Chapter 4

"I promise I'll get more fairy dust. You won't have to wear it forever. Just for the moment so we can all see you. They can't help you if only I can see you, Ralph," Shamus said gently.

"Is she bitching?" Nina asked, with a nudge to Shamus's ribs. "I said I'd go get it. Tell her to shut the fuck up and quit being such a baby. It's just a sheet, for shit's sake, and a good one at that. Egyptian cotton, five-hundred thread count. It's been washed. What's the fucking problem?"

Ralph sighed and held up her arms, using her hands to try to adjust the eyeholes they'd cut into one of Nina's sheets so she could see. To no avail though. She couldn't actually touch the sheet.

Her hands flapped around, slicing recklessly through the material.

"Tell Nina I'm sorry. I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth. I really don't. I truly appreciate her help, their help, and yours, too, Shamus. I'm trying to adjust, is all. I mean, I did just find out someone shot me."

That's what the article had said. She'd been shot, but no further details were available yet.

Who would shoot her? Why would they shoot her? Had they been trying to rob the store? She'd only had twenty bucks in the till, for Pete's sake! What could they possibly want from her?

That stupid article did little to nothing to help with any information. Marty's suggestion to go to her place made the most sense, but how could she do that if she couldn't leave Nina's lair?

Also, there was the gunshot wound. How she'd missed a hole in her chest for an entire week was a mystery to her. That she hadn't seen it was a testament to how bewildered she'd been for the last seven days.

Maybe it was because she had a dark cable-knit cardigan over her blouse, or maybe she was simply losing her mind, but the hole was there, right under her heart.

Now that she could see it, it felt like a gaping wound.

"Tell her we said it's okay, Shamus. No one understands the confusion that comes with this kind of life-altering change the way we do," Wanda said. "No need to apologize."

Her heart warmed. As she and Marty scurried off to leave instructions for their children with Archibald, Ralph couldn't help but think Wanda was so nice.

But without their chatter, that left Ralph with her thoughts and this hunk of a pointy-eared silver fox. "So what do we do next about finding out why I haven't ascended or descended or whatever?"

"Have you tried to leave the castle at all, Ralph?"

She paused as she stood behind Shamus at the wide steel-front doors. "Will that help determine what kind of ghost I am?"

"It'll help determine whether you're tethered here. If something drew you here, like an item or another ghost, even."

Sighing, Ralph asked, "Another ghost?"

"Yes. Sometimes, another ghost or even a reaper will lead you to your final destination. Maybe, for whatever reason, they brought you here."

She wanted to lean her head against Nina's wide doors and cry. "And what? Forgot about me altogether?" That wouldn't surprise her. She was almost always lost in the mix of one thing or another. She wasn't a very good squeaky wheel, leaving her lost in the shuffle more often than not.

He reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Let's focus on whether you can go outside. Have you tried?"

Tugging at her shirt, she gave him a sheepish look. "No. I guess I was too afraid."

Which was the tone of her entire life. A little bit afraid of everything. A lover, not a fighter. Cautious, risk averse. The biggest risk she'd ever taken was opening the book store. But what had that gotten her?

Dead. That's what. Dead and left to haunt a vampire's castle.

But even if she could leave the castle, where would she go? Home? How did she get there? Did she float? Hitch a ride in someone's car? Take the train?

"Then you might not be the kind of ghost who's attached to something here in Nina and Greg's castle. That'll help."

"So I'm not a stage-five clinger, then?" she half-joked.

He chuckled, deep and throaty. Apparently as a ghost, she could still swoon, and Shamus was head swoon-maker in charge of all her swoon needs.

"It only means we don't know what brought you here to begin with. You don't know Nina or Greg or any of the ladies, so I'm going to go with something brought you here. But we don't have to have the answer to that just yet. For now, we need to know why you're still here."

"If you think about it, I do sort of have unfinished business. My cat Blanche, for instance. I need to get to her. I'm so worried about what will happen to her." Tears filled her eyes. They didn't fall, they didn't even get her eyelashes wet, but they sat behind her eyelids like hot lead. "Maybe that's why I'm stuck?"

"Maybe," he replied vaguely, leading her to believe that wasn't at all why she was stuck. "How about we see if you can leave the castle while we wait for Nina to come back with my fairy dust."

