Page 65 of Squad Ghouls

“Probably. I’m not great at anger management.”

“Owain doesn’t like it when people are impolite and angry,” he said, but it sounded dismissive. More like a jab than an actual piece of information.

“Oh, trust me,” I said with a smirk, “I know exactly what Owain likes, and you’re not on the list. So keep your hands to yourself, your idiocy quiet, and we can all survive your stay here in relative peace.”

“Fuck you!” Seth said.

“Now who’s being impolite?” I turned away from him before I clocked him in the teeth because he was right about one thing—Owain wouldn’t like that. “Dinner is going to be served soon. Have a nice rest of your evening, Destroyer.”

I walked away, hands in my pockets and whistling at a job well done. Even my mum wouldn’t have scolded me for winding up that douchebag. She would have asked me to hold her purse and smacked him around the head herself.

I sauntered back to my own room to look for my phone and paused in the doorway.

The amorphous shape of Popty froze too.

We stared each other down for a few moments…most of those consisted of me trying to find Popty’s eyes. And then I realised.

“Is that my phone?”

A far-off, anxious ping reverberated through the house before Popty fled the room, my phone falling to the floor.

I walked over and picked it up, only to find it still on the home screen of Ted. Was the ghost trying to break into my shit? Why?

I opened it and everything was as I last remembered leaving it. Fifty unopened Grindr messages, several hundred ignored emails, and five new messages from my mum since nine this morning that I should probably answer before she tracked me down and dragged me back home by my ear.

I sent her a quick text back before pulling up the ExorSquad HQ number.

I closed the door behind me and took a seat on the bed as it rang.

“Good afternoon, ExorSquad. Where all your hauntings go to die. How can we help you?” Ted’s acerbic voice rattled off by rote.

“It’s me, the light of your life.”

“I think it’s time to extinguish us both,” Ted drawled, but his voice didn’t have its usual bite. He sounded distracted. “Why the hell are you ringing the front desk?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t pick up if I called your phone.”

Ted gave a humph, but we both knew it was true. “What do you want?”

I got the impression that he was rushing me along. Normally he would trade a few more barbs with me, at least. “Everything good over there? Ol’ Gerald got you working hard?”

“It’s always busy. People die every day.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You sound cagey. Means it’s something big.”

“Why are you so fucking nosy?”

“I can’t help it that I’m smart and you’re shit at bluffing. If it was the usual Gerald bullshit you’d be venting by now, which means it’s a new type of Gerald bullshit. What has the old geezer done now? Created a portal to the afterlife? Cloned himself?”

“Please be serious.”

“I half am.”

Ted snorted.

“Anything to do with the police who’ve been hanging around?”

“You’ve seen them?” Ted sounded surprised.