human nature. Spill.”
Jilly shrugged. “I wanted to like him and didn’t. Maybe that’s why I got this idea they’re both up to something.”
“What sort of something?”
“Secret something. No-good something. When a millionaire—billionaire, whatever he is—starts looking like my brother Andy, there’s got to be something going on.”
“Fair point,” Sera allowed. She was well acquainted with Jilly’s brother Andy and indeed with the rest of the nefarious Kerrs. “He didn’t look like a geek,” she offered at last.
“Doesn’t mean he isn’t one under the suit,” Jilly pointed out. “He has a highly prized degree in geekery, according to this article I read, as well as being a business whiz. What did you pick up from him? From either of them?”
“Genuine terror. They’re at their wits’ ends or they’d never have called us. Even then, they didn’t really believe we could help, until I summoned the poltergeist and sent it away. That’s the weird thing, Jilly. They’re terrified in that house with that thing, and I don’t blame them in the slightest. But they’re very reluctant to leave.”
“Don’t like giving in?” Jilly suggested.
“Maybe,” Sera allowed. It was a motive both of them understood and valued. “But the good news is, Dale didn’t even blink when I came up with our fee. If we pull this off, we can all have a raise.”
“I could upgrade my laptop,” Jilly said, brightening.
“We could go out for a fabulous slap-up meal,” Sera said.
“We could do both. Maybe the Ewans will recommend us to all their neurotic friends.”
Chapter Three
Back at Serafina’s, they found Elspeth making coffee and Jack huddled over his computer in a frustrated sort of way. Jilly slapped him on the back. “Be nice to it,” she advised. “It’ll do exactly as you ask.”
“Will it buggery,” Jack retorted, then glanced at the prim, grey-haired figure of Elspeth at the far end of the office. “Sorry, Elspeth.”
“I’ve heard worse, Jack,” Elspeth said, presenting her boss with a mug of coffee, which Sera took in both hands with a sigh of pleasure. “How was the millionaire?”
“Riddled with poltergeist,” Sera said with satisfaction. “Fat fee guaranteed so long as it doesn’t bury me under a heap of the ugliest house you ever saw in your life.”
Elspeth reached over to her desk and pulled a glossy magazine toward them. Jilly peered over Sera’s shoulder. It was a popular-lifestyle magazine featuring photos of the interior of the house they’d just left. The huge entrance space and Petra’s sitting room were there along with several other rooms they hadn’t seen.
“That house?” Elspeth asked.
“Aye, that’s the one,” Jilly said. “It really looks like that too. Where do they lay their coffee mugs? What do they read? Where’s their stuff?”
“It’s like a mausoleum,” Sera confirmed. “Or an art gallery maybe.”
Jack, who’d wandered over to collect his coffee from Elspeth, pushed his drooping spectacles back up his nose and said, “I like it.”
“You would,” Jilly said in disgust, pushing past him to get to her own desk.
“What?” Jack demanded. “You wouldn’t know style if it hit you in the face. You’d only hit it back.”
“Damn right,” Jilly agreed. Nowadays their constant bickering amused her. Jack was still an upper-class arse, but she was aware that when he finally left Serafina’s to take up the “real” job his family expected him to do, she’d miss him. “Chuck over that magazine, will you?”
****
By the time Jilly left work that afternoon, she was a lot more familiar with the history of Genesis Gaming. Cofounded by Dale Ewan and the improbably named Genesis Adam, who’d met and bonded at university while studying for what Sera called their “degrees in Geekery,” the company had specialised in pushing the boundaries of gaming technology and then selling the results to the masses at pretty reasonable prices. The strategy had paid off, and the company grew quickly into the runaway success it was today.
Jilly had had to dig deep into much older articles and forums, obscure technical journals and serious, deadly dull business publications to discover the dynamics of the organization. Genesis’s success, it seemed, was down to Ewan’s sound and yet flamboyant business sense. Ewan was the front man, serious with the banks, dramatic in sales and style, and he got results. But he wasn’t the technical genius behind the products. According to himself, he was merely competent in that side of things. Adam had been the whiz.
Only, Adam hadn’t been able to handle the success. After a descent into drink and drugs addiction, he’d let Ewan buy him out and