Rock N Soul by Lauren Sattersby Read Free Book Online Page A

Just be quiet and, I don’t know, try and figure out if you can float.”
    “All right,” he agreed. “Lead on.”

When I made it back up to the front counter and found Richard, his eyes immediately fixed on me with an unnerving intensity. I raised my eyebrows at him like I didn’t know what he meant by that, but he didn’t seem fooled by it. He motioned me into his office and closed the door behind us.
    “Sorry,” I said, trying to placate him before the yelling started. “I just had a little bit of a flashback and it freaked me out. Malika finished up Mr. Kingston’s room.”
    “She said you were curled up in the fetal position screaming your head off,” Richard said. “We got complaints from other guests too. About the screaming.”
    Chris walked over and sat on Richard’s desk. I watched him for a second before I realized that it probably wasn’t a good idea to watch ghosts walk around the room when people could track my eye movement. I wrenched my eyes back up to meet Richard’s. “Yeah. Like I said, I’m sorry. It was just . . . weird.”
    Richard narrowed his eyes, but with concern instead of anger. “Because of Christopher Raiden?”
    Chris glanced up at the mention of his name from his perusal of whatever paperwork Richard had spread out on his desk. I flicked my eyes over to him for the briefest instant before I remembered again that I wasn’t supposed to look at him.
    “Yeah,” I said after a beat of silence. “I just hadn’t been back in that room since then.”
    Richard’s frown softened a little. “I understand. If you need to go home, take the rest of the night off . . . well, I’m sure Vic would be happy to have the extra shift.”
    “Nah,” I said, waving my hand dismissively. “I’m fine. I promise.”
    “Listen, Tyler . . .” Richard tugged at his collar. “If you need to talk to somebody about the whole Christopher Raiden incident . . .”
    “Don’t worry about it, Richard,” I said quickly. The last thing I wanted was to have to talk to my boss about my fears. About the nightmares. About anything related to my life, really.
    “I didn’t mean me ,” Richard said, his eyes widening. “I’m not exactly qualified to talk about, you know, posttraumatic stress and issues like that.”
    “Oh.” I paused for a moment. “I don’t have posttraumatic stress.”
    “Well . . .” Richard pulled at his collar again. “What I’m saying is that this happened to you on the job, so the hotel would be happy to pay for a few sessions for you. If you think you needed some help working through everything.”
    “Um . . .” I considered the offer. On the one hand, I didn’t think I needed counseling. And telling a therapist that I was seeing ghosts would probably get me thrown in a mental institution or doped up on antipsychotic meds, and I’d seen how well that worked for my cousin Chad, who’d ended up with pancreatitis and the total inability to sit still. So no thanks on the clozapine. I’d just take my healthy pancreas and put up with my rock star ghost for a while.
    Still, though, if it would be on the hotel’s dime, I might as well at least leave the option open.
    And then I realized that I hadn’t actually answered Richard, so I shrugged. “Thanks. I’ll give it some thought.”
    He peered at me for several seconds before speaking. “Okay. Well, let me know if you need anything.”
    “I will,” I promised. “Should I go back to my post now?”
    Richard nodded, and I got up and walked out of his office. Chris followed along behind me.
    “You really hadn’t been back up to the room?” he asked.
    “No,” I muttered. “Be quiet.”
    “Why not?”
    I didn’t want to explain everything to him, so I went for nonchalant. “No reason. I just hadn’t.”
    “Were you, like, messed up by it?” He walked a few paces in front of me and then turned around and started walking backward so he could keep watching me.
    “By finding a dead guy in his hotel room?