with big breasts, a big laugh, lustrous black hair, and a master’s degree in electrical engineering.
It was all very egalitarian. Lily ate ribs and potato salad with Rule, a seventh-grade teacher, another Unit agent, the head of a small seminary, Ruben’s secretary, and the director of the Census Bureau.
The director and the teacher turned out to be interesting people, even if they were wrongheaded about key issues. Like baseball. After dessert, the three of them lingered at the table, arguing about instant replay.
“Lily Yu!” boomed out behind her. “It’s been too long!”
Lily turned. A man with Einstein hair, Ben Franklin glasses, and guileless brown eyes snared in a nest of wrinkles beneath bushy brows was beaming at her. He wore baggy shorts and Birkenstocks. A Hawaiian print shirt covered the decided paunch around his middle. “Dr. Fagin!”
“Fagin, my dear, simply Fagin, unless you wish to adopt Sherry’s habit and call me Xavier. Otherwise I’ll look like a patronizing ass when I call you Lily.”
She grinned, swung her legs over the bench and stood. “Annette, Carl,” she said to her fellow debaters, “do you know Dr. Xavier Fagin? He consults here sometimes, but he’s at Harvard—”
“Ah, but I’m retired now. I moved to D.C. last month.”
“I didn’t know that. It’s quite a change for you.”
“Life is change, after all.” He smiled his vague, dotty-old-professor smile, a gentle benediction meant to baffle all inquiries.
Lily took the hint and dropped the subject. “Fagin, this is Annette Broderick and Carl Rogers.”
“I know Annette.” Fagin turned that gentle smile on the Census director. “Delighted to see you again, my dear. And you’re Carl? Good to meet you. I’m afraid I’ve come to rudely steal Lily away. A research matter.”
Lily snorted. “Research, my—”
“A matter of personal research, we might say. Lily, I’m having a terrible time resisting the urge to tuck your hand in my arm and drag you delicately away. Men my age are allowed to get away with that sort of behavior. It’s one of the few charms about growing old. But in your case—”
“Not a good idea.”
Dr. Xavier Fagin—BA, MA, MFA, PhD, and for all she knew, DDT, LOL, and RAM as well—was one of the leading authorities on Pre-Purge magical history. He’d headed the Presidential Task Force that dealt with the aftermath of the Turning, which is how Lily knew him. He was also the only other touch sensitive she’d ever met. They’d discovered the hard way that it was best not to shake hands.
“Alas, it is not, so I must rely on curiosity to lure you away, rather than tolerance for an old man’s peculiarities. You’ve seen a ghost.”
Carl wanted to know all about it. Annette said that her cousin Sondra had a touch of a mediumistic Gift, so she saw ghosts occasionally. She hadn’t realized Lily possessed that Gift, too.
“I don’t,” Lily said, “which is why it’s so puzzling.”
“And so,” Fagin said to the other two, “I wish to ask Lily one or two terribly personal questions, which she will doubtless be inclined to brush off, but I believe if I can get her to myself for a few minutes, I can coax answers from her.” He waggled bushy eyebrows at Lily. “I have a theory.”
Lily allowed herself to be lured. She and Dr. Fagin meandered toward the tubs of beer and soft drinks set out on the deck. “You’ve been talking to Rule.”
“I have. I’ve also been collecting data on non-mediums who see or profess to see ghosts.”
Her own eyebrows went up. “It really is research.”
He waved that away. “A personal interest. I doubt there’s a paper in it. Too much of the data is anecdotal.”
“Why are you personally interested in who sees ghosts?”
He heaved a windy sigh. “I suppose it’s only fair to answer that, since I did promise to ask intrusive questions myself. Fifteen years ago, I saw my mother’s ghost.”
“Oh.” They’d reached the tubs of drinks. Lily pulled out a Diet Coke and popped it open. “You’re not a medium, so it must have been one of those intimate connection deals. I’m told that happens sometimes.”
“She wasn’t dead.”
The can halted halfway to Lily’s lips. Belatedly she took a sip. “Then would it be . . . I don’t know. Astral travel, maybe? Was she Gifted?”
“No. I saw her ghost at five minutes after midnight—terribly appropriate time, isn’t it?—and she died at 12:49 A.M.”
That was a new twist.
“Of some interest,” he went on, “is that she was in the last stages of Alzheimer’s. She’d been at a