Page 46 of Unalive On Air

“I have a ghost surfboard!” he’d exclaimed. “I must have been killed while giving a demonstration, because it’s the demo board.”

“That’s interesting,” I’d replied.

I have my scrap of paper and pencil, Stove has his boom mic, and Josh his phone. It seems that whatever object a person’s holding or attached to when they die goes with them into the afterlife.

Maybe the ancient Egyptians were onto something.

I wonder if any of the other ghosts had objects on their person. Also, I wonder why the chandelier doesn’t have a spectral counterpart since it was attached to my person when I died. Literally. Embedded in me. I guess the same could be said for Peter’s sword.

But I’d needed to switch off my detective brain—easier said than done—and rest had been screaming my name, so instead, I’d closed my eyes and listened to Trystan’s soft resonance describing the different types of waves, and the “sick moves” he’s pulled off in each one. Occasionally he’d ask if I was getting bored and did I want him to shut up?

“No, go on,” I’d say, though I hadn’t the foggiest what he was talking about. The next thing I was aware of was that the “plunging” and “barrel” waves had transformed into gentle snores.

The man doesn’t even have functioning lungs, and yet his spirit remembers his unconscious rasping of breaths almost thirty years after his death.

Another question I’d never dreamed I’d ask has been answered: do ghosts snore?

I can’t say that lying half in the coffee table and half out of it was ideal, but I also can’t say it was uncomfortable. My “body” no longer aches from phantom exhaustion, and apart from Trystan’s gentle rumbling, all I can hear is the tick tick ticking of the minute hand and the distant waves lapping the beach, and I understand, despite the mouldy first impressions, why Trystan had chosen this place as his little corner of The Paragon Hotel.

Eventually, sunlight pierces the cabin through the cracks in the wooden panels. I watch the beams grow and roll across the walls and ceiling. I’ve still not fully acclimatised to the fact that I’m dead.

“Yeeeww, good morning, dude,” Trystan says, sitting his ghost body upright with enviable ease, and pushing a ghost surfboard that definitely hadn’t been there last night aside. “How was your first ever spectral sleep?”

“Okay, I guess.” I attempt to push myself up and instead sink a further two feet into the ground. I’m confronted by the underside of the shack’s flooring and a mass of silvery webs.

Hands close around my triceps and pull me back into the damp space. And for a moment or two or ten, all I see are the spattering of freckles across Trystan’s nose and cheeks, and his blue eyes. Piercing blue, like the colour of June skies or cornflowers or, of course, the ocean. But the kind of ocean one only ever sees in Mediterranean or Caribbean holiday brochures.

I swallow. My mouth is suddenly too dry.

Trystan smiles, looks away, and lets go of me. “What do you want to do today?”

I shrug. “I don’t suppose you fancy boarding the train back to London and getting as far away as we can from this hotel? Not saying I believe the rumours or anything, but somebody once mentioned this place’s haunted.”

“We could see where your boundaries extend to,” he says, between laughing. “But I highly doubt it’s London. We could look for a room for you. Ooh, or I could show you how we haunt people. That’s always fun. Or, if you like . . . we can do some more sleuthing . . .”

“Now you’re talking.”

Trystan’s face splits into the widest grin, and I know that had been his first choice too. “It’s such a shame we’ll never get to hear any new episodes of Unalive on Air.”

I sigh and silently agree. It had been the only light in my life.

“I need to . . . warn you about something,” he says, his expression turning serious for a moment as he glances around the space, presumably to check that we’re alone. “Jeanie was the one really pushing for you to get involved with the cases, not Camille. She thinks if you solve all the murders, it will . . . finish her unfinished business, and that what’s keeping her from ‘moving on’ is closure.”

“Do you think it’ll work? If I figure out whodunnit, she’ll just . . .” I make a gesture like vapour rising into the sky.

“There’s always a chance, I guess. I think she’s simply had enough of this afterlife, this existence, and you’re her last hope before she pays the east wing a visit.”

“Ahh,” I say.

A solemness mars Trystan’s smile, and I nod, but an odd, icky sensation blossoms in my stomach. “Do you think that will happen with you too? If I solve Jeanie’s murder, and if Jeanie’s murderer is also your murderer, am I then finishing your unfinished business? Will you also disappear into the ether?”

What if I’ve only just met this perfect, handsome, kind, deceptively smart stranger, and he gets whipped away to some other eternity? And what if that isn’t my unfinished business, so I’m stuck in this fucking hotel for centuries with a pervert magician, an argumentative edgelord, and a tech-necked whiny teenager?

Well, if that’s the case, first thing I’m doing is finding out where the old servants’ quarters are.

“There’s no way to know for sure,” Trystan says, pulling his shoulders up to his ears. “I don’t feel like that’s my unfinished business, and I’m not sure I even believe in the concept of unfinished business . . .” An unsaid “but” hovers over the end of his sentence.

“You don’t?” I mean, I don’t either, but two days ago I didn’t believe in ghosts and that hasn’t exactly paid off.