The light switch worked, but it didn't show me anything I hadn't seen.
A plastic bin that held only my jeans and T-shirt.
There was a quarter and the letter for Stefan in my pants pockets, but he'd taken the pair of screws I'd collected while trying to fix the woman's clutch at the rest stop on the way to Amber's house.
The bed was a stack of foam mattress pads that would yield nothing I could make into weapon or tool.
"His prey never escapes," whispered a voice in my ear.
I froze where I knelt beside the bed.
There was no one else in the room with me.
"I should know," it ...
he said.
"I've watched them try." I turned slowly around but saw nothing ...
but the smell of blood was growing stronger.
"Was it you at the boy's house?" I asked.
"Poor boy," said the voice sadly, but it was more solid now.
"Poor boy with the yellow car.
I wish I had a yellow car ..." Ghosts are odd things.
The trick would be getting all the information I could without driving it away by asking something that conflicted with its understanding of the world.
This one seemed pretty cognizant for a ghost.
"Do you follow Blackwood's orders?" I asked.
I saw him.
Just for an instant.
A young man above sixteen but not yet twenty wearing a red flannel shirt and button-up canvas pants.
"I'm not the only one who must do as he tells," the voice said, though the apparition just stared at me without moving its lips.
And he was gone before I could ask him where Chad and Corban were ...
or if Amber was here.
I should have asked Corban.
All that my nose told me was that the air-filtration system he had on his HVAC system was excellent, and the filter had been dosed lightly with cinnamon oil.
I wondered if that had been done on my account, or if he just liked cinnamon.
The things in the room--plastic bin and bed, pillow and bedding, were brand-new.
So were the paint and the carpet.
I pulled on my shirt and pants, regretting the underwire bra he'd taken.