Bella couldn't help sighing.
American ghosts these days really had no standards!
Their predecessors used to "work" on foot. Now they wanted to ride in cars?
Pathetic. They've really let themselves go.
But since the deal was made, Bella didn't slack off.
She ripped out the ghost truck's newly reformed engine again.
The chassis—she smashed it apart with a barrage of metallic clang! clang! clang! until it came loose.
Fuel tank, fuel lines, pressure valves—none were spared. Even the broken tires and headlights were pulled off and piled next to her original pickup.
The ghost inside the truck was still alive. Bella worried that if she killed him too early, all the parts she'd worked so hard to remove might evaporate into thin air.
"Do you know how to install these? Because I sure don't."
She pointed at the pile of parts.
Even if Jacob came, he wouldn't be able to install them—not with everything so completely mismatched.
The woman in white was remarkably calm. She brushed her hand over each component, and then tapped the pickup's engine.
The next second—
All the parts floated into the air as translucent outlines, raining down and wrapping the pickup completely.
Bella dropped her psychic shield and tossed the remaining tiny bundle of the truck driver's soul—now a faint white glow—into the woman in white's hands.
A piercing scream erupted for nearly ten seconds.
When the woman in white finished devouring it—
A brand new pickup was born.
Faster than the world's fastest mechanic by a factor of a hundred, the formerly round, chubby truck front had turned into a sharp-edged square shape.
The bumper was now pure black and looked indestructible. The peeling paint job became sleek silver-gray. The whole frame had lifted significantly, and behind each door, a vertical exhaust pipe had sprouted.
A truck that used to haul vegetables had magically transformed into something resembling a Ford F650 muscle truck.
Full horsepower. Cool design.
And now that it counted as a ghost truck, it didn't even need gas.
Perfect.
"Take me home," the woman in white said again—those same few lines she always used.
Her ultimate move, "Do you think I'm pretty?", was thankfully sealed off by Bella.
Since they were going to be sharing a vehicle from now on, Bella figured she should at least get to know her.
"Okay, you probably won't remember my full name anyway—I'm Bella. What's your name?"
After devouring the truck driver's soul, the woman in white's eyes had gained a faint glimmer of awareness. She sifted through her heavily damaged memories.
They drove for more than ten kilometers before she finally whispered:
"Shaw..."
"Shaw?"
Bella recognized it as a surname, but asking for more was useless—the ghost woman Shaw remembered nothing else.
Spiritual power couldn't conjure memories out of nowhere; she'd have to recover them on her own over time.
Miss Shaw was extremely well-behaved. She didn't try to seduce random men, didn't carry any of the previous ghost's prejudices, and seemed to reach some balance with the lingering hatred of the truck driver.
She escaped her original fate as a roadside spirit, regained fragments of memory, and spent her free time fused inside the pickup instead of bothering Bella.
"What a good ghost!" Bella praised sincerely.
Psychic mages were common—but a helpful ghost? Extremely rare.
She had to treat this trusty ghost-sis well—wouldn't want her to dissipate completely.
Passing through Prosperity, Arizona, Bella planned to say hi to Natasha—but Natasha wasn't in town.
A phone call revealed that Natasha and her sheriff mom were both in Phoenix.
According to Natasha—
"It's not a big deal. My parents are getting divorced."
"Not a big—what? How is that not a big deal? I seriously don't understand you guys. Why are they divorcing?"
Bella drove with one hand, phone in the other.
"It's the money! That hundred thousand dollars from Stark Industries! My dad—well, stepdad—wanted to invest it. My mom didn't agree..."
Bella listened, full of gossip-fueled interest.
But the story was simple. And cliché.
The ordinary-salaried stepfather wanted control of the $100,000. Natasha's mom believed that since the whole family had given up on the toy car, and Natasha tripping the robber was what brought it back, the money should go toward education funds for the three kids.
The fight escalated.
The stepfather recklessly dumped the entire $100,000 into the stock market.
And what year was it?
The year 2000.
Right in the middle of the NASDAQ crash.
The money didn't even make a splash. Poof—gone.
Then came the arguments. Escalation. Breakdowns. Actual fighting.
Finally, when Natasha's mom grabbed a shotgun to "discuss things," the stepfather demanded a divorce.
While Bella had been busy for forty days, Natasha's family experienced the entire Hollywood-level cycle of:
Sudden windfall → Conflict → Chaos → Collapse → Divorce.
Natasha stayed with her mom. Her stepfather took the teenage boy. The younger child from the marriage stayed with the father; the mother had visitation rights, etc.
"So? Think Charlie would consider my mom? I think they'd totally get along..."
Natasha showed zero sadness about her family falling apart. She didn't care about the money either. To her, matchmaking Bella's dad and her mom sounded... fun.
Bella was helpless. People here treated marriage, divorce, moving, and transferring schools like running errands. She just had to try and adapt.
"Washington State is super cold," Bella warned.
"That's fine, I'm Russian. I don't fear the cold."
"...Uh, well, our bathroom is tiny, so I don't recommend visiting," Bella said absently.
Natasha giggled. "We can shower together."
Bella snorted. As if being a C-cup made her superior? How shallow.
Natasha joked and joked, then suddenly sounded serious:
"Charlie isn't super poor, right?"
Bella honestly didn't know if her dad was "poor." She knew he wasn't wealthy—but he definitely wasn't destitute.
He was a public servant. How poor could he be?
Bella's mother ran off when Bella was only a few months old. Charlie had been single for seventeen years.
He lived frugally, had no bad habits, owned a house he'd built before marriage, and rarely left the town.
What expenses could he possibly have?