"But didn't you say you were from Manhattan?"

"I did. I am," he confirmed with another amicable smile.

"It's going to be a while then. Manhattan's a long way from Long Island. Maybe we can wait a little?" She was stalling. Ralph hadn't realized it during the week she'd spent here, but admitting she was afraid now felt like the right fit.

Her entire life had been upended like a drawer with the contents dumped on the floor. The castle had been a good place to land. Despite the fact that she didn't know these people, despite the fact that these people should have scared the life out of her, she felt safe here.

They hadn't known she was there, but she could watch their interactions as a family, and that had been a secure harbor while she'd drifted. An anchor.

"Nina can fly, Ralph." Shamus said, jolting her out of her thoughts. "She'll be back in five minutes tops."

How had she missed that detail? "Fly? That's a joke, right?"

"It's not a joke. She really can fly. Some vampires can."

Ralph couldn't help but ask, "Does she turn into a bat when she does it?" She flapped her arms under the sheet.

He laughed again, shaking his silver head. "No, but instead of Nina's powers, how about we focus on seeing whether you can leave the castle so we can determine if anything, maybe an item or something, is keeping you here."

She stiffened, looking around the enormous space, with its arched doorways leading off to other rooms and the checkered flooring. "I'm afraid," she whispered with honesty. "What if what's out there is going to hurt me? Why can't I just stay here? I won't bother anyone. I can even stay in the basement for now."

As if being afraid was new to her. She'd taken the safe path for all her life. She kept her heart close to her chest, her thoughts and opinions even closer.

"What if I held your hand?"

What if he did?

Ralph's heart skipped a beat. How was that possible? Her heart had been blown to bits in her chest.

Maybe it was a phantom heartbeat, like when you lose a limb. Whatever the explanation, the thought of putting her hand in his excited her. Thank goodness for the sheet over her head. It hid her embarrassment.

"How can you hold my hand?"

Shamus straightened the fabric so her eyes had visibility again and scanned her sheet-covered face, looming at least ten inches taller than her.

"Because I can. I don't know how or why. I inherited the ghost thing from my grandmother. It skipped a generation, and the best guess we have is because my mother's an elf and has magical properties, and my father's mother—my grandmother, her name was Ramona—could see ghosts, and they sort of merged and made me." He intertwined his fingers together to signify this merge he spoke of with a smile.

Ralph found she wanted to know more about him and this fascinating life he led. "So you've done this all your life?"

"Seen ghosts?"

"Yes."

He cocked his head. "As far back as I can remember. Nana Ramona, while she was alive, taught me how to cope, and eventually how to help entities get to where they needed to be."

Ralph thought back to her high school days and how hard they'd been, being so shy and quiet. She was a target for every bully this side of the Mason Dixon. She couldn't imagine what that was like for a guy with pointy ears who saw ghosts.

"High school must've been a blast for you."

He leaned against the door, crossing his arms over his chest. "You mean my ears, right?"

"Well, those and ghosts popping up around every corner. How do you hide that?"

"I can hide my ears if need be, and I learned from a very young age how to keep my ghostly visitors under wraps. Now it's even easier because of cell phones. I can pretend I'm talking to someone and no one's the wiser."

"I guess a guy your size probably didn't have too much trouble in school anyway."

He cocked his head, a look of interest on his face. "Did you? Have trouble in high school?"

She snorted. "Ask Roxanne DeLeon what kind of trouble I had."

Just thinking about Roxy D. gave her heart palpitations. Roxanne was her worst nightmare from sophomore year until the day they graduated. All because she'd tutored her stupid boyfriend, Cliff Hanson, in math for a semester.

Roxanne had accused her of coming onto him, when it had absolutely been the other way around. He wasn't at all interested in math, he was more into marine biology.

The kind where he was the octopus and she was his prey. He'd been all hands, Mr. Grabby McGrabberson was.

She'd spurned Cliff and his advances because of Roxy and her reputation for being super jealous. She didn't want what had happened to Lainie Matheson to happen to her. Lainie and Cliff had made out under the gym bleachers. Even though they'd been broken up at the time, Roxy found out and went ballistic. She'd spray painted a message for Lainie on her locker, labeling her a whore with crabs.

"So I take it Roxy was your mean girl in high school?"

"She was the bane of my existence."

