“Sea salt,” Charlie said. The coarse white crystals were all but disappearing into the carpet, but she didn’t suppose it really mattered. The key was to not leave any openings.
“Sea salt.” He sounded a little wary. “How do I know you’re not going to use that to get me sucked into Spookville again?”
Charlie shrugged. “I guess you’re going to have to trust me.”
“Usually when people say things like You’re going to have to trust me, you can pretty much kiss your ass good-bye. Just saying.”
Charlie paused with her hand in the canister to pucker up and make kissy sounds at him.
“Funny.” He watched her moodily. “How is that supposed to work, exactly?”
“It creates a barrier. You can’t get past it. In theory.” She reached the couch. “You want to get up for a minute? I need to sprinkle this behind the couch.”
“In theory? You got a hell of a bedside manner, Doc.” He stood up, reached automatically for the couch arm to pull the heavy piece of furniture out for her, and had his hands go right through it.
“Great. You’re useless.” She pulled the couch away from the wall herself and dribbled sea salt behind it. “I told you I’ve never done this before. If it works, it works.” When she glanced at him, she saw that his expression had changed. “What?”
“I think I got this thing figured out.” He had his hand up and was turning it over thoughtfully, looking at it. “When I walked into the ocean, I could feel the water just like when I was alive. It was warm, and I got wet all the way up to my waist, which is how far in I walked before I started swimming. A little bit after that, I started feeling different. I told you, like I didn’t have any weight. And now that I think about it, I couldn’t really feel the water anymore. That’s about the time I noticed my clothes were gone. In here, when I turned your laptop on, I could feel the keyboard when I touched it. The other times when I tried to touch things, I couldn’t feel them. I couldn’t feel that couch just now, and my hands passed right through it.” He dropped his hand and looked at her. “I think somehow, every now and again, I’m able to turn solid for a little bit. And when I do, something gets thrown out of whack. Then some part of me—my clothes, my hand, probably whatever took the brunt of what I was doing—dissolves or disperses or gets swallowed up by Spookville or something. In reaction.”
Charlie finished salting behind the couch and shoved it back into place, then moved on around the room.
“It’s possible,” she said. “I know some spirits are able to manifest physically occasionally. Somehow their atoms kind of come together and they’re tangible for very brief periods. I suspect strong emotion triggers it, and that’s what’s behind a lot of ghost sightings.”
“That’s why Sweet Cheeks was able to see me in the hall. And I paid for it by going invisible for a few minutes right after.”
Charlie quit laying down salt to narrow her eyes at him. “You know, just for your information, calling Agent Kaminsky names like ‘Sweet Cheeks’ and ‘Sugar Buns’ is disrespectful and demeaning.”
His eyes brightened, then twinkled. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “You don’t have to worry, Doc. Your ass blows hers away. Want to know what I used to call you? Hot—”
“No,” Charlie snapped, glaring as she interrupted him before he could finish. “I don’t want to know. You’re treading on dangerous ground here,” she warned.
He held up his hands. His grin was full-blown now. “No offense meant. It’s just that I’m bad with names,” he said, and she snorted.
“I guess that makes us even, then, because I’m bad at keeping spirits away from divine retribution.” Charlie put the lid back on the salt canister with a snap.
“Aw, come on, it was a joke.” His mouth sobered, but his eyes still twinkled. “Finish up with the salt.”
“No more with the demeaning nicknames,” Charlie said, and he nodded solemnly. She eyed him—if penitent was the expression he was going for, he was failing miserably—then took the lid off the salt, and resumed sprinkling.
“You think there’s any way I could learn to—what did you call it? manifest physically?—on purpose?” he asked after a moment.
Charlie shrugged. “How would I know?”
“Jesus Christ, Doc, you’re supposed to be the expert here.”
“When I see an apparition, it’s usually for ten to fifteen minutes, tops. I’ve never been saddled with one on a full-time basis before. It’s a whole new experience.” She finished with the salt by creating a line across the doorway that led into the bedroom, then put the lid back on the canister again. “There you go. You’re now locked in for the night. Enjoy yourself. I’m going to bed.”
Even as she said it, she realized how tired she was. The adrenaline rush associated with discovering a naked Garland in her apartment had probably masked it until now.
“Wait a minute. Explain to me what you just did.”
“I sealed you into this room. You—including your clothes and all your body parts, hopefully—can’t get out. Tomorrow I’ll see if I can come up with something better. For tonight, that’s the best I can do.” She headed for her bedroom.
“Doc. Wait. Come back.”
He sounded like it was urgent. Charlie stopped, cast her eyes heavenward, then turned and retraced her steps, frowning at him from just beyond the line of salt. “What?”
“I was serious about what I said earlier. If there’s a serial killer at work in the area who knows you can identify him, you need to be getting on out of here. Like, first thing tomorrow. He’ll be coming for you, I can almost guarantee it.”
Fatigue was starting to take its toll. Her shoulders drooped, the small canister of sea salt felt like it weighed a ton, and her emotions were closer to the surface than usual. Fear had started creeping through her veins from the moment she had seen herself on TV. Now it flowed freely, ice cold and thick as oil. Despite trying as hard as she could, it was all she could do to keep the terrible memories of that night at the Palmers’ at bay. Given her history, it was unreal that she was standing here feeling sorry for Garland, liking Garland. A visceral reaction to her own gullibility made her snap: “And you’re so sure of that because …? Oh, that’s right, you’d know all about serial killers, wouldn’t you?”
He looked at her without speaking for the space of maybe a couple of heartbeats. “I’m gonna say this one more time, Doc, and you can believe me or not: I’ve done a lot of bad things. But I didn’t do that.”
The stupid thing was, for a moment there she trembled on the brink of maybe, kinda, sorta, halfway believing him. Then her thoughts snapped back over a combined police/FBI investigation, a trial and conviction, a textbook list of markers, a forensic file as thick as a dictionary. What was she going to believe, the preponderance of all those things, or a man who even before he died she had concluded was a psychopath, albeit a handsome, charismatic one?
The answer was clear.
“Nice try, but no cigar,” she said, and as his eyes darkened she turned to once again head to the bedroom.
“Doc.” His voice stopped her before she’d taken much more than a single step. She pivoted to face him.
“What?” she responded tartly. She was on guard now, armored against any type of persuasion he might try to use: Hopelessly Naïve R-Not-Us.
“Could you at least turn on the TV?” As she stared at him, he gave her a wry smile. “I don’t sleep anymore, you know.”
Why not? It was a small thing. Walking back to the coffee table, she picked up the remote and turned the TV on for him, volume down low.
“ESPN,” he requested.
She found the channel.
“Thanks,” he said, as without a word she put the remote on the coffee table, and clicking off the light as she passed the switch, went to the bedroom.
“Hey, Doc,” he called after her.