The community wasn’t gated, nor was Charlie Reed’s home. That said, it was hard to miss all the security cameras. He’d warned me about the cameras, which was why I had overdone it on the makeup on the way over here. At the door, I knocked lightly. He was evidently waiting for me, as the door opened immediately and my new client’s now-familiar face appeared above me.

  “Thank you for you coming, Ms. Moon,” he said. “I would think these aren’t your normal working hours, but I suspect private eyes work all hours of the night.”

  I winked and shot him a blank with my forefinger. “You suspect right.”

  He stepped aside and showed me the way in. My Asics made a surprising amount of noise on the polished marble floor. In the foyer, at the base of twin curved stairways, I was greeted by an alabaster statue of a rising horse pawing the air. Or whatever the hell they might call it in horse circles. I asked as much.

  “Rearing,” he answered. “I take it you’re not a horse girl.”

  “Not really, although I do have an affinity for wolves.”

  “Sure,” he said, and looked a bit puzzled.

  “A beautiful home you have,” I said. “Who knew electrical engineers made so much money?”

  “We don’t. But I just sort of have a habit of...” But he blushed and looked away.

  “A habit of what?” I asked.

  “Making money. It’s weird. Everything I do, it just sort of works out for me.”

  “Lucky you,” I said.

  “I suppose. This way, Samantha. I can show you where she appears to me.”

  She being his ghost of course. I was led through the entryway and down a small hallway, then through the kitchen and living room. I noted the 90-inch TV hanging from the wall. Yeah, a lot of money. Along the way, I kept an eye out for any ghostly activity. To my eyes, ghosts appear as a collection of energy. And by energy, I mean the surrounding staticy energy that only I can see, energy that lights up the night for my eyes. The more the energy that’s gathered, the brighter the ghost. As far as I could tell, there were no ghosts.

  At an office that was surely fit for an ace detective, there was a desk of epic proportions. Not just U-shaped, but a complete wraparound desk, with a narrow opening that afforded access within. Once inside, Charlie no doubt felt that he could conquer the world. Or at least eBay, or whatever the hell he did in here. At any rate, this would make a helluva crime-fighting command center.

  No less than three full computers sat on the interconnected desk. Two laser printers. Stacks of paper, folders, a Kindle, an iPad, another tablet computer of unknown origin. Trinkets and other knickknacks filled the remaining desk. Or tried to. There was, after all, a lot of desk space to fill up. Between two of the computers, I saw a complete Star Wars fleet of X-Wing fighters and flying bookends (which is what they always looked like to me), and other oddly-shaped spaceships that someone had spent far too long gluing together. I’m looking at you, Charlie Reed. There was the roundish Millennium Falcon, tilted at a proud angle, ready to unleash its full arsenal upon the forces of evil, which, I assume, meant Darth Vader, although Darth Vader was the star of three movies of his own.

  There were other toys/figurines, too. Batman and Superman waging an epic battle, forever frozen on his desktop, each delivering an epic punch that would probably hurt. There was Wonder Woman with her long, Amazonian legs. I didn’t have long legs, Amazonian or otherwise. I had short legs, and maybe a little too muscular, according to Danny back in the day. The dick.

  “She appears there,” said Charlie, sidling up next to me a little quieter than I was prepared for. Hard to sidle up next to me with my own super hearing, but he’d done it. Anyway, he was pointing to a side hallway through a nearby archway. Yes, the study was so big that it had two entrances.

  “Mind if I have a look?”

  He didn’t mind, and so I did. The hallway branched to the left and right. The right dead-ended at a floor-length series of drawers and cubbyholes. The left opened into another bathroom. Neither end revealed a ghost, although I was sensing a lot of... energy in the hallway. I stood there and let it sweep over me, and sort of reveled in it.

  “You see anything?” he asked.

  “No ghost girl,” I said.

  “Well, that doesn’t surprise me. We’re early.”

  “Of course,” I said, and stepped back into the office. “Which of these computers do you use?”

