Ruby's Ghost (6 page)

“Okay. We’re heading out. If you need anything, call.”

“Will do.”

“Lock the doors.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Like that was going to help keep the ghosts out.

Her mother smiled and passed straight through Tate as she walked away. He paled as if he wasn’t used to people going through him and then stood uncomfortably in her doorway. Eloise studied him. He looked very real, right down to the scuffing on his shoes and the wear on his well-fitting denim jeans. Who was she kidding? He was a distraction, anyway.

“What’s your last name?” she asked.

“Cooper. Why?”

She typed his name into the search engine. “Because I think we went to school together.” Then it looked less like cyber stalking and more like friendly curiosity. She glanced up him still standing in the doorway. “You can come in.”

“I usually like to know a woman’s name before I get invited into her bedroom.”

“I don’t think it counts when you’re incorporeal.”

“It counts more. It’s not like I can knock, and I’m just drifting around your house.”

He was right. He could just drift in when she was getting changed, or hover around when she was sleeping. She shivered as she realized that unlike a real man, Tate could go anywhere and she couldn’t stop him. Hopefully he was a nice guy and not an ass.

“Eloise Jones. Welcome to my bedroom.”

Tate let a small smile form. She didn’t look any more certain about this than him. Of course, she had the luxury of having a body while he was…he didn’t know what he was made of at the moment, but he couldn’t do anything except walk through things and move between this house and the accident. Not much of a near-death experience.

“Eloise Jones,” he said, testing out her name. Eloise wasn’t a common name, yet it sounded familiar. He looked at her again. Her dark hair was swept up into a ponytail, the shorter stands framing her face. No makeup, just simple and natural. Beautiful. He was willing to bet it didn’t take her an hour to get ready to go out. He glanced at her nails. They were short and unpainted, yet nothing about her said she didn’t care what she looked like—it was just that it wasn’t her focus at the moment. He glanced at the books on her desk, science books, then the animal calendar on her wall and a bunch of giraffe statues that lined a shelf.

She liked animals and was studying science and that was all he knew about her. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that he did know her from somewhere.

“Where did you go to school?”

She arched one eyebrow and he knew she’d already made the connection. “Greenborough High.”

The local high school, but they hadn’t been in the same year—he was sure of that. She couldn’t be much younger than him. “When did you graduate?”

“Year before last.”

A couple of years behind…he looked at her again. “Eloise Jones.” Then he knew. “There were fundraisers for you, and a special service at church.”

She gave him an awkward smile. “Yep, that’s me.”

Memories of the assemblies and fundraising to help her family came back. She’d almost died after being hit by a car. As a teenage boy he’d soon forgotten about her, distracted by studies and Ruby.

Guilt stabbed him again. But guilt wouldn’t bring Ruby back, and it wouldn’t help him wake up. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life drifting around waiting for something to happen.

“Did this ever happen to you?” He indicated his insubstantial body.

She bit her lip and he knew the answer without her speaking it. “I don’t recall. I don’t think so.”

Of course, and he probably wouldn’t remember either if he woke up. This would all be some kind of coma dream. Hell, maybe it wasn’t real anyway and he was imagining everything as his body fought to hold on. This was his mind’s way of coping with trauma. But when he looked at Eloise he wanted her to be real.

His gaze shifted from her to the computer screen. “What are you doing?”

Pink crept up her cheeks. “I was doing a quick search to find out who you are—double checking you’re not a vengeful ghost.” The corners of her lips quirked but didn’t make it into a full smile.

“You could’ve asked.”

“Yeah, and you’re going to tell me if you’re a serial killer in your spare time,
Dexter
.”

“True.” He shrugged. But she had invited a stranger into her house and bedroom, and if he wanted her to trust him, she needed to see who he was. He didn’t know if he’d be so welcoming if the situation were reversed. If he ever saw a ghost after this, he was going to be nice to them. “If you go to Facebook it will be faster.”

She nodded, did a couple of clicks then typed his name again. “Mechanical engineering?”

