“Jared!” she said.
He poked his head out of the kitchen. Mave stood with her hands on her hips, staring down at the daybed, which stood in the middle of the living room, completed.
“I told you not to touch it!” she said.
“Sorry,” Jared said. He carefully studied the room, trying to find where the firefly was hiding.
“I wasn’t even gone five minutes,” she said, giving the black metal bed frame a hard shake. “How’d you put it together so fast?”
“Magic,” Jared said.
After they lifted the daybed and placed it behind the screens, Jared sat on the couch, blowing on his tea to cool it. Mave came and sat beside him and together they stared at Sarah’s new alcove.
Either the firefly had put it together despite its intention of not intervening in this universe or they were being haunted by the most helpful poltergeist ever, Jared thought. In all the ghost stories he’d ever heard or read, no ghost had ever picked up an Allen key and helpfully assembled low-cost bedroom furniture. Dent had only been able to move things when he was mad. He stared at the daybed. It was weird. But who was he to judge what someone else did with their afterlife? Especially if it saved him from reading assembly pictograms.
“It’s not much of a room,” Mave said.
“Sarah’s pretty sick of couchsurfing,” Jared said.
—
He heard Sarah long before she came through the door, with Justice right behind her. His ex’s power sounded like someone had put sneakers in a dryer, a steady thump, a drumming. He didn’t want to hear her thoughts. There were lines and then there were lines. He did wonder why he couldn’t hear normal people, like Mave. Was it like a signal you had to be able to tune in to?
Sarah dropped her shopping bags when she saw the daybed.
One of your fireflies was here, he thought at her.
She looked up hopefully.
It’s gone now, but it’s watching you.
When Sarah smiled at him, he wanted to do whatever it took to keep her happy.
She went into his bedroom and dragged the mattress out, and while Justice and Mave tidied the plastic and cardboard, she made up her bed with the new linens. Justice had lugged in a suitcase, which turned out to be filled with Sarah’s clothes. Sarah rolled her suitcase over to the bed and unzipped it. Mave came over and picked up one of the dresses, guessing the fabric and vintage. Justice chimed in with the accessories she’d wear with it if it was hers and they all trooped into Mave’s room for a session of dress-up.
Once they were gone, Huey the flying head zipped into the living room. He landed on the coffee table, frowning, looking like a mime trying to convey sadness. He was faint, the brick red of his skin see-through.
“Hey, Huey,” Jared said.
Huey rose slowly, then headed towards the apartment door. He paused until Jared got off the couch to follow him. He opened the door and saw Huey zipping down the hallway, pausing at the last apartment, where Eliza lived with her mother, Olive. Ghosts still waited outside Eliza’s apartment. Huey hovered over them all then popped through Eliza’s door.
The ghosts turned their heads to Jared as he walked towards them, and he hesitated. Their attention made him cold, made his breath visible.
Damn, Jared thought. Shu had been Eliza’s playmate. His cousin had said that Shu was scary but that her world was scarier without her. This must be what Eliza meant. Maybe he should go back home. What could he do, honestly, but bring more trouble down on her?
The hallway lights dimmed for a second and all the ghosts disappeared and a new creature flickered into view, spinning so fast Jared couldn’t make out its face. Then it shot down the hallway to stand in front of him.
Eliza’s father, Aiden, was not an attractive presence. He had a yellowish tint to him, his eyes bulging in horror. Behind him, the thin, dark-red, squirming tentacle of some unseen creature wiggled through Eliza’s door, each sucker glowing nuclear-radiation green.
God, Jared thought. Eliza must be terrified.
Jared yelped as something touched his shoulder and he bumped into Aiden’s ghost, causing him to flicker and disappear. He turned to find his aunt.
“It’s just me,” Mave said. “I didn’t mean to surprise you.”
“Hey,” Jared said.
“Hey yourself,” Mave said. She peered around him down the hall. “What were you looking at?”
“I was trying to decide if it was too late to visit Eliza.”
“Ah,” Mave said. “Definitely wait till morning. He may have been an abusive asshole, but they’re taking Aiden’s death hard.”
“Okay,” Jared said, following her back home.
In the kitchen, he poured himself another glass of alder bark tea. Mave sniffed the jug.
“Very old-school,” she said. “My gran liked alder bark tea. Brings back memories. I think you have to take the sticks out, though, or it gets too bitter.”
—
After everyone else was deeply asleep, Huey returned, all sad eyes and down-turned lips. Jared couldn’t not follow him.
In the hall, the undead crowd was still staking out Eliza’s. The ghosts glared at him as he approached.
“Eliza’s my friend,” Jared said. “Leave her alone.”
They ignored him even as he stepped into them. He tried to think of them popping like water balloons, bursting and dispersing into the ether. His mother made it look easy. Maybe she could give him some pointers.
Don’t say you weren’t warned, Jared thought at them.
Aiden poked his head through the door, staring at Jared like the worst decoration ever. All the ghosts immediately vanished. Jared grunted as Aiden blurred and then hit him in the chest, making him stumble backwards.
“Fuck right off, witch,” Aiden said. “You and your whore of a mother. Trying to turn my girl into one of you.”
“I’m trying to help,” Jared said.
“You’ve got no excuse to be in her life.”
“Dude. That is super-ironic coming from you.”
Aiden hit him again, his ghostly hands cold. Jared banged into the wall.
Eliza? he
