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Chapter 1: Deadly Serious

Let me tell you a thing or two about palm trees.

Firstly, they're only good for coconuts, which in turn are only good for throwing at the heads of the really evil 'professors'. You know, the kind who think they know everything even though you KNOW you're right.

Secondly, they crop up in the most unpredictable of places.

Seriously. You could see the from the place. Tall, leafy and bright in the California sunset.

That's something else. The Sun!

Okay, so many I'm being the tiniest bit over dramatic. Despite what stereotypes would have you believe, the United Kingdom, in all its poshly-accented glory, is not either permanently darkened by clouds nor doomed to a future composed entirely of rain. Also, we don't all wear monocles and top hats.

Except on special occasions.

Back onto the palm trees.

They're damn tall. I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't the gradually darkening landscape dotted with lights from houses and the constantly moving, glistening fabric that was the sea, which was the sight that greeted me. I mean, it was practically pretty.

If m friend was here, she'd say I don't get out enough. It's not like she found me in some stupid little windowless cubical in the centre of London - which, by the way, she didn't. Right now, I'm in a plane over another country - and another continent, I'll have you know - so, um, how much further "out" would she like me? Mars?

Although, via theories and a few less-than-sophisticated simulations I have reason to assume that it would be entirely possible to...

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Did I mention how entirely creepy it is to be on a plane when the flight attendant says "please buckle up, we're about to land"?

Hell, if the landing is gonna be that bumpy give me a parachute and I'll jump.

My trail of thought was interrupted as someone sat down beside me. She was a young woman in a white coat with an ID badge attached to her shirt pocket - the badge said she was a medical student, that her name was Jane Lockwood and that she was registered at Oxford under a professor with too many qualifications for his own good. She made no attempt to fasten her seat belt as she sat down and looked at me with both a quizzical and condescending expression, both of which were immensely irritating.

Her appearance was slightly weird as that seat hadn't been registered to anyone when the plane had set off and the woman was, for lack of a better or more technical phrase, glowing steadily.

What? You mean I didn't mention the whole I-See-Dead-People thing?

Surprise!

Yes, I'm some kinda freak. However, I happen to think this is one of my best qualities.

My first ghostie was at the age of about four, the age when a toddler is "all grown up" and has learned just enough words to make it insanely irritating.

I was, like every young four year old with an imagination, on a secret mission.

I was off to find a small plastic frog. Obviously, at the time, it was very important.

At that particular moment, the frog was winning our little game of hide-and-seek. On the upside - if there is an upside to being outwitted by a non-sentient frog - my hunt was not entirely pointless.

Just as I was about to open a door, at which I was getting adept enough at to warrant locked doors being introduced to my home environment, someone came through it. Like any child, I accepted this fact with style: I backed off as the person walked through the door towards me then developed spontaneous giggles.

Whoever it was, I didn't recognize them immediately, and as such after my fit of laughter my little face was overtaken with a child's frown and I began pointing and chattering nonsensically at her.

I haven't the foggiest what it was I was trying to tell, ask or demand of her, probably something about that frog, but she freaked out the four-year-old me in a way I can't quite describe.

As it comes to it, that's probably the closest I've ever come to properly meeting my mother.

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Okay, so I have parenting issues. Not many, though; I' ve never met my father and I haven't seen or heard from my long-gone mother since. I guess she's flighty and he's shy. Makes you wonder how I came around, 'cause I'm neither.

I was adopted too early for me to remember anything of my biological parents or where I lived before I was found by my more stable parents, but I don't particularly mind. If my bio-parents were all that great, they wouldn't have opted out of my life without so much as a post-it note saying "buh-bye".

As it is, my adoptive parents have been pushing their teenage daughter to go explore the world. They insist that it wouldn't be fair if they were watching my every move and peeping over my shoulder, and than instead of them I should take friends. Go explore. Be free. Kick ass, etc.

This was by no means a ploy to get rid of me. They grew up thinking they had to settle down and have kids by the time they were thirty, and they hate the idea of me being confined to such sociologically strict rules.

They also told me to come back with something shiny. I guess madness rubs off.

They're thrill seekers. My adoptive mother, Karen, is a marine biologist. She travels to practically anywhere there is water so she can go diving, studying and generally getting wet. She happens to think that the last is just an added bonus, which makes her a little weird to outsiders, but she was practically born for the water.

Also, she could seriously kick your ass with the karate she's learned and been practicing since she was nearly six years old.

My dad is a private pilot. He adores heights and anything to do with them, which is a little more than creepy. Parachuting, bungee jumping, abseiling, paragliding; you name it, he's done it.

Me? I'm something of an insane technological genius.

And I fit right in.

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Despite what our air hostess lead us to believe, our landing was smooth. We touched down without so much as a headache, and as we did a new wave of chatter swept through the passengers of the plane. I simply yawned, closed my eyes and laid back, 'cause I'd been on the plane longer than I cared to think about and I was more than a little jet-lagged.

Something pointed jabbed me in the ribs a few seconds later, and the cry that followed gained me plenty of odd looks. I flashed a charming smile at the tourists who raised quizzical eyebrows high and their cameras higher, then, when they looked back at their seat partners, I shot a filthy look at my own companion. All she did was smile in return, which was, needless to say, infuriating.