He didn’t answer; he was reading all the posts on his page. Friends wishing him a speedy recovery, messages of support and regrets for his loss. Pictures of him and Ruby together that people had posted. No one knew they’d broken up before the accident. He felt like a fraud accepting their sympathy and yet it still hurt. Ruby smiled back at him from the screen with red lips, her blond hair perfectly styled. She looked so full of life.

Because a couple of jerks decided to race around the block in the SUV after too many beers she was dead, and he could be following her if he didn’t wake up.

“Shut it down.” He stepped back and then let himself drop through the floor and out of her room. His legs jarred with the impact, but it wasn’t real pain, only the memory of what it would feel like.

That was his whole life lately. He knew what loving Ruby felt like yet all he had was the shadow that lingered afterwards. He’d lost it somehow and no matter how hard he’d tried to find it he couldn’t. It had taken months for him to realize it was gone and that no matter what he did or what she did, what they’d had couldn’t be resuscitated.

The worst part was he didn’t know exactly what had happened or when, only that when he looked at Eloise he’d felt alive again—kind of—that rush of seeing someone, of anticipating seeing her.

Eloise called his name. He looked up at the ceiling and briefly considered going back. But he couldn’t face her, not with pictures of Ruby gazing at him from the screen. It wasn’t right. Yet all he wanted was to feel alive, to stand in the sun and be warm. That had been missing in his life for too long.

Eloise blinked but he’d vanished again. Just because he was a ghost didn’t give him the right to disappear whenever it suited him. Did ghosts even care about manners? She called his name once and was half tempted to go and find him again, but restrained herself. She didn’t have time to chase him around, and she knew he’d be back when he was ready to talk. There wasn’t anywhere else he could go.

She bit her lip and glanced at the screen again. The outpouring of emotion there for everyone to see. He was well liked. And so was Ruby. She was also very pretty, in the way that looked like she spent a lot of time on how she looked.

Feeling rather plain in comparison Eloise pulled the hair elastic out of her hair and tossed it on the desk. She was in yoga pants, a T-shirt and runners. No makeup. None of which would have bothered her since she was staying home studying, but then she hadn’t counted on having a visitor wafting around in his own grief-riddled daze.

She’d have been freaking by now if she was bodiless and unable to wake up. How badly was he hurt? She remembered her injuries and her parents’ faces as they’d tried to explain to her how serious it was. Maybe not knowing was a blessing. At least when he woke up he’d be on the way to healing…if he woke up.

Tate was actually handling the ghost thing quiet well. He was dealing with the death of Ruby very well too. From the looks of the comments no one else knew it was over. Had it been a sudden fight and they were going to get back together or was it really over? It probably didn’t matter now.

She wrote down the details of the hospital he was at, even though the person had posted family only at the moment as he was in intensive care, then she closed Facebook. For a moment she sat staring at the screen. She wasn’t in the mood to study. Any other week she would have welcomed the distraction but this week she needed to focus and cram. One hour, then she would get up and have a stretch. She was the master of self-bribery.

Fifty minutes later she was halfway through an old exam paper and was feeling pretty happy with her achievements. It was much easier to try and answer the questions than to study endless notes. Maybe she could pull this off after all. And tomorrow she’d be convinced she’d fail because she wasn’t doing enough studying. She had to pass; she couldn’t afford to lose the car, and most of all she didn’t want to let her parents down. They’d wanted her to go straight to college, but she’d convinced them a year off was beneficial; however they might have been right. In the year away, she’d gotten out of the study habit, and it had taken her months to get back into it.

Sitting here for eight hours straight wasn’t going to help. It was coffee time. She rubbed her hands together—and maybe turn-on-the-heater time. The temperature was really starting to drop. Who knew a ghost could really cool the place down so fast? Not that she’d seen Tate since he’d dropped out of her room. Maybe he was hanging out in the lounge room or the kitchen. Anywhere was healthier than lingering at the accident scene and dwelling over Ruby. A shiver ran down her spine, but she brushed off the warning.

The house was cold and echoed around her as she jogged down the stairs, determined to get some circulation happening. In the kitchen she put on the kettle. Her breath clouded in front of her. Was it really that cold in here? She zipped up her hoodie and held her hands out to the stainless steel kettle to warm them up a little. A shadow moved behind her.

