GHOST GAL: The Wild Hunt by Bobby Nash Read Free Book Online

where did I put…?” He patted each pocket in turn until he found the key to the loading door. “Ah, here we go.”
    The three of them spent the next half an hour or so unloading the jars and carrying them up the stairs to the second floor one by one, being overly careful with each. Alexandra explained once more to Samuel their encounter with the water spirit and how hard it had beento get it back inside the bottle. This time he listened to her story.
    Once they were done, Alexandra and Joshua joined Samuel in the private office that was the only room closed off from the open outer office.
    “Do you know what you’ve got here?” Samuel asked.
    “A jar,” Joshua deadpanned.
    “A containment vessel,” Alexandra said before her angel guide could respond.
    “Two points for you,” Samuel said. “I haven’t seen one of these puppies in a long time. Do you have any idea how rare it is to find one of these intact, much less… how many did you find?”
    “Forty.”
    “Amazing.”
    Without warning, the angel guide gave the jar a slight shake and then began to remove the tape from the cork stopper, much to the nervous astonishment of his guests. With the last strand of tape removed, the pop of the cork freeing from the lip of the jar echoed throughout the office.
    “Are you crazy?” Joshua demanded. “Do you know what we went through to get that thing back in there?”
    The water spirit they had returned to the jar earlier crawled free, but just barely. Before it could pull itself completely free of the containment vessel, Samuel made eye contact. “Ah, ah, ah…” he clucked, waggling a finger at the ghost. “No trouble. Understand?”
    Surprisingly, the water spirit cowed and shimmied partway back down into the jar and Alexandra could swear it nodded its head in answer to Samuel’s question. Once upon a time she would have thought it impossible, that it was just a trick of the light, but these days she wasn’t so sure. The ghost looked sad, a completely one hundred and eighty degree change from when they had encountered him in the tower.
    There, it had been angry.
    She understood. If she had been imprisoned as long as the spirit had been, she would have probably been cranky too.
    “If you two will excuse me,” Samuel said. “I will see to our friend’s ‘travel arrangements’ and meet you both out front.”
    With a nod, Alexandra stood and led Joshua out to the waiting area near Samuel’s cubicle.
    “Didn’t you want to watch?” Joshua asked.
    “More than anything,” she answered. “That’s his call though. Not mine.”
    “What do we do now?”
    She smiled. “Now, we wait.”

W hile they waited, Alexandra and Joshua exchanged small talk. When they ran out of interesting new topics to discuss, they flipped through the outdated stack of old pulp magazines and a handful of more modern slicks that had piled up on a small end table. Then they took turns pacing back and forth across the yellowed linoleum. They knew the wait wasn’t really all that long, but it felt like time had slowed to a crawl as they waited for Samuel Esau to reappear from the mysterious rear office.
    “What do you think he’s doing in there?” Joshua asked. It was not the first time he had broached the question since their host had excused himself heading into the back office alone.
    “I wish I knew,” she answered. At first, Alexandra had found her fiancé’s constant stream of questioning to be annoying, but then she made a game out of it. Now, each time he asked, she came up with a completely different answer than the time before. If he noticed what she was doing, he gave no outward sign. “Maybe he’s got a glass blower set up back there and he’s trying to replicate the process.”
    “Yeah, maybe,” he mumbled. As with the question, he gave the same reply each time. He stopped mid-stride and gave her a quizzical look. “Wait? What did you say?”
    “Nothing,” she said, holding in a laugh. She picked up a