“Either classic rock or Britney Spears,” I say, scrunching up my face. “It’s an odd combination, I know.”
“You really like classic rock?”
“Yeah, is that surprising?”
He nods. “You don’t look like someone who would.”
“You should stop stereotyping me, Ethan. You said I don’t look like someone who’d have demonic bounty hunters after me and look how that turned out.”
“Touché.” He laughs and opens a playlist, turning on Kickstart My Heart by Mötley Crüe. I watch our surroundings pass us by as drive, feeling increasingly paranoid. I thought everything hit me before, but the fact that I could have died—that Hunter could have been ripped apart—weighs on me and I get all jittery.
“Anora,” Ethan says slowly and reaches over, hand landing on mine, which is resting on my thigh. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say right away and force a smile. It’s such a natural thing to do, to cover up how freaked out I am. But then I realize I don’t have to lie around Ethan. “Actually no. I keep replaying it in my mind, and I feel really fucking stupid for going out on my own like that.”
“Why did you go out on your own?”
“Partly curiosity,” I admit. “And keep going, then turn right into the little plaza up there.”
“What was the other part?”
“I had a feeling those things were looking for me. A herd of cattle was attacked, and I assumed it was them, which makes me sound even more dumb for going after them. I guess…I guess if it wanted me, I wanted it to go after me and not hurt anyone else in a sense, though I didn’t really know what it was yet. Does that even make sense?”
“I think so. Look, it doesn’t matter. We all do stupid things, and we’re all guilty of not thinking things through. Besides, it’s not like you knew demons were in the woods. You didn’t die, and you killed two demons in the process.”
“Are the Pricolici demons?”
“Not in the technical sense, but anything evil can be lumped into the demonic category.”
“This is a lot to keep track of.”
“You’ll get it,” he assures me and pulls into the parking lot. We get seated right away since it’s that off time between lunch and dinner. I order a glass of sparkling water along with my cheese ravioli.
“What’s it like to be a medium?” Ethan asks, grabbing a breadstick from the basket on the table.
“Well, the pay sucks.”
He chuckles. “You worked as a medium?”
“For Madame Violet,” I say in the fake accent she used to use. “She thought I was a fake like her, and when I actually contacted the dead, people kind of freaked out.” I run my finger down my water glass, wiping a line in the condensation. “Mostly…mostly it’s isolating.”
I look up, meeting Ethan’s eyes for a moment. “It’s like there’s a war raging constantly in my head between our world and their world. I have to use so much energy to keep the mental door leading into their world shut. I pick up on spirits’ emotions and they become my own. I remember one time on a school field trip, the bus passed this site where a girl got murdered. Of course, no one else knew that, but I was overcome with these powerful emotions of just absolute terror. I had a panic attack, and we had to stop the bus.” I take another drink. “It made being a kid rather difficult since I was always so different but couldn’t explain why.”
“I know that feeling. Not fitting in but not being able to tell anyone why, especially when you know your secret makes you so much more badass than everyone else.”
“I don’t know how badass having a conversation with a ghost only you can see makes you. I’ll give you a spoiler: it just makes you look crazy.”
“No one knows about your ability?”
“Oh, people know, but only my brother and two friends believe me. My parents definitely thought I was just being defiant at first, and then legit insane. Obviously, I had trouble concentrating in school because ghosts are distracting when you’re a kid. I didn’t get the best grades and got in trouble for not paying attention in class. My mom was positive I had ADHD, and I saw so many different doctors who never diagnosed me since I don’t have it. Eventually, I learned to deal and stopped mentioning that I could communicate with the dead. It worked for the most part, but then Jessie Martin’s seventeenth birthday party happened.”
“What happened at Jessie Martin’s party?”
“Someone thought it would be fun to have a séance. We all got in the circle, and Jessie said we should summon her cousin, Jason, who’d recently died in a fire. Well, I got a vision, I guess you would call it, of him sitting in his bedroom. I described everything in perfect detail, from the color of his eyes to the design of the wallpaper. I even saw his girlfriend, and she was holding onto her necklace. It had two rings on it. Turns out, after he died, she wore his class rings on a chain around her neck. I knew what kind of music he liked and could tell you his hobbies. Everyone freaked out and Jessie’s mom called my mom to come pick me up. Needless to say, Jessie never invited me to another party again.”