Ghosts: The Voices Book 4 by G X Todd

Author:G X Todd [Todd, G X]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2021-12-08T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 2

Addison

Addison wasn’t afraid of the dark. The dark was her friend.

What wasn’t her friend was the hard jut of metal that was poking itself into the back of her hip and had been for about a bajillion hours. But today she was being a mole – a mole packed in soil, taking a snooze – and a sleeping mole didn’t move, and it didn’t snuffle around or scratch to get out, no matter how small its burrow.

The metal cubby-hole she’d crawled into (hidden under a swingy-up panel on the outside of the library bus) wasn’t a burrow, of course. It was a hard box that bounced sound around inside of it. It was like being in the belly of a great robot, the rumbling of its engine shaking her bones, the hum of the road its whirring circuitry. All the noise would probably swallow any small creak she made but, still, she didn’t shift her weight much. Even when her left arm went all tingly and the blood inside it got old and sluggish. Even when knocks and thumps gonged off her robot walls and made her heart jump.

It had been cold at first – there was a cool, constant draught down by her feet – but the metal soon warmed up with her body pressed to it and the heat from the engine’s heart and its turning axles, making her small box toasty. It hadn’t made it any less hard and uncomfortable, though. She needed more flesh on her hips and butt-bone, that’s what Lacey would say and playfully pinch at a non-existent roll of fat at her waist. Lacey knew all her ticklish spots and Addison would laugh and squirm to get away whenever she attacked them, but Lacey’d never let her. She’d lock her in close and wriggle her fingers in her sides, wringing even more giggles out of her.

Addison’s stomach twisted like she had a starving animal curled up under her ribs, but it wasn’t hungry for food. She frowned, unhappy, because this ache couldn’t be petted or soothed or fed a bite to eat. Only Lacey could make it go away.

From the secret place at the back of her head, Fender started a soft hum, a tune that settled the aching twist in her gut. Fender sang it in a way that was both appealing and hopeful at the same time. Whenever Lacey sang it for her, Addison would always smile when she got to the duh-n-duh-duh part in the chorus. It was the song that Lacey would always recognise whenever she got close enough to hear it. Her favourite beetle song, and now Addison’s favourite beetle song, too. It was their song.

Fender was humming it now, mostly to apologise, because Addison was still upset about Fender convincing her to crawl inside this cubby-hole. Chief must have partly agreed with Fender because he’d bounced up and down next to the library bus, directing her attention to this side compartment box. And now she was stuck here for ever.

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