Pops.”
Hadley turned to look at him. “I’m a True Believer, too, Dad,” she reminded him.
“But I’m stuck with you, princess,” Hayes retorted, the love for his daughter reflected on his face. “Pops, not so much.”
Poppy placed her hand behind her back, and Wren leaned back to see the middle finger she raised. Her friend might look like a fairy, but she was pure thug.
Poppy nudged her in the ribs with her elbow, and Wren, grimaced: she always had bony elbows. “I can’t believe that you, after spending most of your life in H-Town, won’t consider the possibility that ghosts exist.”
“It’s because I was raised in H-Town that I know they don’t exist,” Wren countered. “I mean, it’s a ghost-friendly town, and with all the phones around surely someone would’ve captured them on camera by now.”
Dane took the beer Hayes held out and handed it to Poppy. He looked at Wren and grinned, mischief in his light eyes. “So, what’s your excuse for seeing a ghost in the mirror of the dance studio?”
Why was he throwing her under the bus? “I did not see a gh?—”
Poppy gripped her forearm. “You saw a ghost? How could you not tell me?” she demanded, her eyes wide. “Are you being serious right now? We’ve been friends for more than twenty-five years, and you kept this from me?”
Wren glared at Dane, who simply smiled and sipped his beer. “I would have, if I actually believed I’d seen one,” she stated, shaking her head. “I’ll admit to seeing something, but it wasn’t a ghost.”
“You keep forgetting that I saw her, too,” Hadley said, and both Wren and Hayes tossed their hands in the air.
“I did some research, and I think she was Lila Finch, a dancer who fell from the balcony of the old theater in the twenties,” Hadley said, sounding like she was ordering coffee at Mickey D’s.
Poppy turned to face Hadley. “That’s so interesting, Hads. Tell me more. What, exactly, did you two see?”
Wren whipped her head around to glower at Dane, who was trying not to smile. “Do you see what you’ve started?” she demanded. “And when did you start believing in ghosts?”
“I told you when we first met that I don’tnotbelieve in them, that I’ve seen and heard things in theater that made me think there might be things out there we can’t explain.”
“Like what?” Wren demanded.
“Patients telling me about near-death experiences, and spirits leading them away. And then back into their bodies on my operating table, and I was left with no rational explanation as to why they survived. Rescuers telling me about people leading them to survivors, people they would never have found without help, but when they looked around, they were gone.” He shrugged. “I could go on.”
Despite seeing whatever she’d seen in the mirror, Wren still couldn’t make the leap. “I can’t get there, Dane.”
