Ghost Town by Zoe Cannon

Author:Zoe Cannon [Cannon, Zoe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

We went back to Stefan’s parents’ apartment first, and this time I didn’t settle for a cursory sweep of the place. I poked through trash bins and peeked under couch cushions. I opened the freezer and felt around under the mattress. Aside from that one old magazine, and a single page from a homework assignment about vowel sounds, I found nothing. Not just nothing that could give me a hint about where Stefan might have gone. Nothing at all that looked like it belonged to a kid. Apparently his parents had a scorched-earth approach to handling their grief. As far as I could tell, they hadn’t even saved a single picture.

The school files had mentioned a couple of brief and shallow friendships—kids who had sat next to him in the cafeteria a few times, or had gotten him to talk when they had worked on a project together, things like that. We weren’t talking playdates and birthday party invitations here. I visited their families anyway. They were all surprisingly willing to open their doors to a paranormal investigator, especially after I hinted that they might make it onto my ghost-hunting show if they had anything useful to tell me, but none of them remembered Stefan as more than a sad news story and another face in the classroom. The father of one of the kids told me at length about the invisible presence that ripped through his house every night, throwing pots and pans and tearing photos off the wall, but considering he spent more time asking about the show I supposedly worked for than talking about Stefan, I figured I could pretty safely write him off as a fame-seeker. After each conversation, I asked Lissa whether she had sensed anything in any of the apartments, and her answer was always no.

After that we tried playgrounds, and toy stores near his apartment, and then, in desperation, a handful of banks around the city on the off-chance that we had guessed wrong about the robberies. Nothing, nothing, and—you guessed it—nothing.

Now Lissa and I were sitting at Bastian’s kitchen table, which was entirely clear of books for once, watching Kimmy build yet another hotel while Bastian divided his attention between the Monopoly board and doodling in one of his notebooks.

Yes, I was back at Bastian’s apartment. After all the work I had done to avoid talking to him about whether he should be helping me, not to mention the kiss. But the venue hadn’t exactly been my choice. What was I supposed to do, tell Kimmy I didn’t want to see Bastian until I figured out how to tell him that, one, I really wished I could kiss him again, and two, we needed to stay away from each other for both our sakes?

Kimmy patted the fat stack of colorful money in front of her. “I can see why you haven’t paid me the rent you owe yet,” she told me. “I’m clearly the only one here with any financial sense.”

At my feet, the hellhounds grunted in what I hoped wasn’t agreement.

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