My eyes snap back open when I hear a car rumbling up the road. Backward.
Morgan parks next to my station wagon. The way he exits avehicle is cartoonish: he doesn’t climb out so much asfallout, doing a spin as he regains his balance and then trots smoothly off.
He flings a sulky look my way as he slides on a pair of sunglasses and fishes his camera out of a nylon shoulder bag. Beneath the bag is an oversized collared shirt with a paint splatter design, and vintage pants covered in turquoise faces like pop art. I give him my most disgusted frown, because I’m still angry and embarrassed that he tried to use me so shamelessly, but I’m also relieved. A mysterious stranger’s nearby and they keep going on about a clock, so Morgan is now my unwitting bodyguard. Or human shield. If I run faster than him, then the forest stranger will tackle Morgan instead of me.
He flips the screen to record himself, chin tilting upward so that sunlight grazes his sharp cheekbones, and says in a voice that sounds deeper than usual, “This is where a ghost was spotted last night at approximately ten o’clock p.m.”
“It wasn’t a ghost.”
His eyebrows pull down, but he doesn’t respond to me, continuing: “Subject does not believe in ghosts. Or witches, evidently. Even though subject dresses like Morticia Addams.”
“Would Morticia Addams wear these?” I point to my holographic pink geode earrings.
Morgan turns away. He studies the asphalt through his camera, zooming in as if he expects to find trails of sulfur or ectoplasm. “There are no leaves in the road, despite it being a windy day. Suspicious.”
“Why’re you making your voice sound like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like Patrick Warburton.”
I can tell by the way his jaw slides that he’s gritting his teeth. “Please be quiet, I am in the middle of an investigation.”
Good. I hope I’m ruining it. “You’re looking in the wrong spot.” I jerk my head to the right. “It was over there.”
Morgan rips his sunglasses off, pointing them at me. “So you admit it!”
“I admit that I saw a coyote.”
“A coyote? Then why’d you look so weird?”
“I don’t look weird,” I snap.
“Not likethat. I mean weirded out. Your face. It was…” He stops, and I realize I want him to continue, because when he talks about it, it’s like I’m back in that moment, witnessing the impossible.
But he decides to ignore me again, speaking only to himself. “Idea for next podcast topic isnever meet your heroes. They turn out to be frauds.”
“How the hell am I a fraud? I’m the only one around here who’snota fraud!”
“Who says I’m talking about you?” Morgan clips. But then in the same breath: “You wear a witch’s hat in your author photo. It’s on the back cover of all your books. Deceitful behavior for a not-witch.”
“It’s just a hat.”
I walk down the road, exploring a nearby cemetery. I did quite a bit of loitering here when I was a teenager, where it was quiet and I wouldn’t be disturbed. Sitting with my back propped against gravestones so old and weathered that the names on them are unreadable, writing stories in my notebookas fast as my hand could zip across the page. I had thick calluses on my thumb from holding a pencil, handwriting a mess, every other word spelled wrong because I couldn’t slow my pace.
“If all you saw was a coyote, then why’d you come back?”
I turn, watching Morgan step over faded bouquets of larkspur laid over a grave. His sunglasses are on top of his head, cheeks pink from exertion. He looks irritated.
“I wanted to make sure it wasn’t hurt.”
He picks his way over, stopping less than a foot away. I am a rather short person, at five one, and he is a good deal taller than me, but I refuse to tip my head back to look him in the eyes.
So he bends. “You told me you don’t lie.”
“I thought I saw something odd, all right? At first, itdidlook like a coyote—”
“At first?”
