Page 59 of Unalive On Air

Camille puts their hand in the air. “I’m more of a Sheriarty fan myself. Love a bit of enemies to lovers.”

“Thank you,” I mouth to Camille, and before anyone else can comment on my choice of wallpaper, I puff my chest up and raise my voice. “Okay, so we’re gonna need Pete to connect my laptop to the hotel’s Wi-Fi.”

Trystan’s watching me, his lips pinched together, but his eyes are crinkled at the corners. Awesome, and now the coolest person I’ve ever met, dead or alive, knows I’m a pervert for cartoon porn. Entirely my own fault, though how I was supposed to risk-assess a future scenario where a crowd of ghosts hack my laptop, I’ll never know.

“What’s Wi-Fi? Where do I find that?” Peter yells after Stove repeats my commands.

“See the icon in the bottom right of the screen that has four lines in a fan shape?” I say. Stove parrots.

“What? There is no icon like that? Wait, what does icon mean?”

I scrape my hands down my face. We are going to be here for ages. Franny will have finished her shift, and we’ll still be trying to get this ancient ghost to access the internet. “Is there anyone else who could possess Franny? Camille, you’re from my time?”

“Ooh, no. Not a good idea,” Camille says, shaking their head. “The first and only time I tried to possess someone, I almost blew them up.”

“Fair.” I think we have enough ghosts in our group without adding Franny to the mix. “Anyone else?”

Trystan raises his hands in a surrender gesture. “All this wireless shit is way before my time. I wouldn’t know what I’m doing.”

“Me neither,” Pixie agrees.

Beside her, Jeanie nods vigorously.

“Stove? When did you die?” I ask, feeling a little desperate.

“Two thousand and seven,” he says, but Pixie interrupts.

“We need Stove as the go-between. Otherwise, we’re totally cut off from the living realm.”

She makes a fair point. We also need his microphone, and I’m not sure how ghost objects transfer while possessions are in place.

“I’ll do it,” Josh says. “Being chronically online is kinda my thing, plus I know the hotel’s Wi-Fi password.”

I look at the others. I have no immediate objections, but they understand his capabilities and limitations better than I do. They shrug-nod. Like me, they accept we’re short on options.

“Okay, do it. Connect to the Wi-Fi and then find an app on my desktop called Sound Store. That’s the recording app. Then you’ll need to go online and go to the PodStation website. We’ll need to create an account or log into my old one. The password is the same as my laptop’s. I wish I could write all this down.”

I have a pencil and paper in my pocket, but I know that Josh wouldn’t be able to see it once he’s viewing the world through Franny’s living eyes.

“It’s fine, I’ll remember it all,” he says. His voice squeaks up at the end, reminding me of just how young he is. Or was when he died.

“Petey?” Stove calls out, and Peter turns towards the direction of Stove’s voice. “Josh is going to take over. Make some space inside Franny.”

“What?” he yells.

“After three, you’re gonna switch. Ready?”

“No.”

“One. Two. Three.”

Josh slides his lanky fifteen-year-old body up to Franny’s right side, and half a second later, Peter is falling out of her left. Franny’s eyes close, her chin drops to her chest, and then, as though someone has performed a restart function on her, she bounces back. Eyes wide, roving around the room, and a maniacal grin on her face.

Peter crawls over to the chaise longue and collapses onto it. “Let me just . . .” And then he’s asleep.

“This is wild!” Josh exclaims, rolling Franny’s arms out at her sides like a giant wibbly inflatable showroom man. “Okay, here goes.” He steps towards the bureau and bumps into it. His hands, or Franny’s hands, slap heavily against the wooden lid. “Ouch, shit.”

Josh’s inexperience at possessions, or just being a ghost, or life in general, is manifestly evident. He’s clumsier than Peter, his movements heavier, jerkier. So much so that I’m baseline panicking about all the unidentified bruises Franny will wake up with. I should probably get him to pop a couple of ibuprofen before he takes the housekeeper back to her office sofa.