Free Sleep Stalker (Ghosts Beyond the Grove Book 1) by Joy Elbel

known that it wouldn’t end that way.  It never ended that way.  At least not for me, anyway.  Nothing ever came easy.  The roadmap to my life didn’t include a single straight line from Point A to Point B.  No, my map resembled a Slinky—consistently kinked and annoyingly coiled.
          “Zach hasn’t been himself since he got back from California.  I’m pretty sure that he acquired some sort of paranormal parasite while he was out there.  I’m calling to see what kind of ghost it is and what I can do to get rid of it.”
         A deep sigh preceded her reply.  “Okay, I’ll do what I can to help.  Tell me exactly what’s been going on.”
         I briefly explained how weird he’d been acting.  Even though Clay and I had theorized that maybe his physical ailments were due to a medical cause, I included them anyway in case we were wrong.  The part that puzzled me the most, though, were the strange delusions he seemed to be having—particularly his frequent ramblings about a dress I didn’t own.  In fact, all of his current hallucinations were centered around me in some way.  Rita stayed silent until I was finished then hit me with a barrage of questions.
         “What was the first weird thing you noticed about him?  Did his behavior change rapidly or slowly over time?”
         “He was really cranky when we picked him up at the airport—he snapped at me for complaining about it being too hot.  That was the first time he mentioned anything about a dress.”  I concentrated hard on the last communication I had with him before that.  The last time we talked was the night before when he called to tell me what time his flight was scheduled to arrive.  And he told me how much he missed me, how excited he was to see me again.
         “Well—”
         “Wait!” I shouted as I remembered one other thing.  “The day of his flight, I tried to leave him a voice message to let him know that we might be late.  He should have been on the plane at the time but since his flight was delayed, he answered his phone.  But he sounded strange.  He gave me a one word answer then hung up on me.  I didn’t think it was a big deal at the time but looking back on it, I think that was the start of it.  What kind of ghost is it?”
         But of course, the more impatient I was for answers the more questions she threw out at me.  When she ran out of things to ask me, I asked her one more time. 
         “What kind of ghost am I dealing with here, Rita?  And please don’t say wraith!  I got lucky in defeating Allison—I don’t think I could do it again.”
         “What you described to me doesn’t match any kind of entity I’ve dealt with personally or even heard of, Ruby.  I’ll have to think about this for a bit.  It’s possible that he picked something up at the airport in Chicago but we can’t be certain.  You have no idea where else he was between the hotel and the airport.  He could have been to any number of restaurants in California that morning.  Hell, he even might have encountered something just walking down the street.  Regardless, I’ll do a little research on O’Hare International anyway and get back to you later.  Okay?”
         No, it was not okay.  But for the time being, I was going to have to make it be okay.  As long as I could avoid another fight with Zach, I thought I would be fine.  I snuck out of the bedroom quietly only to find him dead asleep on the futon.  After a quick shower, I dressed and left him a hasty note like he’d done for me the day before.  Geez.  Things had escalated so rapidly that in a matter of only a few days, we were communicating solely through one sentence notes jotted down on napkins and random bits of scrap paper.  As a matter of fact, the last texts we exchanged were sent while he was still on the west coast.
         The receipt from my trip to the grocery store was still lying on the