Serafina and the Virtual Man - By Marie Treanor Page 0,71
long time. “This is high profile, Jilly. I could get my arse kicked from here to the Outer Hebrides.”
“It’s nice there,” Jilly cajoled. “Quiet. Plus think of the kudos if you crack this.”
“Aye, just think. I’ll be the man who sent Genesis Gaming down the tubes. One partner dead, murdered by the other.”
“Sera doesn’t think Ewan did it.”
“Then who the hell did?”
“Beats me. That’s what the boys in blue are for.” She regarded his smart, muted jacket and trousers. “Or at least the boys in grey with white shirts and red ties.”
He reached up and gave the tie an uncomfortable tug. Then he sighed. “Okay, I’ll look into it. Unofficially for now. I can call it tying up loose ends in the Killearn case.”
“Thanks, Alex.”
He laid down his coffee mug and stood up, glancing out of her darkened window at the park beyond. “All quiet these days?”
“No more fights, sorcery, or undead disturbances,” she assured him.
When he’d gone, she flopped back onto her favourite cushion in front of the laptop and found a new message from Adam.
Exodus: Sorcery? Undead disturbances?
JK: You wouldn’t believe what went on last autumn. A sorcerer tried to take over the world—or at least this country—by putting vampires in key banking positions. We saved the world in a huge fight in the park, just outside my window.
Exodus: We?
JK: Serafina’s. I won’t tell you my part in it, not online.
Exodus: Sometimes I don’t know when you’re kidding.
JK: Trust me, weird stuff happens around Serafina’s. Why do you think I bought into you so easily?
Exodus: I haven’t bought into “me.” What does Sera think’ll happen if and when we get to the bottom of all this? Will that be my cue to take off to the big computer game in the sky?
JK: I don’t know. Spirits have to move on. She says.
And yet, why should they? Why couldn’t he stay in the VR? Why couldn’t she?
JK: You should talk to Sera. She’s been trying to reach you.
Exodus: Here I am. Send me her chat ID.
JK: I’m serious. Sera talks to the dead all the time. There’s pretty much no spirit she can’t reach. If you hear her, feel her, however it works, please talk to her.
There was a pause before he typed “Okay.” She supposed it was a hard thing for him to deal with, even in his current impossible position. Old scepticism died hard.
****
Jilly was just about to climb into bed when, on impulse, she reached for her phone and texted Sera to ask if she’d tried to reach Adam again.
The message came back almost immediately. “Several times. No joy yet.”
Jilly texted back a thanks and got into bed. Why couldn’t Sera reach Adam? She had every possible connection to him, and yet the only time she’d been able to speak to him was in the VR machine, just like Jilly.
In the past, the only spirits Sera hadn’t been able to reach had been those closest to her, the ones she couldn’t shake her own quite unreasonable guilt over—her mother, her beloved foster parents. Hell, she could even talk to the undead, like Blair, when no one else could.
So what could that mean?
One: that Sera was somehow responsible for Adam’s death. No.
Two: that the VR machine somehow shut off normal spiritual communication? Possible, though God knew how that might work.
Three: that he wasn’t actually dead. After being stabbed and shot?
Jilly sat up in bed slowly, hugging her knees under her chin. Sera couldn’t feel his death or speak to him as a spirit. His only death certificate was almost certainly a fake. Dale and Petra hadn’t killed him, according to Sera’s infallible lie detector. They couldn’t have killed him if he wasn’t dead. And if Andy and George had done it, no way would it have been covered up as it had.
She pressed her cheek so hard into her knee that it hurt. She wanted this too much. She was making up convoluted reasons for him to be still alive. All she had was a computer program that learned. Wasn’t it just as likely that was all he was, without any spirit for Sera to reach?
She wanted him to be more because she’d had virtual reality sex with him. Because she’d liked it so much, liked him so much. But the harsh reality was, she was a lonely, damaged woman, a sexually frustrated woman who’d wanted sex without it hurting her. She’d craved an imaginary lover. He’d even told her the system was largely operated by the