  “This one here.”

  “Mind if I sit? Do as they do in Rome, as they say?”

  “Sure,” he said, pleased all over again that he seemed to be loosening further.

  I moved over to it and sat down in it. Leather, with lower back support. A full array of paddles and levers underneath. Brass studs. High neck support. I veritably disappeared into it. Cozy as hell. How anyone could actually get any work done in it was beyond me. The sucker was just begging to be tilted back and slept in. Or meditated upon.

  “You work from home?”

  “Rarely.”

  “So this office...”

  “Is mostly just for show,” he said, and blushed a little, and I realized he’d made a small joke. If anything, the whole damn house was for show. Yes, he was definitely loosening up. “I am working on a novel, though,” he added.

  “Ghost story?”

  He chuckled. “Actually, it’s a fantasy novel.”

  “Fantasy? Like sexual fantasies?”

  He laughed again. “More like a Game of Thrones, although there is sex in it. I try to make the story as real as possible. Except, you know, the dragons and shit.”

  “Right,” I said. “Because dragons aren’t real, of course.”

  “Of course,” he said cheerily. Then he turned somber, literally on a dime. His red aura seemed to deepen to a crimson. “Except that I haven’t written in four months.”

  I did the math. “Since your wife left.”

  He nodded. “Right. A world-class case of writer’s block.”

  I looked at the time. We had about twenty minutes to kill before his very own Lady in White showed up. While we waited, I asked to read the first few pages of his novel. He didn’t know what to make of the request. No one had ever read the book before. Not even his wife.

  “What about the ghost?” I teased.

  No, not her either. But that broke the ice and he asked me to move over a little, and I did, and he brought up the book on his computer. Then he moved away to sit at a full-length couch near the arched hallway entrance, where he watched me like a voyeur. I don’t like being watched like a voyeur or otherwise, so I did my best to ignore him. Judging by the intermittent spitting sounds, I think he might have been chewing his nails.

  I wasn’t expecting much. In fact, I had already been planning on how to let him down easy if I thought the book sucked—including wiping his memory of me reading the book—when I came across something surprising. A remarkably fine first sentence that hooked me. And a second that might have been even better than the first. And a third that was rich and real, and so I kept reading. And reading. And as I read, something happened to me, something beautiful and magical, and not expected at all. I felt...

  Transported. Straight into his fantasy world, where his characters came to life. They were funny and real and troubled and heroic—and that was all within the first twenty pages. A Game of Thrones, indeed. Maybe better. Maybe a lot better.

  I didn’t want to stop reading, couldn’t stop reading. Charlie’s fancy home had long since disappeared. Charlie had disappeared, too, until I heard his words reaching from seemingly far away. I blinked, irritated, wishing like hell that whatever was talking to me would just go away. I was, after all, quite happy here in the magical land of Dur.

  Finally, finally, Charlie’s words reached me.

  “Sam, she’s here.”

  Chapter Five

  And so she was.

  Crankily, I looked up and saw the bluish glow in the hallway. The glow was pretty damn obvious, more so than just about anything I had ever seen. No wonder why he caught snatches of it, even being a mere mortal.

  Yes, I’d seen all levels of apparitions, from the very faint, to just blobs of energy. I’d seen more full-bodied spirits, too. My last interaction with Danny’s ghost had been a particularly clear apparition. Little did I know at the time that the real Danny—as in, his actual soul—was hiding in my son.

  Let it go, Sam.

  I nodded to my own internal dialogue and let it go. For now. After all, a brightly lit ghost was presently standing just inside the hallway.

  “You can see her?” I asked.

  “Only when I turn my head and look away.” He demonstrated for me. “I can see the bluish glow, and maybe, just maybe, a woman standing there. But when I turn to look at her—poof, she’s gone.”

