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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It damn near killed me to leave Rania yesterday evening. I'd wanted to crawl into bed beside her and hold her for the rest of the night. But I'd done the gentlemanly thing, and when her eyes began to close, I'd tucked her in then backed out of the room and waited for Shannon to come back. Lucky the baby didn't cry, because I wouldn't have had the first clue what to do.
"Is Rania in bed already?" Shannon had asked.
"She was tired."
Shannon wrinkled her nose. Cute, but whereas once my type had been warm and female, I'd refined it lately to something more specific.
"I kind of hoped you'd be in there with her."
At least she got that and was on my side. "That makes two of us, but I get the impression Rania's had a difficult past."
"She has. I think her time in Syria must have been awful. I've seen all the pictures on the news."
"Of Rania?"
"No, of Syria. Rania never talks about the specifics."
"What? Never?"
"Nope. She's... Don't get me wrong, I love that girl to death, but she can be a little...different."
"The ghosts thing?"
"She told you about that?" Shannon sounded surprised.
I nodded. "She mentioned it. You sound as if you don't believe her?"
"Well, it's cr— Not an easy thing to believe."
"How do you explain it?"
"I saw one of those myth-busting programmes once, about mediums. How they're perceptive to their surroundings and use careful statements to make you think they're psychic."
Could that be Rania? I'd thought so at first, but she knew too much. Either she was genuine, or she had better connections than I did and rivalled RJ with her computer skills.
I made a non-committal noise. "One thing that struck me as unusual is that she doesn't spend half her life on social media."
Shannon laughed. "I've tried to get her on Facebook, but she refuses. I guess she doesn't know that many people, so it doesn't matter much to her. And she doesn't even own a computer."
So much for that idea.
"Unusual. Did you get your friend sorted?"
Shannon crinkled her nose again. "I talked her out of the vodka, but she still wants to take a baseball bat to his car. The asshole dumped her by WhatsApp, for crying out loud."
"An asshole indeed. Maybe Rania's right to avoid all that stuff."
"No, she's not. Because you'd never be that callous, would you?"
