Free Tonya Hurley_Ghostgirl_03 by Lovesick Page A

move. They were sporting Double Agent chic, donning cream-colored silk kerchiefs and sunglasses to make themselves look not only deep, but fashionably undercover. They justified their spying by pretending that an intervention was in Petula’s best interest, not just theirs.

As hoped, Petula strolled out into the cold night air dragging a full-to-bursting black heavy-duty contractor’s bag she’d “borrowed” from the landscapers. She lifted it into the passenger seat of her Beemer and took off. The Wendys tailed Petula all the way downtown in the freezing cold. It was rare for them to be down there to begin with, but totally unheard of after dark. Petula had slowed down and pulled around the corner just ahead. They could see the glare from her brake lights around the bend and figured she must have stopped.

“Where are we?” Wendy Anderson asked her copilot.

Hawthorne was a small place with an even smaller downtown, but their inexperience with the seedy neighborhood required research. Wendy Thomas studied the dashboard GPS and pinpointed their location.

“Um,” Wendy Thomas replied not-so-confidently, “downtown?”

“What is she doing down here?” Wendy Anderson asked.

Before Wendy Thomas could respond, the taillights on Petula’s car dimmed and then went black. They heard her car door pop open and quickly slid down as low in their seats as possible, leaving only their head wraps visible above the dashboard. Petula walked around the corner, head down, her shadow cast by the streetlights, growing ever longer the farther away from them she walked.

“Do you think she saw us?” Wendy Anderson queried nervously.

“Shut up, Wendy,” Wendy Thomas commanded. “You’re fogging the windows and I can’t see a thing.”

It wasn’t Wendy Anderson’s big mouth that was causing the windows to cloud over, however, but rather the cool presence of Pam and Prue, who’d just crashed The Wendys’ Emma Peel party. They settled in the backseat and immediately began tracing rude messages onto the glass.

Each time Wendy Anderson wiped away the condensation, Wendy Thomas’s breath would reveal a new insult on the windshield: “Hoe-tards,” “fugly,” “shallowficial.” The looks on their faces were priceless, and Pam and Prue could barely contain themselves.

“This is going to be great,” Prue laughed. “Who needs heaven?”

Pam smiled and nodded but quickly straightened up when she caught a glimpse of Petula stopping and standing on a barren corner, as if she was keeping an appointment. She pointed Prue in her direction, as The Wendys, oblivious to their guests, followed.

“You don’t think…,” Wendy Anderson let the thought that Petula might be involved in some kind of secret affair, or worse, hang in the air.

For just a second, The Wendys’ hard-heartedness seemed to soften, and they looked at each other with almost genuine concern for their leader. The moment was fleeting, however, as they quickly allowed all kinds of alternative theories to fill their small minds.

“Maybe she’s a serial killer,” Wendy Anderson offered.

“That would explain a lot,” Wendy Thomas concurred.

“It really would,” Prue grumbled, as Pam just shook her head dismissively.

The passengers, dead and alive, remained fixated on Petula, as a solitary figure in tattered clothing approached her from the dark end of the street. Petula stood nervously and then began chatting with the bag lady, or rather bag girl. They were all speechless until Wendy Thomas shrieked.

“Oh my God,” Wendy Thomas yelled. “The smoking gun.”

She tried documenting the whole sordid transaction with her phone camera, but the broken streetlamps seemed to cut out on cue and come to Petula’s defense. All she got was a black screen. So, she and Wendy Anderson were left to just observe as Petula handed over item after item of clothing.

“She’s, like, a missionary,” Wendy Anderson surmised.

“I think that toe thing really did