Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
Jamie was nodding, rapt. Poe was making a face Edgar recognized best from the times he didn’t get to pick the movie they’d watch as kids.
“What do they want?” Edgar asked, wishing to leave the realm of theory and enter the practical.
“I don’t know,” Aunt Alaitheia said. “Perhaps they have as many different desires as living humans do.”
“Why can we see them?” Poe asked, leaning in.
Aunt Alaitheia shook her head. “I don’t know. The Rondeaus have always had the gift—or the curse, depending on who you ask. We’re different from other people. We see more. Maybe ghosts sense that. Maybe that’s why they’re drawn to us.”
“Well, what can we do to make them back the hell off?” Edgar asked.
His aunt’s expression held more pity than Edgar was expecting, and it made him want to disappear.
“Oh, darling,” she said. “You have had a rough time of it, haven’t you?”
You’d have known that if you ever bothered to ask about us.
Edgar stared at the tabletop. It was buffed shiny, but the wood was deeply scarred and stained, a record of the years. He hadn’t realized how angry he still was. His aunt had been the one person who knew their circumstances, and she hadn’t done anything to help them.
Jamie put a hand on his knee.
“They terrify him,” Jamie said. “They jump out at him and melt through walls to startle him, and if they touch him, he feels cold and ill, and they won’t leave him alone. Do they have… unfinished business? Something that they need him to help with before they move along?”
“Horror fan, are you?” Aunt Alaitheia said.
“Well. Yes.”
“I’ve never found that interpretation very compelling,” she said. “Mainly because I don’t think ghosts experience time linearly. I don’t think they would be invested in getting revenge on a person or revealing a secret, because that involves understanding that something in the past is still affecting the present.”
She raised the absinthe bottle, the green liquor glowing where light shone through it, and offered it to Jamie.
“That stuff’s strong,” they said but motioned for her to fill their glass again. Poe did the same. For the third time, Aunt Alaitheia drank both her own and the one she poured for Edgar.
“One hundred and forty proof,” she said in agreement. “Just like Mama made it.”
“So you think they’re detached from their human lives and are what—just popping up wherever, with no rhyme or reason, and we see them because we’re fucking cursed?” Edgar demanded.
It came out sounding childish and irritable. But once the question hung there between him and Alaitheia, he found that anger burned through his veins. She had never once tried to help them when their mom had left them alone for days at a time. Or when, Edgar’s junior year of high school, his mom had brought home Marcus, who took over their house for a year, treating it like a bachelor pad, leering at Allie and ordering Edgar and Poe to bring him beers or fetch him cigarillos from the corner market.
Here she sat, apparently as unbothered about ghosts as she had been about him, Allie, and Poe for all those years.
“You’re saying that after they die, there is no right or wrong? What the hell good does that do me?! Even if they have no intentions or don’t understand their existence, I still experience the consequences. And they’re awful.”
His voice broke. He was breathing shallowly and blinking fast, trying to keep from crying. Jamie rubbed his leg, a reminder that he wasn’t alone anymore.
His aunt’s expression was somber but curious. “You feel malice from them?” she asked.
“Hell yes, I feel fucking malice from them. They’re ghosts! They shouldn’t be here! It doesn’t make any sense.”
He slumped in his seat.
Aunt Alaitheia regarded him calmly, her expression calculating.
“What is it that you believe then? What explanations have comforted you by making sense?”
Suddenly, Edgar felt like a child. Sense. What did that even mean? So little in the world made sense. People spent their lives amassing money and did nothing good with it. People hurt one another constantly. They destroyed their home planet with no thought to the future. They were hateful and capricious and selfish and unkind. Nothing made sense. Why should ghosts be any different?
He squeezed his fists together, fingernails cutting into his palms, the way he had as a teenager, so full up with feelings he needed a way to keep them inside.
“I guess I don’t have one,” he said finally. “We came here because I hoped you might know something. But I guess not.”
Poe lurched across the table and grabbed the absinthe bottle. He put a sugar cube directly into his mouth, then swirled a pull of liqueur like mouthwash and swallowed. His cheeks were flushed and his dark hair wild.
“See, that’s always been your problem,” he said to Edgar. “You think sense equals good and nonsense equals bad. But most people just want whatever makes them feel not like shit in the moment. They’re acting out of desperation or desire or whim.” He tossed back another absinthe, eyes wild. “You’ve decided that ghosts are an aberration because they scare you. Being scared of something doesn’t give you the right to try and obliterate it. When people try to do that, we call them villains.”