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August has to admit: he was a babe.
She’s gone full True Detective. It’s been four hours.
The cursor on the Google search bar blinks expectantly. August blinks back.
Really, sincerely, from the very bottom of August’s heart: What the fuck?
“A gift from August? What god have I pleased?”
August is going to kick his ass one day.
She’s going to have to say this out loud, isn’t she? Bella Swan, eat your horny little Mormon heart out.
“Okay, hold on. You can’t just tell somebody they’re dead. We have to make sure she’s dead first.”
“You only just noticed she has one outfit?”
Me core
It’s ripped jeans and a leather jacket! Every lesbian I’ve ever met has that outfit!”
She tries to picture it, Niko in all his Niko-ness, putting his hand on Jane’s shoulder: Hello, how are you, I think you may be an unmoored spirit trapped in some kind of MTA purgatory.
“You said you didn’t want to freak her out.” “I never said that. I said you shouldn’t tell somebody they’re dead unless you’re sure they’re dead. Very bad energy.” “What would you even ask her?” “I don’t know. It would depend on how things feel. Sounds like a fun experiment.”
Like—can I pour a ring of salt around her or splash her with holy water or something? But like, in a subtle way?” “You and I come at subtlety from very different directions,” Niko observes.
August can practically hear her mother scoffing into her Lean Cuisine from the next time zone.
I don’t like where the moon is right now, though, so let’s do it night after tomorrow.
She leans down to take a sip of her drink and promptly chokes on it. “Good lord, that is disgusting. You’re terrible at this.”
“You’ve gathered us here today to tell us you’re boned up for a ghost.”
“I can’t believe you’ve been in New York for, like, a month and already found the coolest person in the entire city. Back to the Future ass.” “We’re more at the intersection of Ghost and Quantum Leap,” August points out. “But that’s not the point.”
“What? Pick the lock?” Wes says. “What kind of feral child are you? Are you Jessica Jones?”
“We’re, like, one fire away from losing our security deposit.”
This with G & I but we are one hole in the wall away
Niko is not technically allowed to use his key for after-hours communications with the dead. No personal calls, basically—they can’t get caught.
In his T-shirt and jeans, it’s all very superhero secret identity.
The one closest to August is either for reuniting past loves or penis enlargement. She should probably get the prescription on her glasses updated.
And now August is in Wes’s position, stammering and hoping Niko doesn’t come through with the truth. “We’re doing a séance to reach a woman August has a crush on,” Niko says, coming through with the truth.
“Please, sir,” Myla says in an absolutely terrible Southern accent. “It’s my girlfriend, she’s very dead.”
August considers pulling the shelf of potions over on herself...
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“We don’t know if she’s dead,” August says. “She just happens to have not aged since 1976.” “That’s basically what we said,” Niko says.
He’s at the table, carefully arranging incense and a ring of crystals around tall white candles, the kind you see in a Catholic church when you’re leaving a prayer for the Virgin Mary, except August is definitely the only virgin here and she doesn’t think praying to her would accomplish anything.
“I swear to God, if a ghost kills me, I’ll haunt the shower,” Wes says. “You guys will never have hot water again.” “We don’t have hot water now,” August points out. “Fine, I’ll haunt the toilet.”
“Why do you want to haunt a bathroom, man?” Isaiah asks. “It’s where people are most vulnerable,” Wes says, like it’s obvious.
He leads them through a closing prayer and thanks the spirits politely and promises to talk again soon like they’re a grandparent he calls on major holidays—which, August realizes, they might be.
Shit. She sounds like her mother.
Jane’s there, and the world tips.
Her voice clips up into daughter-of-a-librarian mode, and she’s powerless to stop it. She’s too nervous.
She doesn’t look annoyed, only mildly entertained, like she’s enjoying the turn her night has taken.
Sometimes August wishes she could know for even a second what goes on in Niko’s head.
She feels unbelievably small. She feels like this is the biggest thing that’s ever happened in her entire life.
August waits for her to laugh, cry, cuss her out, have some kind of meltdown.
Not a single passenger notices her sudden presence; they continue their audiobooks and mascara applications like she was there all along. Like reality bends around her.
That’s the first step, figuring out how trapped Jane is. The answer is: very completely trapped. The next question is, how? August has absolutely no fucking clue.
The afternoon sun falls in Jane’s brown eyes, and August thinks she’s going to need more notebooks. It’ll take a million to hold this girl.
August lost everything and thought that maybe, if she could become someone who didn’t have anything to lose, she’d never have to feel that way again.
They make you who you are, and they happen at the same time a twenty-three-year-old a million miles away is warming up some leftovers, turning in early, switching off the lamp.
But Jane’s always there. So August is too.
“And you, like,” Wes says, “definitely ruled out the possibility that she’s making it up?”
Wes, I need you to be a team player for once please
He looks perturbed at having to open his third eye before eight in the morning. He’s barely opened his two regular ones.
“No offense, but you said the same thing about the guy who moved in downstairs, and he stole all my weed and ghosted me and moved to Long Beach to be stoned all the time. Less honest and sane and more comatose in California.” Myla spits in the ...
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“You’re wearing that red lipstick for her, though,” Myla points out. “I—that is a style choice.”
“I— Oh goddammit, they got my order wrong. How absolutely dare they.” “Criminal,” Myla says. “I go there every single morning and order the exact same thing, and they still can’t get my order right. The disrespect. We live in a society.”
“You lived in New York for at least a couple of years. There’s no way you don’t have a coffee and bagel order.
