Serafina and the Virtual Man - By Marie Treanor Page 0,13

air, she wondered what the hell she was doing trudging home through the freezing darkness of a January evening when she could have been tucked up until morning with her gorgeous and energetic lover.

****

Jilly whipped herself up a quick salmon risotto—a wonderful recipe that didn’t require you to stand over the pot—and while it was cooking, she showered as she’d promised herself and changed into some sloppy pull-ons and a loose sweatshirt. On her way out of the bedroom, she caught sight of herself in the mirror with her hair all rumpled from pulling the sweatshirt over it. She paused and stared at herself.

There I am, she thought. The Jilly that no one else sees…. Except Sera, very occasionally. No makeup, no glamour, just dull old Jilly Kerr, vulnerable and powerless.

She stuck her tongue out at herself. No, I’m bloody not.

She swung away from the mirror and went back to the kitchen to rescue the risotto. So, she reflected, the man in Ewan’s secret study… Was he some shade of Genesis Adam? Flown over from Australia, for God’s sake? From the blurry photos she’d seen, Adam certainly seemed to have been dark-haired, tall, and lanky in his youth, but that was hardly conclusive.

If her stranger really was the ghost of Adam, she thought, spooning risotto into a bowl, was it really likely there’d be two supernatural entities hiding out in Dale’s house? No. Either he was the other half of the poltergeist, or he wasn’t a ghost.

Which meant he was an actual person. Who? And what was he doing in Ewan’s house? And why was he pretending to be Adam? What was all this Are you dead? stuff?

Jilly grabbed the salad bowl from the fridge and carried it, together with her risotto, through to the living room and settled down on a cushion on the floor with her meal on the low coffee table in front of her. After a satisfying mouthful, she reached for her laptop bag and set the computer up next to her bowl.

Why didn’t I just ask the Ewans? Why didn’t I just say, ‘Who’s the weird guy wandering about your house?’

Because she was wandering where she’d no right to be. And because the guy had freaked her by appearing and disappearing without warning.

And somewhere, she had this ridiculous idea that she was protecting him. Because he was insane? Because he’d looked so lost and bewildered? Or because he’d said she had soft skin?

Because he’d touched her and she hadn’t immediately wanted to knee him in the groin. Like she’d come so close to doing to Dave Jenner only hours later.

Oh no. I will not be any more fucked up than I already am.

Banishing the whole Ewan episode from her mind for a little, she decided to concentrate on her social life instead. Which consisted of fellow techies, nerds, and hackers. People among whom she was comfortable, who didn’t care what she looked like or want to know anything about her personal life. She caught up with a few e-mails, continued a few long-running discussions and quick answers. Then someone on a forum reminded her of a very nifty code-breaking program she’d promised him, so she inserted the memory stick from her bag to see if she’d stored it there.

She clicked back to the forum and typed, Searching for it now. The code breaker told her a couple of jokes that had her sniggering, and she passed on another one she’d just had by e-mail. Then she flipped back to check on the memory-stick contents. The list of numbered files hit her like a football in the gut.

Fuck. How could I have forgotten about them?

With a pleasurable frisson of excitement, she hovered the mouse over the first file. She had no compunction about invading this kind of privacy, committing this kind of theft. She’d been doing it since school. She never profited by it, only learned. And if an uneasy voice whispered at the back of her mind that she had occasionally passed on this information to others who might well have profited, she ignored it. Other people’s acts and consciences were their own affairs. The Internet and anything you could make it do was fair game.

So long as you didn’t hurt anyone.

She clicked on the first file.

Nothing happened.

The forum conversation flashed impatiently at the bottom of her screen. She returned to it, began to type, Searching for the right file n. Before she finished the word, the forum screen vanished, and she found herself looking