Gabe looked like he wanted to say, “Don’t take too long,” but he only pressed his lips together.
She took another sip of coffee, then exited through the kitchen door, and Travis stepped through the wall. It seemed that the new physical connection between them hadn’t affected his ghostly status.
They headed for the patio, where she lowered herself into one of the chairs. Travis paced to the edge of the flagstones before stepping off into the grass. They weren’t quite to the limit of their bond yet, and he took a cautious step forward. Again, she felt the uncomfortable sensation that she might have described as insects crawling over her skin, only it was also inside her body.
She shuddered.
Yeah,he agreed.
Interesting that he didn’t have a body, but he could feel it.
“Let’s change places,” she said.
He might have asked why, but he didn’t need to. Whatever she was thinking was fully accessible to him.
“I wonder if there’s some way to shield my mind to keep you from reading me like an e-mail. Maybe that’s another skill we have to practice.”
It’s probably easier when the two people are more separated, he finished.
As she got up, he returned to the patio and stood with his arms crossed, watching her.
She reached the spot where he’d had to stop and felt the unpleasant tingle again. This time, she strove to banish it by bringing back the memory of the two of them on the couch, when he’d kept her at a peak of sexual need until there was nothing else she could do but succumb. The heat the memory generated helped to dissipate the creepy-crawly sensation.
Inconvenient to have to turn yourself on to get away from me,he quipped.
She answered with a small sound. “Don’t pull me out of the moment by making me feel ridiculous.”
Sorry.
The technique seemed to work, and she was able to double the distance. The sound of the door opening startled her. She expected that it would have made the effect snap off, but she didn’t feel the discomfort.
Gabe was standing on the patio, looking from her to where Travis was standing. “I was watching out the window,” he explained.
“You can see Travis?”
“Not exactly. But I kind of see a disturbance in the air.”
“Let’s hope nobody else can.”
“I think they might—but only if they’d spent some time with him.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Do you think you could push the distance any farther?”
“Maybe, but we’d have to keep practicing.”
“This may be far enough. You should change, and then we’ll leave.”
They went back inside, where Gabe took her outfit from the gym bag. It included a dark wig and an industrial-looking outfit with the logo of a well-known big-box store. Probably she was supposed to be a checker or one of the workers who restocked the shelves.
“I’ll go up to change,” she said. She also intended to take a shower because the activities of the night and the previous day had made her sweaty. Upstairs, she quickly cleaned up before changing into the clothing, which fit her pretty well. It was a little hard getting all her hair up under the dark wig, but she managed it with a rubber band and a bunch of hairpins. When she was finished, she could see that the dark wig gave her a very different appearance, although it was a bit startling in contrast to her pale skin. Deciding that a grocery checker would want to look her best, she put on a little lipstick and blusher.
Examining herself critically in the mirror, she decided that it would be hard to recognize her. She and Gabe now looked nothing like the couple who had been at the dock yesterday.
When she came downstairs, Gabe gave her a critical inspection. “Good job,” he approved.
“You picked out the outfit.”
“And you look perfectly comfortable wearing it.”
She glanced at Travis,So what did you two talk about while I was gone?
