Chapter One
"I don't see why you cant just live here," Kat said, looking at me from across the table with her big, sad, manipulative eyes, "you were away at school for eight months and you didn't come home once. You've only been home for a couple days and I've barely even seen you, and now you're just going to leave again?"
I flipped the page of the newspaper, scanning down the list of rental units available. "I just cant be here for another summer, it's too much, I need to live somewhere else."
"Aren't you trying to save money for tuition and books and all that?"
"I'll save money by not living way out here in the middle of nowhere," I said. "I can let the insurance expire on my car and take the bus."
Kat scoffed, "really, you would rather take the bus than live here?"
"The bus isn't so bad." In fact it was worse than bad. Nobody took the bus, not unless you wanted to be drooled on by a homeless person, but if that was the price I had to pay to not live at home for the summer then I was willing to pay it. Anything would be better than living in this house for one more summer, living under the same roof as Tim for one more summer.
"What's the real reason you don't want to live here?"
"I just... don't. Okay?" I looked up again at Kat, saw the pain on her face. "Look it's not you, I just need my own space okay? It's really not anything about you."
"I don't see why we cant be a family for just a little longer," Kat said.
"Come on Kat, we haven't been a family for a long time. Mom left, Tim is barely ever here and he's not our real father anyway, he's just stuck with us until we turn eighteen. He's probably counting the days until you move out too, so he can marry some waitress from the bar and forget all about us. You need to stop trying to hold this mess together and start thinking about getting the hell out of here. Like me."
Kat didn't say anything and I went back to scanning the classifieds.
"Whatever," Kat muttered, and got up.
"Kat wait," I said, immediately feeling terrible for what I'd said. She was the only person that could ever make me feel bad for all the shitty things I said. I got up to follow her but the phone started ringing. I picked up the receiver, "hello?" I said as I watched Kat go upstairs.
"Hello," an ancient voice said, "this is Henrietta Fielding from Spiritual Dispersion Services. I'm looking for Molly Rowan, is this she?"
"No," I said, "she's not here. What's this about?" It had been years since anyone had called for Mom, years since I had awkwardly explained that she was missing, maybe dead, probably just a shitty parent. Once I had even used that ridiculous cliché about her going out for milk four years ago and how I expected her back any minute, but it hadn't been nearly as funny as I thought it would.
"She did some freelance work for us some years ago and we're a bit short-handed at the moment, so we were hoping to offer her a job."
Perfect, Mom had been gone for four years now and she was still getting job offers, and the only work I could find was filling out fast food applications. "Sorry what was your business again?"
"Oh well, to whom am I speaking?"
"Layla. I'm Molly's daughter."
"Oh very good. Well we provide ghost dispersion services to clients looking to rid their property of spiritual menaces."
Did I hear that right, was Mom some sort of hack clairvoyant on the side? Bizarre. "When was this? When did she work for you?"
"Oh let me see here," the old woman said, and I could hear some shuffling sounds on the other end of the phone, "here we are. She first worked for us back in two-thousand-and-one, and the last time she worked for us was two-thousand-and-ten."
Two-thousand-and-ten, the year she went missing. Left. Died. Something. After the years I spent searching for her, on the very day when I was trying to get my own place and move the hell on with my life, this dropped right in my lap. What did it mean?
"Will she be back soon?" Henrietta said.
"Uh, no
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