Heartstoppers

•TWO•

I'd often thought that maybe, just maybe, ghosts had consciousness of their own though I'd never really given much time to experimenting. I'd also wrongly pictured them as aggressive beings who would wither away at one mention of any holy text. Unfortunately, this was when life decided to answer my questions.

"God. Angel. Jesus. I don't know much, Ughh I can't read! What about the Quaran? Lord Krishna? The freaking twelve Olympians?" None of it seemed to work, and I think it's not counted as progress when the table goes from levitating to shaking unsteadily. One might think that supernatural thing might be laughing at me.

The point is, it got distracted. And one thing to remember while calling the shots is never let your guard down.

Without wasting another moment, I edged off the table, dragged a floating Messiah, and booted the two of us out the Loner– all that while wondering what was wrong with the world. It was quite a feat, I must say.

I tumbled out onto the pavement, and I'm sure I must have punctured a lung or plausibly both, but I didn't let go of my Messiah. I was clueless about how I was supposed to snap him out of his stupor and more than a little shaken after the incident. Nothing crawled out of my now ex-haven, as it happens in those unrealistic horror films. If not for Messiah beside me, I would have thought that this was another crazy hallucination. I may have surprised that thing, but I definitely didn't stop it.

"Psst. Over here." Great, just great. Now inanimate objects were beginning to talk to me. "You heard me– over here!" I would have ignored such unhelpful locations, but I sensed an urgency in the voice, which I also dismissed.

"Nope, he wants to kill you." That sounded somewhere beside a tree. I had a horrible vision of those old paintings with a woodcutter chopping a speaking tree. I whirled around, foreboding the possibility of a maniacal grin pasted on the bark of the tree. Instead, I met with a strikingly handsome fellow– And I do not give compliments that easily. Sharp jawline. Slightly tanned, but otherwise creamy face. Beautiful ruby eyes. Muscles? You mean a lorry truck? Lofty burgundy hair– My hand itched to touch it. And there was the maniacal grin– fixed on his thin lips.

Only when I gave him a second glance did I realize that he was... impossible. First of all, what's up with that odd eye colour? 19th Century dress-up? Were his legs hovering in the air? I couldn't tell his exact age– His get-up was twenty years old, but his eyes shone with old socks and wrinkles. A bit of wisdom too, but my pride won't let me admit that. And please, no one that good-looking was supposed to exist– Mass women stampedes were fatal.

But he was not the only thing I saw.

The other voice? The one that extended aid towards me first? It came from a traffic light. Well, another gorgeous hunk leaned against the yellow pole, mastering the art of looking mesmerizing while performing ordinary activities. He had more sharp, sly features than adorable– angled eyebrows, dark shady hair looming over his obsidian eyes, and a pale complexion. Basically, the kind that makes your ovaries go ooh-la-la but is also sophisticatedly unapproachable and with full-clad asperity. His hands were in his pockets, and if victorian clothing could attack a person, those full-cuffed shirts with a zillion button and those thin-stripped overalls would crucify you alive. It wasn't legal for something this alluring to live either– I would have compared them to angels, but of the fallen kind.

It was like one of those moments when all you've got is a handful of pennies, but in front of you paraded the entire candy selection enough for the next ten years, and each of the savouries begged you to pick them. The only difference, I didn't have that handful of pennies.

I stared at no one in particular, mouth slightly ajar– Just like I'd pictured the worst-case scenario when I would finally meet hot guys with extraordinary swag. "I'm dying. Don't interrupt." I muttered and re-focused all my attention to Messiah.