It's been close to a month since I left hospital, and there's still no sign of Connor. The police came by for an update, of which there was nothing to update. Admittedly, I probably shouldn't have made that joke to their faces.

The nothingness of it all makes me feel like a sitting duck, like we're waiting around for Connor and his posse to track us down. What am I supposed to do? Just sit around twiddling my thumbs until the police find my brother? What if they never find him? This blessed place is lovely and everything, but I don't want to literally spend the rest of my life here. At this rate, screw it, I'll throw caution to the wind and track Connor down myself.

It would be safe, sort of. Maybe. I'd just need someone with a blessed stone attached to me at all times. With Lucy gone, there's no more energy Connor can track, so it would only be partially idiotic to go undercover and find him myself; least I assume Lucy's gone. Passed over. There's been no sign of her since her boyfriend's brother was arrested on the suspicion of her murder, which was the result of an anonymous tip off. It turns out Northern Irish isn't the only accent Carmen is ace at. I just hope Lucy's passed over to the right side.

I'm ranting about our lack of progress on the Connor detection front to Chiku the day after the police visit, and she without a doubt can't understand a word I'm saying, but it feels good to complain, so I keep going anyway. She's pretending to listen, which I appreciate.

"You know what I'm saying? It's like, yeah sure, I might die, blah, blah, blah, but this is so boring."

Chiku makes a hm sound, but her attention is fully invested on the antique show flashing on the TV. I'm not sure how well she's following the whole thing, but she starts tutting when a contestant decides to buy a candle stick instead of an old jewelry box.

"The guy isn't stupid," I continue. "He's probably not even breaking a sweat trying to hide from the police, and I know I'm avoiding uni, but we're hardly far from the city. He knows I lived there. We can help the police, try and find him our--"

"Whoa, they should've picked the jewelry box," a voice interrupts from the doorway, and I nearly wet myself.

"Holy shit, Ava, how long have you been standing there?"

"Ah! No! No swear!" Chiku snaps as she bats one of her hands at me.

I apologise. Ava is leaning against the door frame, her eyes transfixed on the television. She's eating--What the hell? She's eating a stalk of celery. She takes a bite, and it makes a loud crunching sound.

"There is something we can try," Ava says absentmindedly.

Her eyes are still on the TV, and I've got no idea what she's talking about.

"Tell people," she continues, which makes even less sense to me.

I furrow my eyebrows, and Ava turns away from the television. As if remembering where she is, she blinks and shakes her head as she looks at me. She takes another bite out of the celery. She stands there, just sort of chewing for a minute or so, before speaking again.

"To try and locate Connor and his dark spirits," she explains. "We can tell other spirit talkers about you."

Wait, what? The Medakis have kept this to themselves?

"I thought--Haven't your family said anything?"

"They've warned the families we know about a spirit talker turning dark and trying to bring dark forces together, and have asked them to pass the message on, but it's all been vague." She shrugs as she takes another bite of her celery. "Don't worry, it's groovy, nobody knows about you," she says with a mouth full of green.

"What? Why not?"

Ava tilts her head. "We assumed you'd not agree to that in a million years."

"Don't get me wrong, the thought makes me want to die, but if telling other spirit talkers the whole story helps, then it's dumb not to."

"Oh," is all Ava says. "Really?"

I nod, be it begrudgingly.

"Groovy."

Ava takes another bite of her celery, swiftly turns around, and glides into the hallway. Wait, shit, what did I just sign up to?

Never has regret burned so fiercely in the pit of my stomach. When I agreed to revealing my deepest, darkest secrets to a bunch of strangers, I didn't account for the possibility of them wanting to gather in one place to discuss the whole thing. I definitely should've because apparently, that's exactly what's going to happen.

Within the next few hours, a bunch of spirit talking families are going to gather at the Medaki mansion for a chinwag, and I'll be the hot topic of the night. I was hoping I could just not show up, but I'm already in too deep. I've never hated my past self so much in my life.

The budget ghostbuster gang and I are all huddled in Ava's smaller living room. I still can't get over the fact she has multiple living rooms. Meanwhile, the Medakis, all bar Ava, are running around the house getting everything ready for when guests arrive. We offered to help, but I think it was pretty obvious I was one anxiety trigger away from a state of panic which would release an onslaught of demonic screaming inside my head, so they told us to just relax until people start turning up. I'd not refer to my current existence as relaxed, but I'm managing to keep the banished voices at bay, so I guess I can't be too bad.

I'm pacing around the room talking at a million miles an hour as I play catch with Tom because I desperately need to fidget with something, anything. We're using Annabel the Second as our ball, and I'm throwing him so aggressively that I'm surprised he's not being ripped to shreds.

"Must you move so much?" Jamie mutters from the armchair near the patio doors. "You're distracting me."

