Page 50 of Ghostlighted
This time, Avi got a look—I’d seen it before, whenever he was tracing a memory or evaluating a problem. His eyebrows lowered behind the rim of his glasses, his head tilted slightly, and his eyes seemed to focus on the distance.
“I suppose,” he said slowly.
If I was right, it would mean two major breakthroughs about Avi’s abilities in as many days. I gripped the keys in my pocket and nearly pulled them out to toss in my palm again, but resisted in consideration of Avi’s nerves.
“Think about it. That time the laptop bluescreened, you’d pointed to something in the document I was working on. Your finger was close to the screen, but nothing happened. Everything was fine. But when you leaned your hand on the table, you misjudged the distance and your fingers passed through the keyboard.”
“Sorry.” He glanced away, clearly embarrassed. “My spatial awareness sucks.”
“It’ll get better. You’re just not used to being a ghost yet.”
“It has nothing to do with being a ghost.” He turned a glare on me. “My spatial awareness hasalwayssucked.”
“Mypoint—and I do have one—is that computer circuits pass signals around constantly. There’s more traffic happening, so there’s more opportunity to interrupt one of those signals than, say, preventing a single connection when a light switch gets flipped or a key turns in the ignition.”
He lifted an eyebrow and gestured toward the Civic. “Are you volunteering your car as a test case?”
“And risk being wrong?” I shook my head. “Not a chance. That would feed right in to the campaign to get me to buy a new car.”
“Oooh. We shoulddefinitelytry it out then.” Avi grinned and waggled his fingers. “Just a little touch to interrupt the signal, you said? I may need a few tries to get the timing right.”
As much as I didn’t want to fry my car’s ignition, I was so happy to see Avi’s playful mood that I nearly agreed to let him give it a go. But we had something more important on the agenda today. “Let’s make our first forays into circuit interruption on something less expensive and immediately necessary than my car, okay? We’ve got the whole Manor waiting for us.”
He wrinkled his nose. “A roomful of dusty papers. Oh, joy.”
“A roomful of dusty papers that could give us clues about how the whole ghost thing works.”
“A point. All right.” He studied the Civic. “How do you suggest I enter?”
“Uh…through the door.”
“Which I can’t open.”
“That didn’t seem to stop you on the porch earlier.”
“Because you were on the other side with the ring.”
I spread my arms as though encompassing the house beyond the garage. “But we’re still within your domain. You’ve always moved through the house.”
“Yes, but notinsidesomething that isn’t part of the house.” He cast a revolted glance at the car. “And that is definitelynota part of the house, nor would I ever want it to be.”
“This is a good trial, then.” I leaned against the wall. “See if you can get in on your own. If you can’t, I’ll climb behind the wheel and you should be able to join me.”
He shot me a skeptical glance. “On your head be it.”
His shoulders rose and fell once, twice, three times, and then he marched over to the passenger door, his feet mostly touching the concrete floor. He frowned, staring down at the handle before shaking his head and reaching toward the window—and thenthroughthe window.
“Come on, come on,” I murmured, practically bouncing on my toes. “You can do it.”
Avi pulled his hand back, frown deepening, and took a step forward until he was standing partway through the door.
He stepped back, shaking both hands. “That feels… weird.”
“Weird bad or just weird?”
“I don’t know. Although I’m not anxious to try it again. It’s like…” He gazed up at the ceiling, gnawing on his lower lip, and sketched an unidentifiable shape in the air with both hands. “I’m not acquainted with it, or at least I wasn’t when I was alive. It’s present here”—he glanced at me sidelong—“but from the perspective of mydomain, it doesn’tbelonghere, so I can’t interact with it in an ordinary way.”
“Like sitting in the passenger seat?”
