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And she wasn’t wrong.
“Did you find something?” Jonas asked, looking up from sorting through the mess on the desk. And sporting two outrageous tufts of white hair escaping from either side of an old fedora. It didn’t match his outfit, and he hadn’t had it on when we arrived. But I’d already discovered that trying to figure out Jonas only made my head hurt, so I mostly didn’t.
“He’s just fluffy.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Uh, no. Not yet,” I told him, trying to surreptitiously shoo Laura back out the door.
She crawled under the desk instead.
“Done already?” Jonas asked, looking at me over the tops of his glasses as I crawled after her.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Are you certain you didn’t overlook anything? It’s quite small, you know.”
“Pretty sure.”
What he wanted wasn’t in the outer office. I knew that because I knew where it was, but I needed him to take a few minutes to find it. Minutes that I could use to pry some secrets out of Laura. But Jonas wasn’t looking like he felt like giving them to me. For once, Jonas was looking focused.
“This is no time for games, Cassie,” he said sternly, as Laura crawled through his legs.
“Couldn’t agree more,” I muttered, grabbing for her.
Only to have her go abruptly less substantial, and my hands to pass right on through. And grab Jonas’ calf instead. “Is there a problem?” he asked dryly.
Yes, although the fading wasn’t it. Laura’s senses didn’t work as well when she wasn’t all there, so to speak, and she was curious enough to be back any second. The problem was worse than that.
The problem was that she thought I wanted to play.
“No, no, wait—oh, shit,” I hissed as she blinked completely out of sight.
“What?” Jonas tensed, staring around. “What is it?”
Laura giggled and reappeared over by the threadbare plaid sofa, where Tony parked his guests so he could watch them squirm on the tough old springs. “Can’t catch me!” she said, throwing out the usual challenge.
It had been fun when I was a child and didn’t have anything better to do. It was less so now. “No, listen—”
“I am listening,” Jonas said impatiently, as she disappeared again.
Damn it!
I crawled out from under the desk. “Cassie, what—”
“I’ll be back in a second,” I told him, through gritted teeth.
“Even for a Pythia, you’re acting a bit crazed,” he said mildly as I stomped out.
Not half as crazed as I was going to be if I didn’t find a certain playful ghost, I thought grimly, staring around the outer room.
Nothing stared back, except for an old portrait on the wall, some glowering relative of the family that used to own this place before Tony decided he wanted it. It was limned with moonlight, like everything else in here, which was a problem. When faded, ghosts were little more than silver smudges, and damned hard to spot in a chiaroscuro of old furniture, stuffy portraits, and leaping shadows. Lightning flashed outside, making the whites of the painted eyes stand out creepily.
“No fair hiding,” I called tensely.
But it looked like I was the only one who thought so.
This really wasn’t going to be easy. And what else was new? I thought savagely. If there was one thing I’d learned in the last three months, it was that nothing ever was. It was like living in Murphy’s Law.