"There's one in every school across the globe, huh?"

She chuckled until she realized where she was. Looking around, she blinked. "Gracious…we're outside!"

Somewhere between her recollection of Roxy and the hell she'd made her teenage years, and his memory of high school and seeing ghosts, Shamus had managed to take her hand and lead her outside.

Ralph could feel his hand. Oh my God, she could feel it! And it felt amazing.

He smiled at her, letting her fingers go. The regret she experienced when he released her stung. "Then we can check that off our list. You're not attached to anything in Nina's. Though, something in her house might have drawn you here."

"Or ditched me here. But who or what?" Ralph mused, looking around in wonder. It was a frigid day. She couldn't feel the chill, but she could see it in the air and in the condensation shooting from Shamus's mouth when he spoke.

She could see it on the limbs of the bare trees and the ice hanging from them. In the small snowdrifts piled against the sides of the eternally long driveway.

Shamus zipped up his heavy leather jacket and tugged his cap over his pointy ears. "I don't know, but for now, you know what this means, don't you?"

She held up her hands in a helpless gesture. "I can take that trip to the Caribbean I've been putting off? Think of all the free airfare."

"Hah! There's that, but before you take that trip around the world, you can go to your apartment and check on your cat."

Ralph's insides warmed. "Her name's Blanche Devereaux, in case you were wondering."

He grinned. "Like the Golden Girl?"

"One and the same. She was my favorite."

"Really?" he asked, cocking his head in thought. "Mine was always Rose. I always thought she got such a bum rap for being so positive, but no one could turn a bad situation around the way Rose could."

She fought using her hand to fan herself. Rose was his favorite. If she'd ever had to contain a breathy sigh, now was the time. He made her knees melty.

"She was also impossibly na?ve."

"And that's a bad thing how?"

Nina skidded to a stop in front of them, kicking up snow, thwarting any further Rose talk. "Look at who got the fuck out of my castle." She rooted around in her hoodie pocket and pulled out a small satchel. With one fell swoop, she yanked the sheet off Ralph and hurled fairy dust at her.

Ralph coughed, swatting at the flying particles before straightening. "Can you see me now?"

Nina nodded. "Clear as flippin' day. So what does this mean, Ghostbuster?"

"It means she can leave. She's not tethered here. I don't know why she landed here, if maybe she was brought here, but that's not as important as the fact that she can travel."

"Travel? What the fuck does that mean?"

"Some ghosts are attached to a person. They can't go anywhere their host doesn't go."

"Welp, it's good to know I'm still single," Ralph said on a laugh.

Shamus looked at her in the fading light of the afternoon, his hair extra silver under the bruised purple and blue sky. "Were you ever married?"

"Are you?"

Had that bold question come from her mouth? Wanda wasn't kidding when she said your brain no longer had control of your mouth when something like this life-altering happened to you.

"Not anymore. I was, though. For fifteen years."

His gravelly voice made her shiver. She wanted to ask what happened, but Nina jammed her face between the two of them.

"Listen, it's great you two wanna get to fucking know each other, but this isn't The Dating Game and I'm not Chuck Woolery. Quit twirling your hair and batting your eyelashes and let's get this show on the fucking road. Or don't you want to get your cat and see if something at your apartment might help you hit the highway to Heaven? Because if you don't, I do."

Instantly, Ralph pulled her finger from her hair in guilt, looking down at her feet, still in her ballet slippers with drops of rusty red on them.

Blood?

Was that her blood?

Did it matter?

You were murdered, Ralphie. Don't you want to know who did it?

Shaking off her thoughts, Ralph nodded. "Of course… I want to see if there's something that'll help me move on, and of course I want to get Blanche."

And then she wanted to sit on her comfortable couch, pull her favorite blanket around her, and cuddle with her cat. Fall asleep with the sounds of the city as her lullaby.

Nina pointed as a dark Suburban pulled around front. "Then float your ass to that big SUV and let's ride. I got shit to do."

Wanda popped the passenger door open with a smile in Ralph's direction. "I can see you! Yay!" She wiggled her finger. "C'mon, honey. Get in. Let's go get your cat!"

Her stomach gurgled and her heart raced. Sort of. More phantom pain, maybe?

Either way, they were going back to the scene of the crime.

Where she'd been murdered.

And Ralph was terrified.