anything she’d imagined. When she reached the sitting room again, still deep in thought about her encounter with the vanishing stranger who thought he was dead, the door suddenly flew open and Dale Ewan almost mowed her down.
Jilly stepped back smartly to avoid contact.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded.
“Just wandering around taking readings,” Jilly said mildly. “It’s necessary to understand what we’re dealing with. How’d you get on, Sera?”
“It’s big and it’s angry and it’s got to go,” Sera said flippantly. Jilly breezed past Dale and into the room, where she sat on the arm of Sera’s sofa once more and got the laptop back out of her bag. Hastily, she opened a Notepad and keyed in: Adam? Then, as the Ewans approached, she erased it and called up the environmental data files.
“Yes, the psychic energy was all focused in here,” Sera said sagely as if picking this up from the computer readings.
“Did you learn anything useful about it?” Jilly asked.
“Yes, a bit. It’s extraordinarily angry, negative parts of a spirit left behind, I’d say.” She frowned as if remembering something, then glanced up at the hovering Ewans. “Does the name Adam mean anything to you?”
Neither of them blinked.
“Of course,” Dale said in surprise. “My ex-partner. He founded the company with me in 2004. He died last year.”
****
“What’s the matter with you?” Sera demanded as soon as they were in the car. “You’re white as a sheet.”
“Go, just go,” Jilly said urgently. Sera started the car, turned it, and began to drive away from the house. Jilly forced her tense shoulders to drop. A laugh tried to surge up in her throat. “Fuck, Sera. I think I’ve seen a ghost.”
Sera swerved slightly as she jerked her head around to stare. She righted the car, satisfying herself with short sharp glances at Jilly instead.
Jilly drew a shuddering breath, controlling the threatening hysteria. “Adam. The dead partner. In Dale’s secret test lab, hidden behind the study. He told me he was shot.”
Sera frowned. “They told me he didn’t die in the house and that his death was expected. I assumed he’d died of cancer or some other long-term illness.”
Jilly chewed her lip. “Could he have died somewhere else and his spirit gone back there?”
“I suppose so,” Sera said doubtfully. “Or it could be some other manifestation of the spirit trashing their house. Was he an angry ghost?”
“No, he seemed pretty laid-back about the whole thing, considering. A bit lost, maybe, but quite accepting.”
“Well, the poltergeist is the most focused anger I’ve ever come across.”
“Could it be the negative half of my ghost?”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Sera said after a moment. “But it does make a weird sort of sense. Only why would he come back to haunt these two?”
“And how come I saw him and you didn’t?” Jilly asked, rubbing her head, which had begun to ache. “I don’t see ghosts.”
“Well, either you do or he wasn’t one,” Sera said reasonably. “What we need is more information. An afternoon of research, I think—you’re good at that.”
They drove for a while in silence. The earlier brightness of the morning had faded with the frost, and the sky was darkening to a more universal, dull grey. Jilly watched the trees and fields fly by. But everything seemed overlaid with the face of the dead man, the memory of his solid touch.
Sera said, “Genesis is into virtual reality, right? Could this ghost just have been some kind of hologram or whatever?”
Jilly shook her head. “No, I touched him. He was real, all right. Hey, can you touch ghosts?”
“Not like that… What if you didn’t really touch him? What if you were just made to think you did?”
“I thought of that. But I wasn’t wearing VR gloves or goggles. I hadn’t touched anything that should have had that effect on me. But you’re right, it does sound like a computer game. I just can’t explain it.” She sighed, shifting her legs with a jerk of frustration. “At least the poltergeist is real. Will you be able to get rid of it as easily as you told them?”
Sera’s hands lifted off the wheel and regripped. “No, it won’t be easy. I’ve never encountered a poltergeist that formed and focused. But if we can get the Ewans out of the house —it’s feeding off their terror with fiendish delight, you might say—it’s probably doable.”
She glanced at Jilly. “What did you think of them?”
“You’re the psychic,” Jilly retorted.
“But I’ve never been so good at