I tugged my small bag halfway off the rail, then dived aside quickly as gravity got a bit carried away and pulled it down towards my head. At that point, my invisible friend had started to laugh, knowing very well that I was the only one who could hear her. By this time I was ignoring her while effecting unconcern, an expression, which, to be fair, really isn't that good. However, it must've done something, because she stopped laughing and started sulking when I walked off the plane without her.

The horizon was a mass of burnt red, bright orange and sunflower yellow. It was beautiful, in a kind of chaotic way; the shapes and colours of the clouds and sky had no particular pattern. Despite the fact that random colours aren't what I'd call pretty ordinarily, tiredness was creeping into the dark corners of my mind and thus I was able to appreciate the wash of colour that was rapidly fading to purple and dark blue.

Fatigue was impairing my observation skills, so my taxi ride from the airport to the hotel - no, sorry, the Pebble Beach Hotel & Golf Resort - is still kinda blurry. The moment I remember clearest is getting up out of the car, bags in tow, and giving the porter a casual, vague, single-fingered salute. He gave me an uneasy smile, but that might've been because I'm English and my accent is weird. He probably thought I was Australian. It wouldn't be the first time.

The Pebble Beach Hotel, I can tell you without the slightest bit of doubt, is the biggest, most expensive and poshest hotel for a considerable distance. My accommodation alone was huge, with french doors onto a balcony that overlooked both the ocean and part of the Hotel's complex. Spotlights littered the place like glow-worms, lighting up the sizable pool - filled with people, even at this time - crowds of hibiscus flowers, and the entrance to the Hotel itself. I'd have to make sure to wile away some time standing on that balcony looking serenely at the horizon.

I was so glad I was not paying for all this. That, however, does in no way mean I was entirely happy to be hanging around on the west coast of America, alone, at something-past-eight feeling like I'd been hit over the head with something heavy. Like a tree.

I dropped my bags beside the door without any kind of thought for what was in them then walked into the bedroom, where I collapsed face-first onto the bed with a muffled thwump. That's when my ghostly stalker finally caught up with me.

Don't get me wrong, for however many hours were were on that damned plane, she was nowhere near as stressy as I thought she'd be. I wasn't entirely sure when she'd disappeared in order for her to reappear, but I can tell you - just in case you didn't guess already - that I really wasn't bothered at that point in time.

"Are you planning on actually getting up this century?" she asked me in that annoyingly cocky tone the dead get when they're trying to badger the living into doing their biding. "Or am I going to have to go find her myself?"

"Go," I told the bed covers in a less-than-clear voice. "See if I care."

I was pretty sure, as sure as I could be with a bed obstructing my vision, that she's folded her arms by now. It was the typical stance she assumed when I was being my wonderful, typical, difficult self.

"You know I can't go without someone else to back me up..."

"You mean," I told her, conscious of how callous it would sound but not caring, "someone with a heartbeat."

"I did not," she told me in her best no-nonsense tone, "persuade my brother to fly you halfway around the world so you could sit a bitch about ghosts."

"Actually," I threw back at her as I rolled over onto my back, ever the antagonist, "I'm pretty sure that is why you sent me over here on this stir-crazy mission. It was either that or you were trying to save the world. I can't quite remember which."

She sighed, as she did so often around me. "Can't you just be serious for one moment? It'd make my job a hell of a lot easier."

"Be serious? What're you trying to do, ruin my teen years?" Slowly, I sat up, mumbling, then perched on the end of the bed, which was a precarious position to take, in my state. "And no, I can't. I'm jet-lagged, no-where near home and being plagued by pesky ghosts. I can't actually believe it was the living that used to bother me."

"Then we're all screwed."

"Tough. I'm sleeping in. You've destroyed my sleeping pattern and my body clock, y'know."

She made a noise that I took to mean "Uh, am I supposed to care?"

"Bite me," was all I said. Judging by the fact I got no response and the room warmed up a little, I'm guessing she wandered off somewhere else. Probably to complain to her brother. The poor guy was a nervous wreck already... it's not like it didn't freak him out that his thirty-something-year-old sister came back as a ghost, but she came back about ten years younger too - apparently, her vitality peaked in her mid twenties. She's now around his age, and he's doing everything he can to avoid her. It's the funniest thing I've seen in ages.

Ahem.

Anyway, he's due to arrive in a few days, as Jane would say, primarily to keep me out of trouble and to make sure I don't screw up. I think she enjoys ruining my fun. Hmph.

Notwithstanding, this means I have a few days of being a tourist to fill before I'm flung into chaos and calamity.

First thing's first, though, I planned to sleep undisturbed, for once.

Twenty minutes later, clean and prepped for the biggest lie-in of my life, I covered myself in an unfamiliar duvet and tried to drown out the cold silence. It didn't take me long, I'm guessing, because I don't remember much except noticing the dodgy pattern of the ceiling and repositioning the piece of cardboard I'd managed to scavenge. With the aid of a spare bottle of tip-ex, it now read something along these lines:

'No ghosts beyond this point. Violators will be tossed into the Underworld with a postcard for the Devil.'

Look, no-one ever accused me of being subtle. Or nice.

It worked, though. I love being right.

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AN :: I just thought I'd mention inaccuracies, while I was here. If there are any that I've missed, let's just put them down to expanding creativity. 'Kay? :D

Just in case is needed clarifying: this is definitely not Suze. She's still at home with Jesse, no doubt, doing something... interesting. -cough-

Also, reviews are love & constructive criticism is even better. On that note, big thanks & cyber cookies to Pandagirl66 for her lovely review. ^^