He's typing away at his laptop, and doesn't stop doing so to complain, so if anything, I'm not distracting him enough. Everyone has their exams soon, and Jamie is without a doubt revising. Hardly the time for it.

"You could've stayed at the flat if you were that bothered about working," I fight back as I lob Annabel the Second with huge force towards Tom.

"Careful with that thing!" Annabel the First hisses at me from the sofa near the doorway.

"I'm not staying there alone," Jamie scoffs as he finally looks up from his laptop. "Not after everything with that dark spirit."

"They don't care about you," Tom, who miraculously caught my last throw, chimes in. "You'd be the booby prize of the ghost world."

Jamie doesn't respond. He just grunts a bit, and turns back to his laptop. I keep pacing. Three families have responded to the Medakis' invite. I can handle that, right? One of them is the Gruffudds, and I've met them before, so that makes things even easier. It's not a big deal. It's a huge deal, it's horrific. No. Not a big deal. It's fine. It'll be fine. The Medakis have already said they'll do all the talking. All I need to do is sit back and look pretty.

I throw Annabel the Second again, except I'm a little too lost in my thoughts because I don't aim. I just launch him forward, and he slams right into Jamie's face. Jamie yelps while Tom and Carmen burst out laughing. Annabel snaps at me again, and Ava must have missed what happened because she's glancing between us with a lost look on her face. Jamie scrambles in his chair to find Annabel the Second, then promptly throws him at me, but I'm too quick for his slow arse. I easily catch the soft toy before it can hit me.

"Reflexes of a cat," I say to him with a wink.

This pre-shit show downtime is kind of working. I'm still crapping myself, but seeing Jamie writhe in frustration is doing great things for my mood. I take a break from mine and Tom's game to check the time. It's creeping up to six o' clock. People are due to start arriving in a little over an hour. Just three families, I repeat in my head. Three families. You can hack that. The families won't be that big, right?

Wrong.

I might start predicting exactly what I don't want to happen, so that way, what I want to happen will follow because as it stands, everything goes exactly the opposite to how I think it will. It's almost half seven, and three families have turned up, one of which didn't actually confirm they were coming. Now there'll be four families all together, not three. Can't wait.

Worse still, there's around twenty people here. I was expecting a few people per family, not the whole damn brood. In addition to the extra unexpected family, there are a few representatives from another family who didn't RSVP, but I'm telling myself they don't count because there's only two of them. I've not actually spoken to any of them yet, nor physically seen them with my own eyes.

I'm currently hiding in the kitchen. Quite literally hiding given the fact I'm sitting in the corner of the room, as far away from the doorway as possible while stroking a cat that isn't Ava's. She visits a lot, apparently. The neighbour's. Annabel keeps checking the main living room for me, then coming back with updates.

I told everyone I was making myself a quick bite to eat before people started arriving. Despite the fact the Medakis have made a goddamn buffet for this event, no one said anything. Just left me to my own devices with a blessed stone on the kitchen island to be safe. They let me get away with too much sometimes.

"Come! Hakuna paka!"

I snap my head up to see Chiku standing in the doorway. Damn it, I've been found.

"Sakafu chafu!" She pulls a face as she points at the floor. "Come!"

"You coming?" I ask the cat. She says nothing, just nudges her head into my hand as she walks over my lap, then sits back down beside me. "Alright, fine, but don't say I didn't offer."

Chiku yells at me again, and I'm suddenly feeling threatened by a five foot tall woman wearing an oversized t-shirt with a sheep on it. Chiku has grabbed the blessed stone, and is charging out of the room by the time I'm on my feet, so I have to power walk to catch up with her.

I'm so distracted with chasing the bloody woman that I don't realise I've entered the pits of hell until thereafter. The second I do get my bearings, I feel eyes on me like moths to a flame, and shit. I feel okay. Huh. Before I can take that thought much further, Ava's voice distracts me.

"Whoa, there you are!" she sings as she waltzes over to me.

My attention doesn't stay on her long, and I don't resist when she takes my arm and pulls me towards the fireplace. People are looking at me, but I can tell they're trying not to stare, and as dumb as it sounds, I didn't expect everyone to feel so unfamiliar.

There's an Indian family sitting on and around one of the large sofas, but from what I can hear as we pass, their accents are English. The other two families are bigger, and both look European. Ava's living room is so damn huge that I can't hear anything either family is saying, but these two broods easily take up three quarters of the strangers' faces. The two representatives of the other family stand slightly apart from the others, and look like they might be from Japan. I hope not. That's way too far to travel for my uninspiring arse.

My friends stand and sit around the fireplace, as does Annabel, and they're all looking pretty bored. Carmen and Tom say hi once I reach them, but Jamie's too focused on his laptop as he types away on the floor to acknowledge me. Annabel sort of grunts. There's slow classical music playing from a speaker on the fireplace, but underneath the stream of chattering that fills the room, it sounds more like a monotonous humming noise.

