“Yes, sir,” Sly said and saluted.
The guy seemed awfully cavalier for someone detained by police. After the cops left, he turned toward Merry and said, “Well, nice seeing you again. I’ll be on my way, now.”
“Would you like to come in for some coffee? It’s pretty chilly out there tonight.”
He glanced at each of them and said, “Maybe some other time. It looks like you and your boyfriend are going out on the town.”
Jason placed a possessive arm around her waist. “Yes, we were just getting ready to leave.”
“So long.” Sly waved. “Oh! Before I forget. You know there was someone else skulking around out there in the bushes, right?”
“There was? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because the person took off as soon as they nabbed me, and if I said, ‘Oh, it’s not me… it’s the other prowler you want,’ they’d buy that sometime after they bought the Mass Avenue Bridge.”
“Do you know who it was?”
Sly shrugged. “Nope. It was a woman with a knit cap pulled over her hair. She may have been a private detective trying to catch a cheating spouse or an ex-girlfriend stalker or something. She had a camera. Well, have a nice night.” As soon as he had jogged down the outside steps, he seemed to disappear into the darkness.
“With my luck,” Jason muttered, “it’s the paparazzi.”
Something about Sly didn’t feel right. It was more than his attitude or dark hair and pale skin. It had nothing to do with jealousy, even though he seemed overly interested in Merry. There wassomethingabout his black, glittering eyes. The man oozed danger.
“Well, the nutty professor signed the lease anyway. He must be nuts if he thinks I’m going to let him stay here.”
So far, Chad had made sure a champagne cork hit the new tenant in the eye, he’d dimmed and brightened the lights at inopportune times, and slammed every door in the place, and all the professor did was explain it away with logic.
“Bummer. I’ll have to try harder.”
He wished he could show himself somehow.“He’s not psychic, that’s for sure, so I doubt he’d bother with infrared cameras.”
Chad only knew two people in the building aware of his existence and only one he could speak to—Morgaine, the witch from across the hall.“Maybe when she’s in a trance I can talk her into getting this dude to split.”
Of course, there was always the landlord and his girlfriend. Chad had heard them talking about paranormal phenomena recently and it seemed as if the nurse had seen some strange things while working at night in a hospital. Maybe he could try to get her attention and see if she responded to anything.
She had mentioned a room that was used only to house supplies after a number of children had reported seeing the same man, dressed in black, watching them from the end of their beds. He’d have thought the grim reaper might be checking up on their conditions, but she said the man always wore a hat.“Old Grim wouldn’t be caught dead in a hat. Ha ha ha.”His pun just occurred to him.
As Chad mulled the situation over, the professor retuned “home” to the apartment.“I won’t bother learning his name since he’ll be freaking out and leaving soon.”
He had brought a female friend with him. She was oddly dressed, though. She looked like a throwback to Chad’s generation… the sixties. She wore a long, tie-dyed dress and clogs and her hair was long, loose, and mousy brown with graystrands coming in.“I didn’t think geeks had girlfriends. Shows how much I know.”
She closed her eyes and stood in the middle of the room.
“Ah ha! He brought a psychic! I knew she couldn’t be a girlfriend.”So far, the professor hadn’t impressed him as boyfriend material. He spent all his time on the Internet. And he surfed the most boring sites. He grooved on science and space, mostly.“If he spent even half the time looking at porn, I might consider letting him stay—and that's a big maybe.”But he was of no use whatsoever as far as Chad was concerned.
The psychic was taking a series of deep cleansing breaths and going into a trance.
“Spirits inhabiting this place, can you hear me?”
“What should I do? Answer her? Or perhaps it would be more fun to simply stay quiet so she tells the professor that nobody’s home and he thinks he’s going nuts.”
“Give me a sign that you are here. I can help you move on.”
“Move on? Don’t tell me she’s going to open up a path to the light and ask me to go into it! Hey, if they wanted me there, they would have invited me long ago. I have a mind to cross my virtual arms and pout, then maybe she’ll go away.”
She stayed in her trance. He was glad. He hadn’t been looking at things logically. If he wanted the professor out, what better way than to use her voice and scare the shit out of both of them? It wasn’t the easiest thing to do, but if she was open to it, he might be able to sink into her head and control her speech.“Okay, I’ve never done this before, so I might not succeed, but it’s worth a shot.”
Chad gathered his consciousness at the top of her head and descended.“Man, this is the weirdest feeling. It’s all warm and squishy in here! Gross.”
