"Oh my god I can't believe I forgot!" Sanha groaned, leaning backward until she'd knocked her chair onto the floor. Youngjae jumped at the sudden noise, laughing sheepishly afterwards.
"I can," Jackson said dryly, grinning as she playfully glared at him. "What'd you forget?"
"Alyssum, it doesn't just help with emotional balance, it protects against glamours and hexes." She slapped her forehead. "God, I'm such an idiot!"
"So pack some." Jackson pushed his own chair back and grabbed the opal necklace they'd picked up at a store the day before. He draped it around his neck, and Sanha laughed.
"You look like my grandmother."
"At least I'm not going to die."
"Opal just makes you brave and blocks glamour, silly. It doesn't protect you."
"It gets combined into strong opal and passes that on to the wearer," he insisted. "I looked it up."
She shrugged and slid her own necklace on. "Mine matches my aesthetic."
"I hate to break it to you, but you're as colorful and cheerful as you can get. Ebony does not match you," Jaebum stated as he settled a crown of alyssum flowers in his hair.
"Yeah well, I never pegged you as a flower crown kind of guy but here we are."
"You're just jealous."
Youngjae pulled on his bracelet of lava rock and bronzite and stood. "Guys, we have to go, we're losing daylight."
"You know daylight doesn't matter for what we're doing, right?" Sanha asked as she slung her bag over her shoulder.
"It makes it easier to not die while we're getting there."
"Finally, someone who agrees with me!" Jackson threw his arm around Youngjae's shoulders. Sanha rolled her eyes at them and pulled the door open.
"After you!"
As they walked, Sanha filled them in on the research she'd done into what she might've seen.
"Right now, all I know with absolute certainty is that it's not a ghost," she explained. "Our best bet right now is that it's a spirit."
"Aren't those the same thing?"
"Not exactly." Sanha's brow furrowed as she tried to think how to phrase it, and she pulled her notepad out of the bag at her side, flipping through the pages to find her notes.
"You still use a physical notepad?" Youngjae stared at her.
"I'm old fashioned." She shrugged. "And anyway, it helps me organize. Do you want the question answered or not?"
"Ghosts are remnants of people that were once alive and died in some horrendous way or with unfinished business," Jaebum explained for her while she found her page. " 'Spirit' includes ghosts but a little more than that besides."
"Yeah," Sanha agreed, tracing her pen down the page. "Ghosts manifest as dark shadows and these little sounds, but rarely more than that. Spirits are practically physical, which is kind of what I saw, and they aren't necessarily a dead person. Essentially they're like the soul of a person, 'the energetic part', and it leaves the body when they die. They can possess other bodies too."
"So are they evil or nice, or what?"
"That depends. And get this, if the spirit in the body isn't the original, they're basically invincible! Isn't that exciting?"
Jackson groaned. "Thanks, that makes me feel so much better."
"At least you have your necklace."
YOU ARE READING
Blink and You'll Miss It
RandomSanha's been a curious shit her whole life. Jackson's always told her she's going to get herself killed at some point. She thought that was a bunch of bull, but he might've actually been right. She might be in way over her head on this one.
