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She should probably be disappointed, but she wasn’t. After all, it wasn’t as if she expected the thing to work. Fighting off a fit of the giggles, she repeated the routine in the next room. All she needed to complete the ridiculousness was the Ghostbusters theme playing in the background. She was about to give up when her phone made a strange sound. Allie glanced down to find a red blip on t
he screen.
She shook the phone. Just to make sure she wasn’t imagining it. The blip was still there.
This was priceless! Too bad Cameron wasn’t here to share in the fun.
All of a sudden the room went warm. The smell of lemons hit her like a slap in the face. It was the same sensation she’d experienced last night. Allie had almost begun to believe that she’d imagined it, but this was as real as the ground beneath her boots. Her hand trembled, making it difficult to concentrate on the screen. She willed herself to take a deep breath.
The blip became bigger and the lemon smell stronger. It should have gagged her, but it didn’t. Instead she wanted to drown in it. To sink against its warmth, like a fire on a cold winter day. She shook away that ridiculous thought and concentrated on her phone screen. According to her location, whatever was making the ghost radar go off was standing directly behind her.
Tom watched as Allie held her phone in her hand like her life depended on it. Whatever she was looking at had distracted her enough that she hadn’t heard him enter the room.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She jumped around, her brown eyes wide. “You scared the heck out of me!”
“Sorry.” He hadn’t meant to sneak up on her, but he’d wanted to make sure she was all right. “Why are you holding your phone that way?”
“No reason,” she said as if he couldn’t tell when she was lying.
He glanced down at her phone. She tried to hide it behind her back but then it began to beep.
“Oh my God. Hold still.” She aimed the phone in his direction. “Dang! It disappeared!”
“What disappeared?”
“Nothing.” She stared at her phone like it was going to explode.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.
“Believe me, you don’t want to know.”
“Yeah, actually, I do want to know. I can’t have you going around in the dark where you can fall and get hurt again.”
“I only fell last night because I lost my balance going through the window.” He opened his mouth to say something but she cut him off. “And yes, I know it was my fault because I was trespassing.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“Maybe not, but you thought it.”
She was right. It had been exactly what he’d been thinking. “Look, I’m here for the night so I might as well help you.”
“What about your baseball game?”
“The game’s over.”
She thought it over for a few seconds, then shrugged. “All right, if you really want to know what I’m doing, I’m using a ghost detector. Cameron downloaded it for me.” She handed him her phone and pointed to the screen. “See? It’s searching for any disturbance in the quantum flux. Which just occurred. According to this, there was a ghost right where you’re standing,” she said in a tone that dared him to contradict her. He wondered if she knew how damn adorable she looked right now.
“The quantum flux?”
“I know, it sounds hokey, but basically it’s a disturbance in the force. And please no Star Wars or Back to the Future jokes.”
“According to this…ghost detector, there was a ghost,” Tom said. “Right where I’m standing now?”
“Well, there was something there. Something with enough energy to make this thing go off. I mean, besides you.” She glared at him. “Maybe you scared it away.”
“I scared it away?”
