Rania Algafari never asked to be different, and when she escaped the war in Syria and moved to the UK, her only goal was to live her life in peace. Get up, go to work, avoid talking to the dead - that sort of thing.
But not everyone dies quietly, an...
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Six months. Six months had passed since I banished my last black soul, and five months since my life changed completely.
Dealing with Geri had been our first task—an interesting challenge since Mrs. Weston had officially fired Will, I was still on bail, and Detective Turner was busy following the misguided theory that Lloyd Weston had murdered his own daughter for reasons unknown.
But everyone chipped in, even Shannon, who went to a yoga class to keep an eye on Geri while RJ stayed at home with Aisling. He'd got better at babysitting now, and he refused to put on yoga pants.
That left me to visit Geri's house with Will in my first role as his sidekick. RJ had offered to go instead, but Will said a couple would arouse less suspicion than two men. If a neighbour saw us, we could always claim to have misread the address when we went to pick up our newly purchased second-hand bookcase.
But nobody noticed us, or at least, nobody living. While Will picked the lock on the back door and snuck off to explore Geri's cottage, I hung around in the kitchen, keeping an eye out for her return and chatting to fifty-seven-year-old Doris, who'd died from a single punch to the jaw when her drunk husband returned from the pub many years ago. He'd long since perished from cirrhosis of the liver, so she said, leaving her to spy on Geri for all eternity.
"She's a strange one," Doris said. "Lives on mushed-up fruit and vitamin pills, but then she smokes those funny cigarettes every evening while she watches crime dramas on the television. So graphic. Back in my day, we had Dynasty and The Golden Girls."
"Funny cigarettes? You mean hash?"
Back home, so many of the teenagers had smoked it. Hash was the only pleasure they got in our broken city.
"Marijuana, love. She grows it herself. A right little gardener. Sometimes, she watches those DIY shows too, but mostly it's the crime programs. Although that chap on CSI's quite dishy. You know—the one with the brown hair."
"I'm not sure who you mean." I looked around, taking in the back garden, or rather, the patio, seeing as the entire thing was paved with ugly pink-and-yellow stones. A sparkly fairy balanced on an ornamental toadstool, and a small fountain reminded me I really needed to pee. "Where does she grow her marijuana? She doesn't seem to be much of a gardener."
"In the cupboard right behind you. One of those fancy setups with the lights."
"What cupboard?"
"Behind the wall tapestry."
Yup, Doris was right. Behind the ugly orange-and-blue scene of a duck kissing a turtle lurked a full-height door. I covered my hand with my sleeve to avoid fingerprints and pulled it open. Wow. Geri had gone to a real effort. Trays filled with water and some kind of porous stones, bright strip lights, and half a dozen healthy, bushy pot plants filled every bit of space.