Eloise spun, expecting to see Tate, but there was no one there. The bubbling of the water in the kettle quickened to match her racing heart. Then the kettle clicked off and there was silence. Absolute quiet. The hair along her arms and up the back of her neck prickled.

“Hello?” Her voice quavered. She swallowed and waited.

Nothing.

She shook her head. One ghost and she was weirding herself out. But as she picked up the kettle she saw the shadow move in its surface again. This time she didn’t turn, she tried to ignore whatever it was, whoever it was. It certainly wasn’t Tate. It was one thing to see his spirit but another to have ghosts around that couldn’t really be seen, only sensed. Maybe it was nothing, just a dirty smudge. Except dirty smudges shouldn’t move over the surface and they certainly didn’t give off an air of infuriation.

She could swear there was someone standing behind her, arms crossed, eyebrows raised, ready to demand an explanation. An explanation for what? With careful determination, she stirred the sugar into her coffee. She would not get freaked out by a shadowy smudge.

With her cup in hand, she went outside where it was warmer. As she closed the glass sliding door the shadow was watching her. Eloise blinked and tried to pretend nothing was amiss, even though her heart was pounding loudly enough for the neighbors to hear.

Slowly she walked to the outdoor chairs, one eye on the windows. The shadow followed. She was sure there was another ghost in her house. Had Tate dragged something from the other side with him or was she now going to see ghosts at every turn? She glanced away from the house and saw Tate, sitting on the steps at the end of the verandah.

He was on the top step in a patch of sunlight. The light seemed to catch in whatever gave him shape so he was haloed in light, like an angel. For a moment she stood there transfixed. Then Shelby ran straight through him to crash into her leg with a playful head-butt that had been so much cuter when they hadn’t almost weighed the same.

She gave Shelby a scratch and then sat down next to Tate. “Hey.” She tried to act like everything was okay and there was nothing odd going on in her house.

“Hey.” He smiled but it was fragile. “Sorry about before.”

“It’s okay.” Eloise took a sip of her coffee. The cup warmed her hands.

“It was kind of strange reading about myself like that. About Ruby. I know this isn’t right—” he indicated his lack of body, “—but I don’t feel like I’m in intensive care clinging to life. I just feel kind of separated. Like it’s happening to someone else and there’s nothing I can do.”

“It’s okay. Maybe it’s for the best that you’re not there.” That sounded dumb. The kind of thing that people say when they don’t know what else to say. Which was exactly the situation she was in. But what could she say to him? She wanted to believe he’d go back when his body was ready. He was probably hoping the same thing. She pulled Shelby away from Tate. It seemed rude to let the dog keep walking through him, even though he didn’t seem to mind.

“I should be studying. I’ve got finals next week.”

Shelby rested her head on Eloise’s leg. No doubt there’d be a drool patch when she got up—nice—but Eloise didn’t push her away. Instead her hand patted the dog’s broad black head. The dog was warm and real, unlike Tate or the shadow in the house. “I’m sure the college has a sick policy.”

He shook his head, his blond hair hanging over his forehead as he looked at the ground. “It’s not just that. If I don’t get back, I won’t wake up. If I don’t wake up…”

He didn’t need to say his life would be over. They both knew that.

“We’ll work something out. I know where your body is now, so that’s a bonus.” She forced a smile.

Tate looked at her, his lips pressed together in a thin line, obviously not believing her platitudes. “If I die, I don’t want to linger around.”

“I understand.” It wasn’t like she had any claim on him.

“No you don’t.” He turned to face her. “I have no control over anything that’s happening. I might live, I might die, I might never wake up and be stuck like this forever, I might wake up and have no memory of ever meeting you.” He went to put his hand on her leg but it passed through her, like a cool breeze against bare skin. “I can’t do anything.”

He went to stand.

“Tate, just sit with me. Slow down. When I was stuck in hospital I used it as a chance to work out what I wanted. Sure I was thirteen, but I knew I didn’t want a boring job like my dad.” She looked at Tate. “He’s an accountant. I wanted to work with animals. I’m first-year science because I took a year off to travel—that was the other thing I wanted. I wanted to see the castles in Europe. I wanted to eat pizza in Italy.”