Kat Richardson - Poltergeist

"Good. I'll be very upset with Mr. Lupoldi if he doesn't show up on Sunday," Tuckman continued. "The group may waver if he misses two sessions in a row." Then he hung up on me.

I doubted the group would have much enthusiasm for Sunday's séance once they learned Mark was dead, but that revelation would have to wait on Solis. While I was convinced they could go further unaided than Tuckman believed they could, I wasn't sure they could go far enough to harm someone. The table had been damned frisky. What else could they do? And, as Tuckman had put it, how far would they go?

I hoped I wouldn't have to convince Tuckman of the existence of things that go bump in the night. If it was more than a physical saboteur, I'd have to exhaust all the prosaic options before there was any chance Tuckman would agree that his phenomena were real, and he would resist that to the end. I'd have to know how it all worked and who might have the motive as well as the ability—or not—before I could prove to him it wasn't faked. There were days my life would have been easier if more people believed in ghosts.

I had a strange feeling about this case. I still didn't think Tuckman was being straight with me and that pissed me off. And I didn't like what had happened to Mark. I tried not to make assumptions, but Solis was just as bothered as I was, and though Mark's death wasn't my case, it didn't seem entirely unconnected.

I stuffed down my misgivings and paged Quinton. I waited for him to call me back, listening to the rain play music on the metal awning. When he called, I arranged to pick up the ferret on my way home, then headed back to my truck.

About eleven o'clock, I was stretched out on my sofa at home with Chaos snoozing in the crook of my arm while I pretended to care what was on TV. The phone rang, interrupting a commercial that featured dancing clams. I smiled, remembering Phoebe's jibe about my absent paramour, and picked up the phone.

"Hello," I said.

"Hello, Harper." The warmth in his voice was almost a caress, speeding my breath and raising heat beneath my skin all the way from England.

"Good morning, Mr. Novak."

"Should I say 'Good evening, Miss Blaine'?"

"Do you want to sound like a Cary Grant movie?"

"Only if it's one of the films where he gets the girl."

"Wasn't that most of them?"

"Probably. He even got the girl in Suspicion, though he wasn't supposed to."

"Yeah, I know," I said. "I read the book."

"So… which ending do you prefer?"

"I'd have liked to see the book ending. Even charming, handsome guys can be coldhearted killers—but that's probably my cynical occupation talking."

"How is your cynical occupation at the moment?"

There was a slight chill in his sigh and my rush of happiness crashed. I frowned and was glad phones didn't have video feed. I sometimes thought his absence kept our on-again, off-again relationship from foundering completely on the rocks of my occulted life, but even fondness-engendering distance didn't seem to be working now. "Nothing special," I answered, "though I ran into Detective Solis today."

"I remember him. I recall he's pretty fierce for a quiet guy."

"I wouldn't care to be on his bad side."

"I hope nothing you're doing is tangled up with any of his cases."

"No," I lied. I did not want to talk about Solis or my job. "How's Sotheby's?"

"I'm almost at the end of this contract."

He fell silent. I waited.

"An independent valuation firm is chatting me up, though. It's mostly insurance work, but it's interesting, and I guess I'm getting a bit of a reputation in the right circles."

Another stumbling silence. "So, are you thinking of taking the offer if they make one?" I asked.

"Maybe. I'd still have to come home for a while to satisfy the alien worker requirements. But I could be home for Christmas. I wouldn't want to disrupt Michael's school schedule here, but we could work it out." Michael was Will's much-younger brother, still in school, though studying for British college exams now—when he wasn't cutting class to work on vintage motorcycles. "I could always look for something in the US…"

"If you're thinking of doing that for me, Will, then you know I'll tell you not to. If you want to come back, you have to come for yourself."

That was the crux of our problem: Will wanted a stable, honest relationship and the best I could offer was a catch-as-catch-can string of interrupted dates, creepy clients, and mysterious disappearances— which had almost brought our romance to an end on the first date. I wasn't very good at separating my work from my life—especially since the Grey and its denizens didn't respect office hours—and that was something I doubted I could break Will to, even if I'd wanted to.

I'm not the sort of woman who wants to remodel "her man" and I wouldn't care to be in the opposite position, either. We'd set off sparks from the moment we'd met, but Will and I didn't have compatible lives and I could never tell him the reason and he wouldn't believe it if I did. Which was why I was in Seattle and Will was in London. I may have fallen into bed with him the first time for all the wrong reasons— and I didn't regret it one bit—but neither of us could live our life for the other no matter how great the sex was when we managed to have it.

Will sighed. "You're still impossible."

My heart dropped and I felt cold with a childish desire to cry. I swallowed it back down, like I always have. "Yup," I replied in a bright voice. "That's me: Impossible Girl."

"Sounds like a cartoon."

"The kind the Korean studios make for Japanese audiences and then dub with American voices: seriously messed up."

He laughed. "All right, Impossible Girl. I–I have to cut this short. Maybe I'll make it for Christmas. But now I have to go. The bloody tube's on strike again, so I'm walking to work."

My turn to laugh. "You sound so British. Next you'll be complaining about the wretched Americans, voting Labor, and insisting that 'tire' is spelled with a Y."

"Can't vote: I'm one of the wretched Americans. OK, I'm off. I'll call again Friday, OK?"

"I'll look forward to it."

"Me, too." He hung up and I shivered, still holding the phone and conscious of being alone but for the ferret.

Thursday I chased down other cases and read files until three, when Quinton showed up to help me install a DVD drive on my office computer. I had a DVD player on my TV at home, but I didn't want to have to drag all the files and notes back and forth every day. Once the device was up and running, we sat down to watch a few of the discs together. I hoped Quinton would be able to point out the ghost-making machinery in action. We huddled in front of the monitor like a couple of kids watching scary movies on Halloween. All we needed was some popcorn and blankets.

The first session hadn't been very interesting and they didn't improve for a while. The group had sat stiffly around the table in reduced light, meditating for a while, then just sitting and talking about Celia and getting nothing, though they did seem to establish some rapport. Eventually, they'd tried to replicate the Philip group's technique by singing a song Celia might like—an off-key version of "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree."

"They sing as badly as you," Quinton said. I dug a sharp elbow into his ribs and snorted.

After quite a while, they got a single distinct rap, which we both suspected was caused by one the participants—possibly by accident.

But even though it was plain to us that the rap wasn't a legit phenomenon, the group seemed to be pleased with it and gave themselves credit. No one was upset by the knocking, though the Asian woman and the man in the business suit both frowned a bit. Other reactions ranged from surprise to delight, though I thought the young tawny-skinned man looked just a touch smug about it.