Ghost

Chapter 14

The moment the blade sliced through his neck, Alec coughed up blood onto the floor in front of him. The bearer of the knife who I instantly recognized from her level, almost bored stare to be Adalyn stretched her lips into an amused smile.

Adalyn pushed the knife in a bit further, blood spurting out of the wound she'd created, then she pulled it out with a thunk. Alec crumpled to the ground, his dead eyes still widened in surprise.

"You know," the girl began, obviously in a much better mood compared to the rest of us. "I never do things the simple way anymore. I really should more often, it gives you a thrilling feeling of nostalgia." Adalyn licked a spot of blood that had traveled from the tip of the blade to her small hand.

"You... Bitch." Mel seethed, she was so pissed that she was trembling. Which was surprising, because I'm not sure about her but yet again I could not move,

I glanced at Claire expecting to see a similar, if worse, reaction, but she was frozen in place. Her face wore a shocked expression and if not for her slow, heaving breaths and the occasional blinking I would've thought she was stuck like that.

"Now, now. Don't say that." Adalyn scolded, "it's retribution for making the wrong decision. You all are barking up the wrong tree, a very scary tree too, so now you get to deal with the consequences."

How she managed to get all of that out and still sound like a little kid is beyond me, but so was everything else about her.

"How is dying the consequence for talking to her?" Mel's eyes were raging.

"Silly. If she had figured out who you all were, it wouldn't just be this boy here." Adalyn nudged Alec's corpse with her foot. "And that'd be way too boring. I'd rather do things one at a time." Adalyn giggled as if she wasn't contemplating the best way to kill us. "Ah, but it's also not about me anymore." My heart lurched from the way she delivered the last sentence.

"What do you mean?" I asked, masking the fear building up inside me.

"Im taking a little vacation." Adalyn said almost condescendingly. "Physical forms make me sleepy. But not that girl. She's too loopy."

Physical forms? I thought to myself.

"But, being the kind soul I am," Adalyn declared, the blood of our friend flicking off the dented knife in her suddenly moving hand and hitting the wall. "I'll give you a few fun facts about my roommate!"

We all stayed silent, I didn't want to listen to anything that came from the young girl's mouth, but I also needed to know what the hell she was talking about.

"She's a teensy bit broken." Adalyn said, taking our silence as an affirmative response. "But being stuck in a house with just a voice in your head as company, that kinda makes sense."

"She started out sane enough, she refused any anger for her father and instead chose self pity. She cried lots and lots. Very loud and annoying." Adalyn huffed, not even pretending to feel bad for Elaine. "And she really hated those fun abilities of ours, she never even thought about the great things that could happen with them. Though I guess it makes sense, it's their fault she got into this whole mess."

"Wait," Mel said, still angry but withholding any of her fury in her voice. "All that stuff, can't you use it cause you're a ghost?"

"No-no silly." Adalyn said giggling, "you've got it backwards, she's still here because of the abilities. Not the other way around."

So she was like that before.

"She was never that good with using them anyways." Adalyn was unwilling to stop for any further questions. "Throwing energy all over the place, switching her bodies too fast. She's never even thought to refuel. It certainly made all of you more convenient, you're like free refills."

The useless motionless state of my body made much more sense now. I wasn't afraid, Adalyn was using us whenever we were in close proximity. Free refills.

"That's why you chose wrong to try and kill her." Adalyn dropped her sardonic persona. "She's an unstable girl with unstable abilities. All those fun feelings she hid from herself; the angry, twisty ones she couldn't show herself shaped me. Her true feelings. She wants blood and revenge and everything associated with them. She wants every single one of you dead, not for fun, just cause."

Perfect, I thought. Someone so awful the psycho killer is warning us about her.

"That's all." Adalyn said. "It won't help you though. I just I'd give you something fun to think about when you're in hell. She's coming in an hour, so you've all got a bit of a breather before you stop breathing altogether. Bye-bye." With a wave, she skipped off and left us in silence.

"She just told us we're gonna die in an hour." I said, mostly to myself.

"Yeah." Mel replied.