I went down the stairs, two floors not being worth the effort of taking the elevator when I didn't have anything bulky to bring with me. The plan was for Jack and I to stay at the smoothie shack from the time it opened to as late as we needed to to catch this ghost.
"Should we try to talk the ghost down before we save the person, or do we just follow her out and try to save her?" I asked Jack we descended the winding staircase. I was torn on the subject. On one hand, before we stopped her from killing anyone would be the time she would be most willing to listen to reason, but it could also prompt her to take countermeasures against us if she knew what we would do.
"I don't think she'll see reason. I don't know why, but I've got this feeling about it," Jack said. Jack's gut feelings were far more trustworthy than my own, so I let them decide our course of action. I just hoped we didn't get the cops called on us for following someone home for no discernable reason.
"Sounds like a plan, or at least the idea of a plan," I responded as we made it to the lobby.
Jack led the way to his car, pushing the fob on his keychain twice to unlock the metal contraption. I pulled the passenger side open, carefully slipping my fingers around the edge of the door to prevent it from hitting into the car directly adjacent and slipping in, my basketball shorts sliding smoothly across the leather. The door shut with a muted bang as Jack closed his door and started the car.
The smoothie shack wasn't far, maybe a couple of miles. We arrived at the shop at around nine thirty according to my watch, a solid half hour before it actually opened. We waited in Jack's car, which he turned off to save gas and battery. It wasn't like it was hot enough to need AC, and it was the tail end of summer, so it didn't get cold enough to need heat for another few months.
"What do we do when she starts killing someone?" I asked Jack after a few minutes of sitting in silence.
"I think one of the witnesses said there was floating? I guess what we do is we just. . . pull her away and run off. I don't know what to do if that doesn't work, try and talk the ghost out of it?" Jack clearly wasn't confident in any of his answers, but they were more answers than my thoughts which just seemed to get tangled in a heap on the floor.
After another long moment of silence I noticed when an open sign flickered to life in the front window of the store as several employees wandered slowly about inside, getting everything set up for customers. Jack didn't see because he was scrolling on some website on his phone. I tapped his elbow and popped the passenger door open to let me out. Jack followed suit and locked the door once both doors were shut so we didn't have to worry about that while we waited for a dead person to try and play reaper again.
We walked into the doors, a small chime escaping a bell set just above the door for a short moment. The young boy behind the counter shot his head up to look at us. "Uh, welcome in, what can I do for you?" he asked. He seemed shocked that someone had come in so soon after opening. I could tell he didn't want to make anything yet, but he would if he had to. There was a single circular table inside and two benches along a wall. I could tell they were mostly there for people to wait for smoothies, but today they would serve a different purpose.
"I don't think we need anything right now, we're just waiting for someone. You can just pretend we're not here," Jack said with a faint smile as he pulled a chair from the low table and sat down, pulling out his phone but clearly looking up more often then watching his phone. I did the same, sliding my phone out of my pocket and watching videos of people picking locks and making fun of master locks, a joke that got more funny the deeper into lockpicking I went.
"Oh, uh, alright. I'll be here if you need anything," he said, then he moved away from the counter for a second to grab a rag that I guessed was soaked in some cleaning solution that he used to wipe off the counters.
"We should be all ready to go for a while," said a large woman as she came in from the back. I estimated her to be around forty, her dark skin to dry and worn to be young but not wrinkly enough to indicate someone truly old. "Oh, hello. Are they waiting on us?"
"No, there's someone they're waiting for," responded the younger boy.
She shrugged and moved to the back again, leaving the boy out front in case someone came in to actually order a smoothie. I felt kind of bad just sitting in here, keeping them from relaxing from our mere presence. I remembered my part time jobs during high school, unable to have the conversations I usually would because it would look bad in front of customers, and there was no real way to tell who would leave a bad review from it and who wouldn't. Although, my boss was always a bit crazy about getting bad reviews, always up our asses about something or other that we couldn't really control.
We waited, the workers growing more and more uncomfortable at our continued presence as the minutes dragged by. Several people walked in, ordered a smoothie, and left. Sometimes they asked for more exotic flavors, other times they would ask some of the dumbest questions I'd heard in a long time. I did not find myself missing my high school years, I'll say that much. Customer service was not my forte. Business started picking up, more and more people coming in and buying overpriced blended fruits in obscene quantities. Really, what was one person going to do with thirteen smoothies? Such an oddly specific number.
I shook my head, watching as several ghosts milled in and out, none particularly more interesting then another. My eyes stayed focused, waiting for one murderous ghost to make herself known. I'd seen her twice, twice! I couldn't believe that she was so bold as to show her face when she was as powerless as I was but not when she's easily far more powerful.
"When do you think she'll come in?" I whispered to Jack at about noon, just before what I assumed would be a lunch rush.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
"I don't know. If her magic thing only works at night then she'll probably show up later. Can't tell you when though, there's no way of knowing, her pattern's just too chaotic," Jack responded, looking up from the table where he was resting his head. I smiled lightly as I noticed the red diamond pattern that the table had imprinted onto his forehead.
"You've got some. . . Jewels," I pointed out with a finger to his forehead.
"What?" Jack reached up to his head and felt the bumps left behind by the table. "Shit." He started rubbing his forehead to try and remove the grooves that had imbedded themselves into his face. I chuckled softly, too softly for him to hear through the vicious rubbing that was going on over there.
