The harshness in his features softened by a fraction, a minuscule crack in the hard mask of his anger. He stared at me for a long moment, then gave a single nod. “Fine. I’ll wait outside.” He jerked his head at the balcony. “You have an hour.”
“Thank you,” I whispered and watched him park himself in one of the chairs, eyeing the sad palm with a touch of pity.
Taking a bracing breath—I kept forgetting I didn’t need to breathe in this form—I turned toward the closed door in the opposite wall, leading most likely to Tay’s bedroom. She was an early riser, but glancing at the digital clock showed it was barely past six in the morning...a bit early even for Tay, especially on the weekend. Chances were she was still sleeping, and I just hoped she didn’t have company over.
Grimacing, I approached the door and tried the handle. My hand slipped right through it.
Dammit. Blasted ghost form.
You can walk through walls. Azazel’s earlier comment echoed in my mind.
Well, then. Let’s try that.
Closing my eyes, I stepped forward, right through the door. When I opened my eyes again, I stood indeed on the other side, a small, darkened bedroom greeting me.
Taylor was sprawled on her bed, wearing some sort of rainbow-dotted pajamas, the sheets half-tangled around her. Thankfully, she was alone. This whole thing would be a lot more complicated if she’d had someone over.
I bit my ghostly lip—not feeling it, which was another drop of weird in a sea of strangeness—and pondered how to do this. I didn’t want to give her a heart attack.
Maybe I could move something to wake her? Azazel said I could touch things if I focused, right?
I concentrated on a pillow lying on the floor and leaned down to pick it up, trying hard to imagine my fingers actually touching the material instead of slipping through. It took me eleven attempts, but I finally managed to gingerly scoop up the pillow and sort of levitate it in front of me with my ghost hands. I still didn’t feel it, which made for an interesting experience balancing the pillow and keeping it afloat.
No wonder a lot of ghost stories featured objects clattering around in often uncontrolled fashion—if this was the only way how ghosts could move things, it made sense those movements would appear clumsy.
Okay. This was going to be...a bit cliche.
I focused and slapped the pillow down on Taylor’s face.
She shot upright as if hit with an electric shock. Eyes huge and rounded, she whipped her head around to scan the room, her hand groping for the switch to her bedside lamp. Light spilled from the small lamp, and Tay frowned at the empty room.
Right, she couldn’t see me yet.
Focus, focus…
I knew the precise moment I became visible. Taylor’s shriek shook the walls.
“It’s okay, it’s okay!” I held my hands out in a placating gesture. “It’s me! I’m real, I’m not a ghost—well, not really, I mean, in terms of appearance and walking through walls and such, okay, yes, I’m like a ghost, but I swear I’m not dead!”
“Zoe?” Tay clapped both hands over her mouth, her face white as chalk, her strawberry blond hair coming undone from her messy bun.
“Yes.” I nodded and took a slow step closer, as if approaching a skittish cat. “I’m here. For a visit.”
Taylor closed her eyes. “Wake up,” she murmured. “Wake up, wake up, wake up…”
“You’re not dreaming. I’m really here. Look at me. Please.”
She opened one eye and peered at me.
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” I said, “but I don’t have much time. I want to visit my mom next, and I can only stay so long here on Earth before the connection to my body in Hell gets severed and my soul becomes a ghost doomed to roam around here until I turn into a poltergeist and start smashing things and hurting people and I really don’t want to hurt people and—”
“All right, all right!” Tay held up a hand. “I believe you. No way I could come up with that much creative rambling in a dream.”
I grinned. “I miss you so much.”
Taylor took a trembling breath. “It’s really you. You’re...back. Oh, God.”
She threw the blanket off and jumped out of the bed, and the next second her arms closed around me.
Or...would have closed around me, had I been solid.
Instead, Taylor sort of ended up hugging herself. I stepped back just as she realized, her face