  Except, of course, I wasn’t having that problem. There was no poof. I could see her full on, and she was quite beautiful. She wore a sort of nightgown, but it was antiquated. She was tall and slender and had big, nearly cartoonish eyes. Eyes that, if I had to guess, were filled with tears. She also seemed familiar in a way that I couldn’t put my finger on. I’d certainly never been to this house before. Nor had I seen her. I was sure of that. No way anyone could forget a face like that. But yet... I felt I might know her. Worse, that I should know her. Was she an actress, maybe? A model? A pin-up girl from yesteryear?

  That was about when my warning bell sounded, buzzing lightly in my head, and causing an increase in heart rhythm, which really wasn’t saying much. But it was noticeable, at least to me. The buzzing was light, akin to a pesky mosquito. I was being warned that something was amiss, but not terribly so. His friendly ghost, I suspected, was anything but friendly. In fact, few things caused my inner alarm to sound. Vampire hunters, yes. Serial killers, check. The Devil himself? Oh, yes. Ghosts, not usually. Yet, here was my inner alarm, warning me of potential danger.

  I continued sitting in the chair, surrounded by toys and computers and enough desk space for a start-up company, and watched the ghost standing in the hallway, staring forward.

  Most important, I was pretty sure she wasn’t a ghost. At least, not any ghost I had ever seen. The energy was different around her. Most ghosts were composed of zigzagging energy, a sort of gathering of such energy. Not her. She was complete, whole, pure. Just... not quite here. Closer to a hologram than anything.

  I eased away from behind the desk, and stood. Charlie shot me a glance but, interestingly, the ghost never looked my way. In fact, if anything, she looked even more distracted, more distraught. Now I could see the tears spilling from her eyes. Most interesting—yes, most interesting, I could see her lips moving. Rapidly. She was speaking. Now she bowed her head. Was she praying... praying?

  I edged through the gap in the desks, and got a better look at the woman standing in the archway. She was beautiful and otherworldly. She seemed to take no notice of me.

  “It’s okay,” I said to her, now about halfway from the desk to the arched opening. “I won’t hurt you.”

  But my words had no effect. She just stood there, lips moving silently, and weeping. Since when could I see a ghost’s irises and pupils? I was pretty sure that was never.

  Because she’s no ghost, I thought. What she was, I hadn’t a clue.

  I saw her perfect, even teeth, her impossibly full lips. She didn’t seem real, as in, no woman really looked like that, did they? She could have been a Disney princess come to life. Or any man’s fantasy come to life.

  Now she bowed her head and held her fingertips to her lips, and now I was certain she was praying. A second or two later, she turned around and walked away, disappearing within a few steps. And just like that, she was gone.

  Chapter Six

  I was in Detective Sherbet’s office, and I had just given him Charlie Reed’s address and he didn’t seem too happy about it. He mumbled something about ghost hunting, and that he was a real detective, and that he wasn’t paid enough for this shit.

  “You know I can hear you, right?” I said.

  Sherbet shook his blocky head, and took his mumbling internally.

  “Every thought, too.”

  He input the address and clicked the mouse harder than he had to. He squinted at the screen and blew air through his nose that whistled if you listened hard enough. The screen reflected off his glasses, making his eyes appear bluer than they were. Sherbet and I had a wide-open channel. He couldn’t lie to me to save his life. We were tight like that.

  “Too tight,” he said. “And my head isn’t blocky. My wife says it’s proportionate to my body.” He caught my next thought before I could barely think it. “And, no, my body isn’t blocky, either.”

  “I like blocky men.”

  “You’re one weird chick. Okay, got the address. There’s nothing here.”

  “No murders? No deaths?”

  “Nothing at all, Sam. Wait. A domestic disturbance call was made in ‘92. But that’s it.”

  “What were the names?”

  “Helga Antigone reported her two sons fighting in the yard to police. Apparently, she hosed them down before the police got there. My kind of woman.”

  “Two brothers fighting in thirty-five years? That’s it?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  I said, “Just because nothing was reported, doesn’t mean there wasn’t a murder,” I said.