There was a huge rush at around two, the four workers quickly getting bogged down in more orders than could be reasonably fulfilled. I felt bad for them, I really did. One of their coworkers had been brutally murdered just a few months prior and they had to train someone entirely new, plus it got unreasonably busy. Then there's the fact the at customer service is just a terrible job to work, and it looked like everyone had to do everything. It may not have seemed bad on the surface, but watching these kids all day helped remind me of the hell that kind of job really was.
I looked at every face, trying to find a potential victim, or possibly even the ghost. If we could get a good eye on either one, the chances were that we could save a life that night. While I looked I thought, humming the song she played when she killed someone to myself as I did. It kind of freaked Jack out, I could tell, but he didn't say anything. This song had been the playlist for the investigation, it was the thing I was humming when I had some of my most brilliant breakthroughs.
As much of this investigation I contributed to Jack, I really did do a lot of the heavy lifting with breakthroughs. I knew it was because I didn't communicate well, he only had the information I had given him, which had been vague at best. Of course I made the big breakthroughs, I knew all the small details that connected into this web of insanity, so of course I was able to see the connections. Jack would have found them so much faster if he'd had everything.
Not for the first time I found myself wishing Jack had been the one born with this ability instead of me. He'd probably still be able to talk to his friends, and he would have been even smarter than he was now. And he would have been able to solve this case on his own instead of relying on me to do everything. If Jack had experienced seeing ghosts he probably would have seen a way to stop the ghost that put less people at risk.
There was nothing to do, so I just waited and watched. I decided to buy a smoothie, the employees had grown uncomfortable with our presence and had asked each other about us, questions which unfortunately didn't have understandable answers. I figured the least I could do was buy something.
"Hey," I said as I approached the counter. At the moment the employees, Jack, and myself were the only people in the store, so I didn't feel like I was contributing to a rush.
"Hello, what can I do for you?" said a young girl, maybe sixteen. She seemed overjoyed to be working here, but if you looked deep enough you could see exhaustion barely hidden behind a thin veneer of false excitement.
"Hey, I'm just getting two smoothies. Let's go with. . ." I looked at the flavors they had and picked two out of the lineup. "I'll do the Passionate Dragon and Perfect Peach," I said. The names almost sounded like bad pornos to me, but such is marketing.
"Is that all?" she asked.
"Yeah, that'll be it for me," I responded as I pulled my card out of my wallet.
"Okay, whenever you're ready to pay, while you're doing that I'll get it all set up for you," she said as she whipped around, her long, dark, hair swinging around and hitting her in the face, regardless of the fact that it was in a pony tail that should have prevented that kind of accidental assault. I chuckled lightly at her expense and followed the instructions on the pad. When I finished paying I sat back down next to Jack.
"You got a smoothie?" he asked.
"Actually, I got two. I got you a dragon fruit one, sounds like the kind of weird exotic thing you'd like," I responded.
"I do like dragon fruit," Jack said quietly, almost to himself as he nodded. With that silence fell over us as we waited for something to change.
"Two smoothies?" I heard from the counter. I stood up and walked over. "One Passionate Dragon, and one Perfect Peach." She pushed the cups towards me and stepped back from the counter to take her gloves off. I took the cups and took them back to our little table, handing the white colored one to Jack. We sipped slowly, our heads whipping around to the door any time the bell rang to indicate a new customer, or sometimes another employee as I'd learned in my day.
I was halfway through my shake when the bell atop the door rang with a shrill cry. I looked up as I had at every sound throughout the day. It was the ghost, or at least I thought it was for a moment. She was the spitting image of our murderer, although she seemed much more kind and she wasn't wearing a wedding dress. Instead she waltzed into the room in jeans and a light blouse, a dark purse slung around one shoulder. She looked far more like the killer than any of her other victims so far, and I assumed that killing people that looked like her mattered for whatever reason.
"I think we found our victim," I whispered in Jack's ear as I subtly pointed. Jack nodded and kept an eye on her, nonchalantly sipping his smoothie.
"Hey, sorry, it's my first time, I'll need a minute," she said as she folded her hands together and squinted up at the televisions that displayed the flavors.
"Take your time," said the cheery young girl. She can't have been so excited, this place was closing in two hours. It didn't stay open long, which was a shame but it also made it so we'd have a better idea of when this ghost would show up.
A minute, it turns out, became half an hour very quickly as she made several calls and asked people "I'm getting smoothies, what flavor do you want?" I was probably as frustrated at her as the poor girl who had to pretend to care behind the counter, though from different reasons I was sure. I was waiting for her presence to signal the coming of the ghost that would try to kill her by now, but nearly an hour later and nothing.
She finally hung up the phone and stepped up to the counter, the girl who had nearly fallen asleep waiting for her to order something quickly sprung into a ready position. The lady proceeded to order ten smoothies, a frankly ridiculous number, and proceeded to specify what flavors she would like all of them in. I knew from watching that this shop did not have any good ways to carry so many smoothies, the most efficient they could offer being four shakes per hand, which was more than should be reasonably expected. She sat down to wait for her plethora of smoothies to be blended up and played on her phone, which had to be struggling with battery after such a long call.
I kept my head up, looking around the shop with wild and ready eyes for anything that shouldn't be there. After such a long day I was rather well informed on what should be in the space rather than not. The few ghosts that had been in the little shop each looked outside at the sun which started to hang low and cleared out with a small cloud of mist that faded quickly.
A cloud of mist came from a wall near Jack and I, resolving itself quickly into dark skin and a stark white wedding dress, a wooden object that seemed to have intricate patterns that were so fine I couldn't tell what they were through the muted colors and the distance separating us.
"She's here."