“She’s gone. She was staring at me, weirdly.”
“Maybe she got a bad shot of coffee, Vickie. Hey, not trying to be insulting or anything here, but it’s not always about you, Vick!” Roxanne said lightly.
Vickie laughed. “Yeah, yeah, honestly, I know!”
“So! Back to earth here. Griffin is on his way?” Roxanne asked.
“In a roundabout way,” Vickie said. “We’ll just have dinner and go to my place.”
“You’ll go to your place,” Roxanne said. She shivered. “I want to stay a mile away from whatever it is you have going on!”
Vickie didn’t blame her friend; Roxanne had gotten a concussion when she’d been dragged into the investigation during the Undertaker case. She might have been killed.
“Oh! What I said—it sounded absolutely horrible!” Roxanne said, wide-eyed. “I mean, I’d like to think that I’m a good friend, that I’d be with you through thick and thin, but—”
“It’s okay!” Vickie assured her.
“You two will want to talk. Do you think that Griffin caught the person who attacked Alex? Do you think that Alex is safe now?”
“I don’t know. Griffin seems to think that there’s more than one person involved.”
“Oh! Then...maybe Alex isn’t just rude, or forgetful, or having an emergency with his dog,” Roxanne said.
“He doesn’t have a dog, Roxanne, and I am getting more and more worried.”
Vickie managed a smile for her friend. “It’s okay. Go home. I do understand. And Griffin will be tired and we will need to talk. So, we’ll finish dinner...and hope that Alex is okay. That he’s just being rude—and the danger facing him is going to be from me!” Vickie said. She tried to speak lightly.
She just didn’t believe that Alex was rude. He was too good a guy.
And that meant...
She tried to keep her worry at bay as they ordered and made small talk as they waited. She didn’t do so very well. She picked at her food. And finally, Roxanne said, “Hey, let’s go. I have to wrap up my latest painting to bring to a gallery at Copley Square tomorrow. And you’re not enjoying your time with me. And I’m enjoyable. So let’s just cut it short. I know you’re worried.”
They left the restaurant, walking together as far as they could to their apartments, and then warning each other to keep their eyes out for trouble.
Both women carried whistles and mace—something Griffin had insisted on after all the trouble during the Undertaker situation.
But Vickie reached her apartment with no one doing anything other than giving her a nod in acknowledgment as they passed—that was Boston’s method of a smile, she thought. A nod!
Entering her apartment, she called Griffin’s name, but she didn’t believe that he’d returned yet, and he hadn’t.
Her apartment, however, wasn’t exactly empty.
It appeared that a young couple was seated on her sofa.
They were both just teenagers, and attractive. He had been a high school football hero, well-built, charming, quick to smile. She had been a light-haired, light-eyed beauty, incredibly sweet, tragically naive. They were really adorable—completely absorbed with one another...
And dead.
Of all things, they seemed to be watching a marathon showing of The Walking Dead on Netflix.
The boy was Dylan Ballantine. He’d saved Vickie’s life when she’d been a teenager—and he’d haunted her ever since. A good thing, since he’d helped incredibly in the recent Undertaker situation. His family had been involved, and Dylan dearly loved his family.
The young lady...
She was newer at being a ghost.
Tragically, she’d been a victim of the Undertaker.
Vickie saw the remote on the coffee table and picked it up to turn the volume down.
“Hey,” she said to the two.
“Hey, Vickie! We didn’t expect you back yet!” Dylan jumped up, looking as guilty as a teen caught petting in the back seat of an old Chevy. “We thought you’d be late, that you and Alex would go on forever and ever over all you’d dug up!” Dylan added. “We aren’t really TV hogs, you know.”
“It’s okay. You know you’re welcome to the television. I’m happy that you guys are enjoying your...”
She almost said “lives”!
“Enjoying each other, being together. Enjoying...”
“The Walking Dead?” Dylan asked, amused.
“You’re ghosts, not zombies,” she reminded him. Dylan did have a wicked sense of humor—he’d spent years totally enjoying tormenting her, trying to make her speak to him in public and, in short, look entirely crazy.
Years ago, Vickie had been babysitting when an escaped serial killer had targeted her. Her charge—Noah Ballantine—had been born after the death of his older brother, Dylan, who’d been struck by a drunk driver at seventeen. And when the psycho had been in the house, Dylan had materialized before Vickie, warning her to grab Noah and get the hell out.
Terrified, she had done so. At that time, Griffin Pryce had been a cop and was out on the street, and he’d been the one to bring down the man who had been about to kill her and Noah.
While she’d felt an instant connection to Griffin, she hadn’t seen him again until he had returned to Boston as an FBI agent, looking into the Undertaker kidnappings and killings.
But while the ghost of Dylan Ballantine spent much of his time in his parents’ home, which wasn’t far from Vickie’s, he’d apparently made it his vocation in death to haunt Vickie, down in New York City when she had been at the university, and again here, in Massachusetts, since she had moved back. He’d actually become an amazing friend—although one who still liked to taunt her in public and make her appear to be insane when she forgot herself and responded to him.
And now, Dylan had a friend of his own—a ghost friend.
Darlene Dutton was a couple years older than Dylan, but she was equally sweet and innocent. She had been the first victim of the Undertaker murders. And while she had seen justice done, it appeared that she liked learning about the spirit-world-on-earth—and being with Dylan. So it seemed she was sticking around.
Dylan was now an experienced ghost. He was quite capable of manipulating items, like moving a can of pop a few inches or using a remote control. And he had no problem making himself seen to those with the special gift of seeing the dead. Vickie had noticed that while most of the population didn’t see Dylan or Darlene, they did often stop and frown when the ghosts passed, or shiver, as if aware that they’d been brushed by someone or something that they hadn’t seen.
“Alex didn’t show,” Vickie told them.
Dylan immediately looked perplexed. Alex couldn’t see Dylan—he didn’t see ghosts. But Dylan had tagged along with Vickie to a couple meetings with Alex.
He liked the nerdy historian. And he admired him.
“Alex didn’t show? I think he lives for his time with you and other friends with whom he can actually talk a lot of history. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but... It’s weird he flaked.”
“I’ve told Griffin that Alex didn’t show up. We’ll figure out something when he gets here. By the way—since I doubt you guys watched the news at any point—Griffin stopped one of the attackers tonight. A head-smasher, just like Alex’s assault. And the guy killed himself rather than be taken.”
“Wow,