  “That’s my girl. Always looking on the bright side.”

  “You know I’m right,” I said.

  “I’d like to believe a girl wasn’t murdered there, but, yeah, you’re right.”

  “Except...” I began.

  “Except she didn’t look like a murder victim,” said Sherbet.

  “No, she doesn’t,” I said.

  “I can see her there in your thoughts. She’s, um, quite the looker. She is dressed oddly.”

  “How well can you see her, Detective?”

  “Well, I’m relying on your memory. And, like the memory of the giant Sasquatch on top of you last night, it’s a little blurry, thank God.”

  I would have blushed if I could. Maybe the detective and I were a little too tight.

  “You can say that again, sister. Anyway, the image kind of comes and goes as you think about other things. But I can see her there in your thoughts.”

  I nodded. Telepathy was weird. Seeing my memory had the transverse effect of creating his own memories. Sort of a watered-down memory. In effect, he now had a memory of something that he had never seen.

  “About as weird as it gets,” he said.

  “What do you make of her?” I asked.

  He leaned back, closed his eyes, either accessing his own memories or mine. To help him out, I brought her up in my own thoughts and tried like hell to keep her steady for him. Harder than it sounds.

  “Beautiful, buxom. Nice figure, although kind of hard to tell in that gown. Little feet. Big lips, small ears. Eyes about as round as I have ever seen. Seems distraught. She also looks like she’s praying.”

  “Praying. People still do that, you know.”

  I thought about that as he continued, “Mostly, she seems a little too perfect, if you ask me. Like she’s not really real. I mean, no one looks like that, right? It’s a bit like that movie... what’s it called...”

  “Weird Science,” I said.

  “Don’t act so smug, Sam. You saw it there on the tip of my tongue. The point is, the beautiful woman in the movie, Kelly Le something or other—”

  “Le Brock.”

  “Yeah, her. Anyway, she represented the ideal woman to two teenage boys.”

  I nodded, recalling the entity’s eyes again. Her figure was hidden mostly in a nightgown of sorts, but I suspected it to be perfect under all those layers. “She did look like a walking, talking Barbie.”

  “Or praying,” he added. “But yes, she’s beautiful, but off. Not quite of this world.”

  “So what are you saying, Detective? That she’s not real?”

  “Not in our world.”

  His words hit home, and I found myself nodding. Not real in our world, but perhaps another world? As crazy as that statement was, I’d lived through enough crazy stuff to know there might be some truth to it.

  “Or maybe she was a hologram or something. You said he was an electrical engineer. Maybe he gets his jollies creating, you know, computer programs or holograms or robots and shit. Maybe he was testing something on you? And being a ‘paranormal investigator’ made you an easy target.”

  I opened my mouth to laugh it off, but the truth was, Sherbet’s logic made sense.

  “And you yourself said you didn’t dip too far into his mind,” he added.

  He was right. I hadn’t, if at all.

  “Well, there you go,” he said, picking up the thought instantly. “Maybe you missed something. Maybe he was pulling a fast one on you. Testing out some new technology.”

  “Then why did my inner alarm go off?”

  “Barely went off. You said it yourself. Just a small blip or two.”

  I nodded. Sherbet, as always, heard and remembered everything. “Yeah, I don’t know what to make of that.”

  “Maybe your inner alarm thingy goes off if you find yourself in a middle of a prank.”

  I blinked at that. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Well, I’m guessing it does. And I’m guessing your new client was having a little fun with you. Think about it, he had all the time in the world to set up that hologram in his hallway. Or whatever it was.”

  Chapter Seven

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” said Allison. “Why on earth would he invite you over to his home just to prank you? And then give you money?”

  “A lot of money,” I said.

  “Was his check good?”

  “Very good,” I said.

  We were working out in Allison’s gym in Beverly Hills, where she sometimes worked as a trainer. Gyms in Beverly Hills consisted of lots of chrome and shiny equipment. Lots of fake plastic boobs, too.