Read Online Tonya Hurley_Ghostgirl_02 by Homecoming - Free Book Online

half-hopeful and half-petrified.
    “Let me guess,” Damen said, finally putting it together. “Charlotte?”
    Scarlet was silent.
    “How are you going to contact Charlotte?” Damen asked skeptically. “She’s … gone.”
    “I’m going to go find her.”
    “You’re not going to start speaking in tongues, are you?”
    “I’m serious,” Scarlet said soberly. “I’m going over there, Damen.”
    “I can’t let you do that! What if you don’t come back?”
    “I’m going,” Scarlet said firmly.
    “What if Petula wakes up?” Damen asked, still trying to convince her to wait it out. “She could at any second!”
    “Whatif isn’t what is,” Scarlet said even more definitively.
    Damen noticed a sudden calmness and resigned-ness in her expression, the kind of look you see on the faces of martyred saints on those supermarket devotional candles.
    “If I can find Charlotte,” Scarlet reasoned, “maybe she can help me find Petula. And then we can save her.”
    Damen held her tight and whispered in her ear.
    “What about you? Who is going to save you?”
    “Oh, Romeo,” Scarlet said, trying to lighten the mood. It comforted Damen a bit to know that her sense of humor, if not her sanity, was still intact.
    “Scarlet, I’m serious,” Damen said sternly. “I know you think you know what you’re doing …”
    “Damen, I’ve been over there before. If I can help Petula and I don’t, I won’t be able to live with myself.”
    For all his levelheadedness, Damen knew she was right. He also knew there was no stopping her now. He’d seen that look before. Her mind was made up.
    They looked into each other’s eyes as if it might be their last chance. In her eyes he saw resolve, in his she saw respect … and fear.
    “She would do the same for me,” Scarlet said sarcastically, trying to get him to crack a smile.
    They both laughed, bonding over Petula’s selfishness that they both oddly missed so much.
    “There’s just two things,” Damen said. “How are you going to get there and what happens to your body when your spirit splits?”
    “Details, details.” Scarlet poo-pooed.
    Scarlet paused, lost in thought for a second as she realized she hadn’t thought this through very well. Without her soul, her body was very likely to wind up just like Petula, maybe worse.
    “Yeah, well, they say that’s where the Devil is.”
    “Have you just met me?” Scarlet asked. “I don’t care what people say.”
    The closet was tiny, definitely not a walk-in, which is what Petula would have insisted on, had she been conscious. It was overflowing with folded towels, blankets, latex gloves, backless gowns, bedpans, Vaseline, triple antibiotic ointments, bandages, and surgical booties. Barely enough room for supplies, let alone Damen and Scarlet. But it was the only private room available.
    He would have much preferred to have snuck into a closet with her for a quick make-out session, but romance was the last thing on his mind, well, one of the last. He was a guy after all.
    “Don’t worry,” Scarlet said in a forceful whisper. “I know what I’m doing.”
    “Really?” Damen whispered back sarcastically. “What are you going to do, click your Doc Martens three times or something? Scarlet, please don’t do this.” He was more fragile and open than he had ever been with her. “If anything goes wrong …”
    “Yes?” Scarlet replied hopefully, breaking her concentration for just a moment, and giving him an opening to declare his undying love.
    Damen wanted to say he loved her, that he couldn’t live without her, but he wouldn’t allow himself to get all Casablanca with her. It was too maudlin, too final.
    “What will I tell your mom?” he asked instead, hugging her tightly.
    “That I’ll be back,” Scarlet said, trying to convince herself of her answer at the same time.
    “Promise?”
    Those weren’t quite the words she was waiting for, but the point was made. Scarlet was getting jelly-legged now