“You three are based out of Quantico, right? I’d have to relocate.” Charlie thought of her house in the mountains.

“You’d probably find it more convenient.”

“And I’d have to give up my research.”

“On the upside, you’d help catch a lot of bad guys. Which would save a lot of lives.”

That was something, she had to admit. “I have to think about it,” she said, and he nodded.

They walked inside in time to hear Kaminsky say, “When a person dies, it’s like they just drop their bodies. Then they step into a new one.”

“When a person dies,” Crane replied, sounding like he was talking through his teeth and making Charlie think the discussion had been going on for some time, “they enter into eternal rest. Until Judgment Day.”

“You are so—” Kaminsky began witheringly, only to break off as she spotted Charlie and Tony. “Pizza,” she said to them in a different, brighter tone.

Charlie shook her head. “Thanks, but I think I’ll just go on up to bed.”

Tony followed her to the foot of the stairs. “Let me know, okay?”

Looking past him to where Kaminsky and Crane were both regarding them with identical speculative looks, Charlie gave him a wry smile. “I will.”

Then she went upstairs. As soon as she stepped through the door to her darkened apartment, she noticed two things: the TV was on, although she had left it turned off, and Garland was there, big as life and looking just as substantial, standing in the doorway between the living room and the bedroom. As she closed and locked the door behind her, he propped one broad shoulder against the wall and folded his arms over his chest.

From the straight set of his mouth and the glint in his eyes, Charlie realized that she was looking at one pissy ghost.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Charlie’s immediate thought was that Garland must have witnessed Tony’s kiss, and not liked what he had seen. That straightened her spine and made her pissy, too. She didn’t owe him any explanations, and he had absolutely no right to object to anything she chose to do.

No right to spy on her, either.

She wanted, badly, to blast him for it. What stopped her was the fact that she was not one hundred percent sure he had seen her kissing Tony, and that kissing in general was not a subject she wanted to discuss with him at the moment.

The knowledge that what had happened between them last night hadn’t been a dream was still fresh enough to make her squirm.

“If you’ll get out of my way, I’m going to bed” is what she said. Her tone was icy. She had a feeling her eyes were hostile, but it was dark except for the bluish light emanating from the TV, which meant he probably couldn’t tell.

He straightened, and stepped out of the hallway into the living room so that she could walk past him.

She did, ignoring him ostentatiously. Of course he followed her.

She whipped around, pointed a finger at him. “Stop right there.”

He stopped. He was still in the hall. She was at the threshold of the bedroom. The room behind her was as dark as a cave. Because of the light behind him, he was a tall, broad-shouldered, should-have-been-intimidating silhouette.

Only she wasn’t intimidated one bit.

“For the rest of the time you’re here, the bedroom is off-limits,” she informed him tightly. “The bathroom, too. They’re mine. You can use the living room.”

“Ain’t that a treat.” His low voice had a growly quality. “You owe me some ju-ju, Doc.”

She knew what he was talking about: something to keep him here.

“I don’t owe you anything. I told you I’d try, and I did. If the sea salt didn’t work, you’re shit out of luck.” Turning her back on him, she marched into the bedroom and turned on the bedside lamp. As soon as her eyes landed on the bed, still rumpled from the restless night she had passed, she realized that heading to the bedroom had probably been a mistake, because it instantly brought to mind last night’s dream-that-wasn’t.

“Does kissing somebody always make you this bitchy?”

She whipped around again, bristling with temper. He was standing inside her bedroom looking like he was spoiling for a fight. His eyes were narrowed, his face hard, and dark energy rolled off him in waves.

The problem with having this particular fight was that she wasn’t completely sure which kiss he was referring to, the one she had shared with Tony or the one—all right, many—she had shared with him. Come to think of it, though, it didn’t really matter. She didn’t want to talk about any of them.

“Get out of my bedroom,” she snapped. “Right now.”

He smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. In fact, there was a time when she would have said it was downright dangerous.

Now it just made her mad.

“Make me,” he said, and because she knew she couldn’t, except by using the sage and the candle and she wasn’t going to try that again even if she could get it set up and get him in position for it, which she knew wasn’t going to happen ever again in this eternity, she picked up a pillow from her bed and heaved it at him.

The thing about it was she was a dead shot. She hit him smack in the chest. And it went right through him, to land on the floor behind him.

He gave her a taunting look. It made her so mad she threw the second pillow at him, with the same result.

He laughed. Then he said, very softly, “Maybe you ought to try calling Tony for help,” and she knew he had indeed seen the kiss.

The look she shot him should have singed his eyeballs. “You have no business spying on me.”

“I was keeping an eye on you. Because it doesn’t suit my plans for you to get your pretty throat slit. Who knew you and your boyfriend would start going at it out there in the dark? Next time, give me a heads-up, and I’ll make myself scarce.”

“You won’t be around next time. Because in about three days or less, you’ll be gone. Poof. Bye-bye.” She said that last with defiant relish and a little wave.

His eyes narrowed. His voice mocked. “Didn’t look like Tony turned you on all that much. Want me to give him some pointers?”

Charlie could feel her face starting to heat.

“Go to hell,” she snarled.

He smiled at her. “Not if I can help it.”

Then he turned and walked out of the bedroom. Past fury, she hurled the last remaining pillow, a round decorative one, after him. It bounced off the hall wall.

From somewhere in the vicinity of the living room, he laughed.

Seething, Charlie took a shower and went to bed. The shower was an awkward affair, because the last thing she wanted was to be caught naked by him, and she certainly wouldn’t put it past the rat bastard to pop up at the most embarrassing possible moment. She had to maneuver with towels, her robe, etc., so that she was nude for as brief a period as possible. Then she practically yanked a nightgown over her head and jumped into bed. In the end, of course, probably simply because she was prepared for him not to, he left her alone.

Turning off the lamp, she settled down onto the pillows she had been infuriatingly forced to retrieve and closed her eyes. Her emotions were in so much turmoil that she was afraid she would lie awake for hours. It didn’t help that she could hear the TV, which since she now associated the sound with Garland meant it was impossible to banish him from the forefront of her mind.

If last night wasn’t a dream, what was it?

She decided she didn’t want to know. In fact, she was too tired to think about it. Just like she was too tired to think about Tony, or Bayley Evans, or ways to find the monster who had murdered those three girls. She was too tired to think, period.

She had barely closed her eyes when she fell fathoms deep asleep.

Her dreams were a jumble of terrifying images. Charlie found herself looking down at Bayley Evans’ body on the gurney again, in all its horrific detail. Only, in her dream, the girl’s eyes suddenly popped open and she started to scream, soundlessly because her vocal cords had been cut along with her throat.