Possessions by Nancy Holder Page A

splintered wood and cobwebs. Just normal, no special effects. Just a little sneak-party, no grand shindig. These people were super-rich, but they were just people. It was just a party.
    I turned around.
    And there he was, Troy, my knight, dressed in a white doctor’s coat with a stethoscope around his neck. And that jolted me back into normalcy. I was so grateful . . . and so very happy to see him.
    I couldn’t see the color of his eyes but I knew they were dark blue. His dark hair curled around his ears and I knew it was streaked with blond. Oh God, I couldn’t stop staring at him. Lucky thing he couldn’t tell since I was wearing my sheet.
    He stepped forward and looped his hands around the small of my back, then slid them down to cup my butt. I know I blinked. I probably even gasped.
    “Hey,” he said, gazing down at me, “you said you were going to be a ghost, but I thought you’d be a little sexier.”
    I suddenly realized we had a case of mistaken identity, and I wondered who he thought I was. “How do you know what I’ve got on under the sheet?” I replied tartly.
    He let go of me and jumped back. I took pity on him and whipped off my disguise. And to my intense delight, he smiled broadly, obviously happy to see me.
    “Whoops,” he said, with an evil grin. “No harm, no foul?”
    “I’ll never wash my ass again,” I retorted, and he burst out laughing.
    We shared a little amused moment. I was a little deflated, because he obviously had a girlfriend, or some girl he was expecting to meet tonight. But I knew things like that could change. They had changed on me.
    “You. Are. Trouble. Casparrrrr.” He gestured to the corridor. “You going in?”
    I half-turned. Saw the darkness. Smelled the smoke and the disinfectant. And then I was stymied again.
    Not now , I begged myself. Act normal.
    “It’ll be fun,” he said, misreading my fear for shyness. Maybe that was all it really was.
    “C’mon.” He took my hand— he took my hand!— and propelled me forward gently.
    “It’s downstairs,” he said. “In the basement. Vere ve perform zie autopsies.”
    “Dissect here often?” I asked, concentrating on his hand. Warm. Big. Nice veins. Bulgy muscles. I was okay. Pretty much. I was having a little trouble breathing, but . . .
    “Yes, as a matter of fact,” he said. “Well, we don’t dissect, but we do come over here. We row over. Lakewood bought new rowboats two years ago, and we know where they keep the old ones.”
    It was intriguing to think of him sneaking around on our side of the lake. “Why don’t you drive? And what do you do when you come over?” I asked.
    He snorted. “Because we’re supposed to be snug in our cubicles, studying. And what do you think we do when we come over?”
    “Not going there,” I said, feeling my face warm up.
    He chuckled. “You crack me up.”
    “Then my work here is done.” After Riley broke my heart, I’d thought I would never flirt again. But it really was like falling off a bicycle.
    “Here we go,” he said, turning me to the right. His flashlight grazed a dark rectangle, and I stiffened as the stench of cooked meat mingled with the odor of disinfectant and the smoke.
    “Oh my God, that stinks,” I said.
    He looked at me, then raised his chin and sniffed the air. “What? I don’t smell anything.”
    I blinked. “You’re kidding.” Then I had a terrible thought. What if there was a fire down there? Maybe someone knocked over a candle, and the flames caught on someone’s costume; Julie had a hurt leg and . . .
    . . . And what if he was pretending not to smell anything because he’d been prepped to help out with a prank and he didn’t know the fire was out of control?
    “C’mon, be serious, Troy,” I ordered him. “You smell it, right?”
    He cocked his head. “I really don’t.”
    I exhaled and cradled my forehead in my free hand. Was I losing it? Going crazy?
    “Do you have allergies?” he asked me.
    “What? No,” I snapped