Free The Edge Of The Cemetery by Margaret Millmore Page A

wearing lightly tinted round-rimmed glasses, which I initially mistook for the typical glasses the ghosts and demons always wore. When I realized she wasn't a ghost, I asked her why she was there, received a sarcastic reply, and being that I was exhausted from my experience with Edgar, I wasn't in the mood. After a few minutes of not-so-pleasant back and forth, she told me she was there to visit her aunt, Justine Wilkinson. Since Justine had told me she had no family—an omission she later apologized for—things got worse from there, and I almost called the police on Billy.
    Billy had always been a loner, and after college she had decided to travel the world solo, killing ghosts. Her personality, in part, was due to that nomadic existence, but now I thought it was more like a habit she couldn't quite shake. She smiled a lot more these days, and she was without a doubt a happier person. Perhaps that was because she finally had a permanent place to call home, and she was surrounded by people that loved her. I smiled at the memory…it sometimes amazed me that we'd become as close as we were in such a short time.
    This morning she was sitting on the same bench in the courtyard, wearing calf-length spandex jogging pants and a tank top. Her skin glistened from the sweat she'd worked up on her run. Her forearms were perched on her knees and her head was lowered, her breathing still labored as she cooled down. I sat next to her and leaned back enough to rest against the building.
    “How was your run? No inattentive texters to rescue today?” I asked teasingly.
    I expected to get a rise out of her, or at least a grouchy response due to the hour of the day, but instead, she quietly said, “Fine.”
    “GG stopped by last night.” I thought that would perk her up a little…I was wrong.
    “And?” she replied blandly. I regaled her with our ghostly conversation. “Figures.” Her tone was apathetic.
    The intensity of the last thirty-six hours had dumped quite a bit on us, and the confirmation that someone and something was trying to kill us should have brought on a more impassioned response. Something else was bothering her—I just wasn't sure what it was.
    “What's going on, Billy?” I asked tentatively.
    Billy's chest hitched slightly as she exhaled, and when I looked over at her, her eyes were moist. Billy didn't bother with too many human emotions, and the only other time I'd seen her cry was after she'd killed her grandfather. Although, I thought those were tears of relief and finality…these tears were full of anguish. Her hands moved to the edge of the bench and tightened to the point that her knuckles whitened, then she released her grip and moved them to her lap.
    “She has this power…over me…she can reduce me to nothing, to the sniveling little brat she gave to Vokkel. I…I won't do that again. I won't let
her
do that to me….” A tear ran down her cheek.
    Sometimes I felt like Billy's big brother, which was odd since I was an only child and didn't have any brothering experience, but occasionally that's what she invoked in me, and I suddenly had the urge to comfort her. I put my arm around her shoulders and drew her close. She let me, and that bothered me. This wasn't my Billy…it was the one that her mother had left behind all those years ago, and I wanted my brazen, obnoxious green-eyed monster back.
    I suddenly felt horrible that I'd been too tired last night to realize the impact Julie's unwelcome visit would have on Billy. I couldn't imagine the life she'd lived, not knowing her father and being traded to an evil man for money. I knew Justine had done everything she could to give Billy the love she didn't get from her parents, but maybe it wasn't enough.
    “Well, you don't have to see her again, it's that simple. She'll finish cleaning out his house and his money and she'll move on.”
    Her chest hitched again but the tears were gone, and I decided to push forward using her annoying version of