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"Oh, wow." Rose silently mouthed, lips hanging gently agape. Suddenly feeling somewhat vulnerable, she wished she at least got a little made-up for the occasion, so that the hovering ghost in front of her wouldn't have to look at a Lalonde without makeup on. She could feel the judgmental gaze of the ectoplasmic entity hovering about a foot off the floor of the dorm in front of her, watched the TV distort through her translucent body as Rose stared back at the trailing tail that presumably used to be two legs. "Um. M-Miss, uh. Um." She said, trying not to do anything that would piss an actual, real life ghost off. What do you do, Rose? What do you do? Well, she scooted back, got on her knees, and bowed down as politely as she could possibly manage.
She stayed like that, head down, for about a minute, staring at the chalk pentagram circle she had drawn onto some unfolded cardboard Amazon boxes, feeling the heat from flickering ritual candles gently curling around nothing. When it looked like she wasn't going to get her soul ripped out of her body, or anything like that, she slowly tilted her head up, peeking up at Roxanne Lalonde, her great, great, great grandmother.
There she was, in the... ectoplasm. Bright, bubbly pink, like liquid bubble gum, with little sparks and flares coming off the surface of her skin. There was clearly a drapey, Victorian-ish outfit fitting over her body, but at this point it had sort of decohered into Roxanne's torso, rendering it indistinguishable from her skin. Her hair, fit in gorgeous curls, and her face...
Makeup, even in death. Damnit. Roxanne slowly bobbed towards the ground, reaching out towards Rose's face, and Rose was filled with a creeping, impending sense of doom. "I'm sorry! I just wanted to see if it would work. I'll accept any consequences to my foolish, foolhardy actions. But I would very much prefer if you did not kill me." She pleaded, squeezing her eyes shut and wincing as Roxanne's hand reached down to pat Rose's head.
"What are you so upset about? I'm not going to kill you, silly girl." She half-asked, half-chided, clearly confused, in a thick, French-ish accent, albeit one not particularly familiar to Rose. "You're my... Daughter? And I'm dead. Right? Why would I kill my own flesh and blood?"
Rose shook her head nervously, her heart pounding its way out of her chest, threatening to spill out all over the nice tile floor of her dorm. Her face was covered in a thin sheen of sweat. What the fuck was happening? Was the ghost not going to kill her for her impertinence in bringing the dead back to this earthly plane? Apparently not! "Great, great, great granddaughter." She corrected her, deciding to not answer why Rose was under the impression that her death was imminent. "I have... so many questions for you, Miss Roxanne! Is there anything after you die? Did you go to Hell? What was your husband like? There's nothing about him in any of the records I could find... Is it true that you're a-"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second there, missy!" Roxanne interrupted, holding a hand up, watching as Rose slowly rose to her feet. Rose thought it was curious how she wasn't speaking any sort of Old English, maybe something about the summoning procedure adapting her language to the modern era? Who's to say, another question to ask! "I'll gladly answer all of your questions to the best of my ability. But, first, we have to get two things out of the way. Okay?"
Rose's eyes lit up. Eldritch knowledge of the afterlife AND her lost family geneology for the low, vague price of "two things"? Oh, this was positively stupendous! She tried not to jump up and down a little bit like an excited child. "Yes, ma'am! Anything you'd like. Anything at all."
"One." Roxanne replied, counting out with her fingers. "Roxy, not Roxanne. Two, where's the hooch?"
"Oh, I have some vodka in the fridge. Why, can you drink it?" Rose asked, raising an eyebrow. This meeting seemed like it was somehow going to become a lot less dignified than she expected.
Roxy shrugged. "Let's find out. What's a fridge?"