Ms. Vogler smiled. "That's it. Except in my case, it wasn't a prank, either. It was a manifestation of my anxieties. That's what my fiance says. He's getting his doctorate in psychology."
"Fiance. Congrats. Rosalyn mentioned you'd had a breakup that night. Is this...?"
"Same guy." Ms. Vogler flushed. "We worked things out."
"Ah, so that was the anxiety being manifested. About the breakup."
"Not...exactly." Ms. Vogler picked at a thread on her skirt. "The breakup was...fallout from other...issues." She turned to Gabriel. "Your aunt helped me see that. Please thank her for it. I was in a predicament. One I wasn't even acknowledging to myself. Let's just say something happened to me, and I hadn't acknowledged it, and I needed to. She helped me do that."
"I'm glad to hear it," Olivia said. "So when you say that the supposed ghost was actually a manifestation of your anxiety, I'm guessing you mean it was your subconscious prodding you to make a decision."
"Yes."
"And prodding you in what way? Did the hitchhiker refer to the incident in question?" Olivia paused, and Gabriel could see her struggling to find a way to tie this to their cover story. "Did you share something with Rosalyn that she failed to pick up on?"
"No, the message wasn't that obvious, which is why I didn't understand it myself. The ghost--or whatever I thought I saw--said I was lost."
That old chill slid down Gabriel's neck, and he heard himself repeating, "Lost?"
Ms. Vogler glanced over. "Yes. She said I was lost, and I had to find my way back on track, and if I didn't..."
The schoolteacher trailed off and swallowed.
"If you didn't?" Gabriel prodded.
"Then I should end it. I should just end it."
SIXTEEN
GABRIEL
"Is this case making any sense to you?" Olivia asked.
They were in a coffee shop. It wasn't one they'd visited before, but Olivia had a sixth sense for them, particularly the trendy sort with comfortable seats, empty at this time of day, as people headed home, having imbibed sufficient caffeine.
Olivia had apparently not imbibed sufficient caffeine--or sugar, having added a brownie to her mocha. Now she alternated between solid and liquid chocolate as she tapped her pen against her notepad.
She had asked a question, but he knew he wasn't supposed to answer. Not yet. She was still working it out herself.
"We have forty years of one very specific type of ghost. Sad Christina who can't find her way home. And then, boom, vengeful-demon Christie." She looked up at him. "This better not be a demon."
"I have no evidence that such a thing exists."
"Excellent. I'll seize on that as proof and totally ignore the fact that, until a few weeks ago, you didn't know ghosts or fae existed either." She wrote "Not a Demon" on her pad and double-underscored it. Then she skimmed her notes. "I'm missing something."
"We both are, because I fully agree that our ghost story has continuity issues."
"So something happens two years ago that sets her on the path to vengeance. Maybe people stopped picking her up? Or someone mocked her and sent her over the edge?" Olivia sighed. "I'm really grasping at straws."
"Then let's focus on the current iteration of Christina Moore. We have two confirmed suicides, both occurring forty-eight hours after their ghostly encounters. Lambert kept telling me he had forty-eight hours to find his way. But he didn't know what that meant."
"Nor did Angela Vogler at first. She only knew that she felt a sense of urgency to resolve her issue. An urgency so strong that she responded by instead trying to prove she hadn't seen a ghost--in other words, no ghost meant no timeline meant no penalty. It seems to only have been after she fixed her problem that she gradually remembered what the ghost had said."
"Yes."
"So Ghost Christina doesn't care about getting home anymore. She's turned her afterlife attention to playing therapist-from-hell.
The ultimate motivational speaker. You have forty-eight hours to fix your life, or you have to take your life. That's some seriously tough love."