"Who died?" I ask.

"My grade point average," Jamie mutters from the floor, then slams his laptop shut and throws his head into his hands.

"Hey, that was funny!" I exclaim.

"Shut up," Jamie mumbles.

Sheesh, alright, sorry. I make a mental note to never compliment the guy again. I glance around the room, and there are less eyes on me now. What should I do? What's the protocol for this type of shit? The Medakis suggested I introduce myself to people before Sefu does his talk on why my imminent death impacts them, but they've flocked into their family groups. It feels intrusive for me to join in.

"Ha! See, what did I bloody say?" a familiar voice snatches my attention away from the families, and I shoot my eyes towards the living room doorway.

Barging into the room is Mary Gruffudd, and she's yelling profanities behind her as Carwyn shuffles in with a walking stick, and an exasperated look on his wrinkled face. Three strangers follow the couple, but my eyes are quickly back on Mary, who's making a beeline for me. She charges over, stops in front of me, then smacks the side of my head.

"You could've bloody told us! Honestly, to come all that way and not even tell us you can see spirits. Useless! Who's this dark spirit talker anyway?"

"Whoa, sorry," Ava pipes up as she steps forward with her hand in the air. "That was my fault. I told him not to say too much."

"See, butt, never trust the English," Carwyn huffs as he stops beside Mary, then playfully nudges my elbow.

I decide not to reference my South Yorkshire accent, nor the fact I only very recently remembered being anything other than English.

"Where are the drinks?" Carwyn continues before Ava can point out Medaki isn't exactly a traditional English surname. "I need a bloody Scotch after that car journey. She drives like a madwoman."

"You can get a fucking train next time," Mary bites back.

"Gladly. You don't bloody shut up, duw duw!"

I forgot how much I loved these guys. Ava offers to show Carwyn over to the kitchen where the drinks are, not that there's any alcohol on offer, but I get the feeling an exception will be made. While those two head out of the room, I turn my attention back to the three strangers who are now standing behind Mary. I figure they must be family, or that at least the two older ones are because they share Carwyn's full head of curly hair. They still haven't said a word, and I must be staring because Mary soon explains their presence.

"Carwyn's brother, sister and niece. They don't speak English." She nods her head at each one as she relays their names. "Bethan, Rhiannon, and Llywelyn. Can't fucking pronounce Llywelyn, nor will you be able to. Don't stress yourself over it."

"Llywelyn," Carmen chimes in as she steps forward, and the name perfectly rolls off her tongue. "Ydych chi'n siarad Cymraeg?"

The strangers' faces light up, as who I figure must be Llywelyn replies to Carmen. "Ti'n siarad Cymraeg?" he says, then Carmen nods. "Ydy e'n iawn? Mae'n edrych fel e wedi drysu? Neu efallai fod e'n eithaf sâl... Ydy e angen bwced?" Llywelyn continues, then nods at me.

What's happening? Why am I being nodded at?

"Mae'n iawn," Carmen replies as she waves her hand in the air. "Mae wyneb e'n edrych fel hwnna trwy'r amser."

Carmen rubs my arm, then looks up to me with a smile she's without a doubt trying not to turn into a laugh. Mary's watching Carmen with her mouth agape, which I guess I can understand. Carmen doesn't exactly look like your run of the mill Welsh speaker.

Ava and Carwyn return, and I was right in thinking an exception would be made for Carwyn's alcohol craving. As he hobbles over to us, he carries a small glass containing a brown liquid and some ice.

"No Scotch," he mumbles before he reaches us.

"What? Speak up will you, for Christ's sake!"

"They have no bloody Scotch! Had to have bourbon, of all things!"

"Serves you right!" Mary yells back.

It only now occurs to me to switch my attention to the rest of the room. No one's looking at me anymore because everyone is well and truly engrossed in the Gruffudds. I'm not going to complain. Kato glides into the room not far behind Ava and Carwyn, and follows them as they stop beside us.

"Sorry, dear, I've been completely distracted with food," she says with her dark eyes on me. "Have you introduced yourself to anyone?"

"Give the boy a minute to breathe," Mary answers before I can. "He's been speaking with us."

Thank you, Mary, you absolute saviour. Kato isn't fazed in the slightest by Mary's bluntness, and instead responds to her with a small nod. Her eyes land on me for a few seconds, which I take as a signal of get your arse in gear, before she heads over to one of the large European families.

"I'm with you on this one, butt. I know none of these people," Carwyn says once Kato has gone. His drink is nearly empty. "Two birds one stone, eh?"

His pale eyes are on me as he downs the rest of his bourbon, then nods behind him towards the crowd. I've got no idea if he senses my nerves, or if he just genuinely thinks it's more efficient for us to introduce ourselves to all these strangers together, but either way, I'm really damn grateful for it.