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“Come on, Casper. I want to show you something.”
He supposed he had nothing else to amuse him, so he followed and was surprised she was leading him upstairs. These quarters used to be where he kept his office, and he had a small bed in the corner where he’d sleep, hoping to save enough one day for a fine home. But that never happened.
Willow opened the door to her apartment and strode inside, expecting him to join her. But Montgomery only stood at the threshold, feeling a touch discomfited.
“What’s wrong?” Willow asked when she looked back. “Will this doorway throw you back on your butt, too?”
“No it will not. But as this is now a woman’s bedroom, I cannot enter.”
“You can’t? Is that some kind of ghost code? I gotta say that makes me kind of relieved that ghosts just can’t watch people in the shower.”
“It’s not ghost code,” he said unamused. “It is the virtue of a gentleman. I would never enter a woman’s chambers in life, and will not start to do so in death.”
Willow stared into the middle distance. “So… ghostscanwatch people in the shower?”
“I imagine so.”
“And they can write‘boo’on bathroom mirrors?”
Montgomery sighed forcefully. “There was something you wanted to show me? Could you not show it to me downstairs?”
“I only have one TV and it’s in here. Or as you like to call it… electric telescope. Besides, we’ll have Patrick Swayze as a chaperone.”
Zephyr brushed past Montgomery at that point, looking back at him before pouncing on the bed, as if it were an invitation to enter the room.
“Are you quite sure you want me to come in?”
“I insist,” Willow replied.
“I was talking to the cat.”
Zephyr meowed at that, which seemed confirmation enough for Montgomery, so he took a few steps inside.
Willow chuckled. “He’s just a regular cat. He doesn’t understand you. Unless you say the word D-I-N-N-E-R. I’m still upset about that, by the way.”
Montgomery looked around the room while Willow turned on the television, navigating to the streaming apps to find what she was looking for.
“Looks like I have to rent it,” she said. “I should probably buy it at this point.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Ghost. Now sit down, you can’t watch the whole movie standing up.” She patted the bed and clicked on the remote to order the movie.
“There are no chairs,” he said. “And the bed is non-negotiable.”
“Fine. I’ll go get a chair from downstairs.”
“No, no. Allow me.”
“Wait. If you go downstairs, you’ll change your mind and won’t come back.” She huffed, as though she was greatly inconvenienced, and finally nodded in resolution to whatever was going through her head. “Okay. Just hang on a second… and you might want to give me some space for your own safety.”
She waved her arms in circles to shoo him to the corner, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Montgomery noted she was in the same stance as when she was trying to send him out of the building. But this time, a gust of air swept her hair from her neck, and a soft, blue light radiated from her fingertips. And right before his eyes, the shape of a chair began to appear in front of her, starting out as the same blue light from her hands, but then forming into something solid, until she closed her hands into fists and let out a long exhale.
She opened one eye, and then the other, and seemed pleased to see what she had done. Then she looked at Montgomery in amazement.
“I did it. And without sending us into a black hole.”
Montgomery hoped she was joking, not very fond of black holes or anything else as equally ominous. And he should have been amazed by the magic he’d just witnessed. A chair Willow conjured out of thin air was nothing to shake a stick at. But he just looked at it with a puzzled brow, inclining his head to one side.
