AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“August,” he says, and it’s not teasing or apologetic or even like he’s trying to get her to stay. It’s the way he always says August’s name, soft and sympathetic, like he knows something about her that she doesn’t. She settles back down and buries her face in the sleeves of her sweater.
“Okay, fine,” she says. “So, like. You know the girl I told y’all about? The one I asked out?”
Niko doesn’t say anything. When she looks up, he keeps measuring out liquors.
“Her name’s Jane. She takes the same train as me. The Q, every single morning and afternoon. At first I thought, like, wow, okay, crazy coincidence, but tons of people probably have the same commutes, and… I definitely went out of my way to catch the same train as her, which I realize sounds a lot like stalking, but I promise I wasn’t weird about it—anyway, today at work, I found this.”
She slides the photo across the bar, and Niko nudges his sunglasses up onto his forehead to examine it.
“That’s her,” August says, pointing. “I’m a thousand percent sure it’s her. She has the same tattoos.” She looks up at him. “Niko, this photo is from opening day at Billy’s. Summer ’76. She hasn’t aged in forty-five years. I think she’s—”
The rattle of Niko’s cocktail shaker cuts through her sentence, drowning her out, and he wiggles his eyebrows until his glasses fall back down to his nose.
August is going to kick his ass one day.
She has to wait thirty whole seconds for him to pop the top off the shaker and pour the drink into a glass so she can finish. “I think she’s not… human.”
Niko slides the drink over. “Blackberry mint mule. On the house. What do you think she is?”
She’s going to have to say this out loud, isn’t she? Bella Swan, eat your horny little Mormon heart out.
“I think she might be… a vampire?” Niko raises an eyebrow, and she buries her face in her arms again. “I told you it was insane!”
“It’s not insane!” he says, a laugh in his voice, but not a mean one. It never is with Niko. “Once you’re tapped into the other side, it’s really easy to start seeing stuff beyond this one. Like, when I was eight I spent the summer with my cousins in Bayamón, and they totally had me convinced their neighbor’s dog was a werewolf. But, as far as I know, werewolves aren’t real, and neither are vampires.”
August picks her head up. “Right. Of course. I’m an idiot.”
“Well,” Niko says. “She’s not a vampire. But she might be dead.”
August freezes. “What do you mean?”
“It sounds like she might be an apparition,” he explains. “A particularly… strong one. She might not even know she’s—”
“A ghost?” August offers helplessly. Niko pulls a sympathetic grimace. “Oh my God, so she’s dead? And she doesn’t know she’s dead? I can’t even ask her on a date; how am I supposed to tell her she’s dead?”
“Okay, hold on. You can’t just tell somebody they’re dead. We have to make sure she’s dead first.”
“Right. Okay. How do we do that?” She’s got her phone out, already googling how to tell if someone is a ghost. Apparently, there’s a Groupon for this. “Wait. Holy shit. She is always wearing the exact same thing.”
“You only just noticed she has one outfit?”
“I don’t know! It’s ripped jeans and a leather jacket! Every lesbian I’ve ever met has that outfit!”
“Huh. Good point,” Niko says thoughtfully. “Have you ever touched her?”
“Um. Yes?”
“And how did it feel? Cold?”
“No, the opposite. Like… really warm. Sometimes staticky. Like a shock.”
“Hmm. Interesting. Are you the only one who can see her?”
“No, she talks to people on the train all the time.”
“Okay, have you ever seen her touch anything or anyone?”
“Yeah, she has this, like, backpack full of stuff, and she’s given me things from it, gum, a scarf. One time she put a Band-Aid on this kid who skinned his knee on the stairs.”
