I froze and Tracy kept walking.

As the man came closer I could see that the blood was mostly down one side and he was cradling his right arm, but it was sitting at an odd angle. He didn’t seem to see me. He must have been in shock. Blood covered his chest and the right side of his face and his right thigh looked wrong. Was it broken too?

My stomach churned — the gory details coming into focus as he approached — but I couldn’t pull my eyes away. I was vaguely aware of Tracy talking to me and of Johnny heading over to get a closer look at the guy. I knew he was a spirit and I knew that he hadn’t been dead for very long. Spirits always manifested with the injuries from whatever caused them to die. It faded after a while; sometimes days, sometimes after a week or more. And it meant that I had to deal with it till then.

I finally looked away as my mouth filled with saliva and I fought the urge to throw up.

“What’s wrong, Maddie? You look like you’ve seen a… oh, have you?”

I flinched, then remembered that she knew about my so-called gift. I just nodded.

“Really? Where?”

I pointed discreetly. “Over there. He’s in pretty bad shape. Car accident, maybe.”

She winced. “I imagine there would be a few fatal accidents on this road over the years.”

“Yes, but this one is…” I didn’t want to use the word fresh. “He looks like it just happened.”

“What do you mean? How can you tell?”

I explained how they carry their injuries and she cringed.

I gestured toward the people around us. “Everyone is walking toward the clock. It must have just happened. It must be down there.”

Tracy took a few steps in that direction, but there was no way I wanted to see this guy’s body for real. “I’m not going down there,” I told her. “I can’t.”

She nodded. “I understand. I just want to see if there is anything I can do to help. I have some healing crystals in my pocket. Can you wait here till I get back?”

“Yes.”

I sat on a bench on the footpath and listened as Johnny explained to the ghost that he was dead and about the kinds of things he could do in order to cross over. I didn’t want to look and I was relieved that the ghost was too dazed to realize I was looking straight at him earlier.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Once we finally got home and trudged up to my room, I remembered the silly things Johnny had done when I’d met Blake. All I wanted to do was kick off my shoes and relax, but I had to set this annoying spirit straight first.

He leaned back in the chair in the corner. “What a day.”

“Yeah. It went from bad to hellish, but you could have made things easier. You just decided to make my life a living hell.”

“What do you mean? How did I do that?”

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“What you did with Blake. I can’t believe you did that. What were you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t give me that crap. Were you trying to make me look crazy in front of the local priest and his son?” I glared at him. “It was nearly impossible to keep a straight face and concentrate on what they were saying. How can I ever get out of this place if they think I’m nuts?”

Johnny was silent. I sat on the edge of my bed and kicked off my boots. He looked like I’d just kicked his puppy, but even if he was feeling bad about it, it didn’t excuse what he did.

“I’m sorry, Maddie. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Come on, Johnny. You know how much I need to get home.”

“I know.”

“Please don’t do this to me.”

He looked at me with those soulful brown eyes and I softened. “Just don’t do it again.”

He gave me a scouts’ salute and crossed his heart. “I promise.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I know. Sorry.”

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

I looked at my phone’s screen. 8:50 am. I was ten minutes early for my first day of work and my nerves were jangling. Having nothing to do on the bus trip didn’t make me feel any better. It gave me plenty of time to think.

I’d been disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to tell Kellie about the job because she’d slept over a friend’s house last night. I had no idea where the others were this morning and Justina was being weird again. She’d kind of said hello, then ignored me.

I was also disappointed in my lack of progress in my short magic lesson after dinner. I pushed those emotions down. I had to concentrate today.

Ruby smiled as she unlocked the door from the inside and switched the sign to ‘open.’ “Come in.”

She told me where I could put my bag and showed me where the break room and the toilets were. Then there was the usual basic intro stuff and she made sure I knew how to use the cash register. It was hard to concentrate when my mind kept wandering back to the bloodied ghost yesterday. I wanted to talk to Ruby about it, but I didn’t even want to think about it. Weird, I know, but my emotions were all over the place.

My dreams had been filled with visions of the dead man and all that blood, but I was determined to do well in this job, so I pushed thoughts of him out of my head. Again.

At about 9:30, Justina walked in and her eyes went wide. She looked at Ruby with a question in her eyes.

Ruby smiled and said, “Hey, Justina. Maddie is our new assistant — Sascha’s replacement.”

Oh, my god! Justina works here?

“I will also be teaching her some stuff so she can catch up to the other girls in her class.”

Justina looked like she wanted to scream and hit something and I think my mouth was hanging open. “Oh. That’s good.”

Liar. She didn’t think it was good. Neither did I.

Ruby turned to me. “Justina usually works in the office with our online sales. She’s the techy one, so it’s a huge relief now that I don’t have to deal with all of that stuff anymore.”

I relaxed a tiny bit at hearing that. Maybe we could keep out of each other’s way.

Justina smiled and slipped into the office and Ruby continued with my orientation. A few customers came in and browsed around and Ruby served them while I watched.

A woman with long, dark hair wandered in after lunch and seemed to totter around like an elderly woman, but couldn’t have been much older than me.

Ruby saw the concern on my face. “That’s Jade,” she whispered. “She lost her first child — he was stillborn — and she had some kind of breakdown. Loses touch with reality. Poor thing.”

My heart felt heavy in my chest as I watched her. I’d spent some time with people with different mental problems the last few months and some of them had terrible stories, and this story made me feel infinitely sad.

She eventually made her way up to the counter with some amethyst crystals in her hand and placed them gently on the glass surface.

Ruby smiled. “Hi Jade, how are you? I’d like you to meet our new girl, Maddie.” She turned to me. “Maddie, this is Jade.”

We both said hi and when Jade looked at me, our eyes locked and it was like she was looking into my very soul.

Her jaw dropped and she whispered, “Adelina…”