Serafina and the Virtual Man - By Marie Treanor Page 0,4
back into the bedroom. “That?“
“Worth a shot,” Sera said breezily. “Let’s try somewhere it’s been before but somewhere you still feel comfortable.”
“Like with chairs,” Jilly murmured, clambering over the broken wood with her laptop still intact.
“I don’t want to do this,” Petra said, sounding genuinely frightened. “I thought you were going to get rid of it, not invite it in again.”
“Afraid it’s here already. We need it to come out of hiding to get rid of it,” Sera said cheerfully.
Jilly tried and failed to peer in the crack of the one not-quite-shut door.
“Don’t worry,” Sera continued. “I can handle poltergeists. Remember, it doesn’t seem to be trying to kill you—it didn’t form in your presence when it did that.” She jerked her head back toward the spare bedroom.
“Then what the hell’s its problem?” Dale fumed, throwing open one of the farther doors.
“I’ll ask it,” Sera said without emphasis, and Jilly stifled a grin.
Dale paused, frowning. “You mean you actually hold conversations with these—things?” he said uneasily.
Jilly brushed past him into the room—again white and tediously empty of anything more interesting than an abstract painting and a large vase of expensive dried flowers—and perched on the arm of the nearest sofa, the laptop bag still dangling carelessly off her shoulder. She arranged the laptop on her knee while Sera answered.
“Well, I can converse up to a point. Poltergeists use their violence to communicate, so understanding tends not to come from words.”
Behind Sera’s back, Dale and Petra exchanged a hurried, almost panicked glance. Dale gave an infinitesimal shrug and Petra’s eyes fell.
Whoa. Something’s going on here… The back of Jilly’s neck prickled like a pincushion. From disappointment in Dale’s…ordinariness, she was now hearing definite alarm bells.
Sera was the one with the psychic gifts. She could tell truth from lies, read past events and emotions from a simple touch. But Jilly had grown up in a family of criminals. She could spot shifty when she saw it.
Shifty plus all that unexplained electronic energy equalled what? Were they going to create a fake poltergeist electronically for Sera’s benefit? Sera would spot it, of course, and besides, Jilly couldn’t really see the point unless the couple were really, really bored.
Whatever, they seemed prepared to cooperate. Well, it was their own money they were spending.
They all sat down in what was, apparently, Petra’s sitting room, although it was hardly Jilly’s idea of cosy. It was a magazine’s idea of tasteful. White walls, clean lines, minimalist furniture made of steel and limited upholstery. Uncomfortable for arm perching, but what Jilly really wondered was where all Petra’s stuff was. Nothing here proclaimed her interest in anything other than interior design—probably someone else’s interior design. Maybe her bedroom gave more away, or some other room in the bowels of the massive house that no casual visitors ever saw. That was okay; Jilly could relate to privacy.
While Sera sat back, eyes closed, reaching out to any dead intelligence she could find, the Ewans watched her with anxious fascination. And Jilly watched them. She almost missed the cooling of the temperature, the change in Sera’s breathing that signified her excitement. She’d found something.
The curtains swished; air brushed against Jilly’s cheek. Her spine tingled in alarm. The rug under her feet undulated. Petra squeaked. Dale muttered something that sounded like, “Oh fuck.” They clutched each other.
Jilly knew how they felt. This sort of thing gave her the willies. However, at least she was used to it to the extent that it no longer paralysed her, and none of it—except the vampires last year—had ever fazed Sera. So when everyone’s attention was on the shifting items in the room or on Sera herself, Jilly simply stood up and slipped away, leaving her friend to face it alone.
Chapter Two
Despite the activity in the sitting room, Jilly half expected one or both of the Ewans to call after her as she hurried back along the gallery, stuffing the laptop into her bag as she went. It wouldn’t matter much to be dragged back, she assured herself. She was simply following her nose—and the computer readings—to see if she could get away with it. So far as she could tell, the poltergeist was real, but the unexplained electronic activity still bothered her. And that brief, shifty look she’d intercepted between the Ewans.
She went straight to the not-quite-closed door, behind which she suspected was some very powerful computer equipment. Probably nothing to do with poltergeists and none of her business, but she was pretty sure now the