The Haunted_Edit Copy 4-9-17 final final 4 Upload

“Yeah, well, we’ll see.” I attempted a laugh, but the sound
was so hollow it barely made it past my lips. My heart was pounding
out a hectic death metal beat inside my chest. Throughout my entire
body, my nerves were pulled so tight they felt like they could snap
at any second. My whole being was on complete alert, and I wasn’t
even in the people’s house yet.
“You should tie your hair back,” he suggested. “This way
strands won’t get in any pictures and make people think you caught
something you really didn’t.”
“Thank you, Jason Hawes.” I reached forward to the coffee
table and started digging through the piles of books, papers, and
various other goodies that had accumulated over the months. After
a moment, I found a little hair tie, and I pulled my hair away from
my face and into a ponytail.
Just as I dropped my hands back into my lap, headlights
beamed in the window as a car pulled into our driveway. “I must
go,” I said dramatically as I rose from my seat. “Charon is here to
ferry me to the underworld.”
Gunner’s eyebrows turned downward. “Don’t joke about
that, Chelsea. You might be scared and want to make it into
something silly, but it’s not. These are the spirits of real people
you’re dealing with, and you need to treat them with the same
respect you would someone alive.”
I blinked, searching for some kind of response to that. My
ten-year-old brother had just lectured me on being respectful and
serious. When had he turned into Mom?
Finally I just nodded and agreed. “Okay, Gun. I’m sorry. I’ll
be serious.”
“You don’t have to say sorry to me,” he said dismissively as
he opened up his book again. “It’s not my house you’re going to
mess up if you don’t be careful.”
Well, this had certainly put a new spin on things. I had been
so concerned with how I was going to react to the things that might
happen during the investigation, I hadn’t actually considered the
people living in the house or the spirits themselves. I was in such
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