I thought about my mother. If she had known about me—if she’d known that a version of me was still alive—could it have saved her? Would she have accepted me as her daughter? Would I have accepted her if she had died first and become my ghost? I closed my eyes, feeling moisture seep around my lids.
Lex’s father rested his hand on my knee. “People die. Love doesn’t.”
He was right. I could still feel my mother’s love. Neither her death nor mine had changed that.
An Unexpected Turn
A white-haired man with a neatly trimmed beard exited Braden Marx’s office and headed for Murphy’s. “It’s Braden,” he called through the secured door.
With a quick goodbye to Lex’s father, I sprinted down the hallway, arriving just in time to slip in behind the elder psychologist.
For a second all eyes were on me.
“Wait outside,” Lex said sternly.
“You’re not supposed to talk to me,” I snapped, retreating to the sofa.
Lex turned her back on me and addressed Braden. “I was just telling Murphy I think we should send for Maria Mitchell. She’s the only one who’s actually spent time studying them.”
Braden looked at Murphy. “What do you say?”
Murphy sat on the edge of his desk, tapping his bottom lip with his thumb. Lex stood in front of him with her arms crossed. “I don’t know. I’ve never liked the fact her facility operates without ERP oversight. These private contractors don’t seem to be answerable to anyone.”
“Are you proposing a separation, Alexis?” asked Braden.
“No, of course not. I mean, not unless Mitchell thinks it’s warranted.”
Murphy narrowed his eyes, giving Lex a low-beam glare that was somehow even more unsettling. “Don’t you think I’d know if it was warranted?”
“No, I don’t,” she shot back. “That’s the point, isn’t it? Listen, Irish, all I’m suggesting is that you talk to her. Maybe Mitchell’s seen one like this before. Maybe she’ll have some ideas about managing her. You know we can’t afford this kind of disruption. Julia’s ghost was all but locked down. She was a week from switching to maintenance sessions.”
“Your ghost was talking with Lex’s when I came down,” Braden observed, eyeing Murphy. “I think we need to take this seriously.”
“Jesus,” muttered Lex, shaking her head.
Damn, damn, damn. Was there still time to salvage this? What the hell was a “separation”?
“All right,” agreed Murphy, “I’ll work the next couple days from home. We’ll see how it goes, and in the meantime I’ll think about bringing in Mitchell.”
Braden nodded. “I think that’s all that’s warranted at this point. In two days the situation may have resolved itself. You could try sedation while you’re home, so you can get some rest.”
Did he mean for Murphy, or me? I hadn’t considered the possibility they might drug me. He might find that trickier than he imagined.
“Stay away from Julia for now, okay, Murphy?” said Lex. “I don’t think your ghosts should spend any more time together.”
I snorted a protest but held my tongue.
“Not a problem,” Murphy said dryly, causing Lex to raise an eyebrow at him. He stood up and grabbed his coat and shoulder bag. “I’ll check in later this afternoon.”
* * *
Murphy didn’t give up his coat on the way home. But in all fairness, the weather was balmy compared to that morning, with fat white clouds scudding across a fresh blue sky.
I had my apology ready. I knew I’d been careless, and now had at least a vague understanding of the potentially serious consequences for both of us. I didn’t need some ghost expert coming to examine me, or proposing new ways to keep me in my place.
There’d been no need for me to defy them openly—no reason (beyond my own pride) not to keep quiet and act the part while I continued my research. Now they’d be watching me, and Murphy, who’d seemed, at a minimum, conflicted. I’d also possibly lost my only friend. My one consolation was that Ian had his wife to himself again.
So I intended to apologize and see what good it would do, but Murphy’s mood stopped me. He flung his coat and bag onto the sofa and walked to his desk. He stood gazing out the window, fingers digging into the back of the chair. I watched him, wondering whether it was best to try and speak to him or to disappear into the closet for a while. I could see tension in the erect line of his back and shoulders. I could feel it rolling off of him.
Despite my resentment over the protocol, I felt a twist of guilt for being the cause of all this. Murphy had not been unkind to me. He’d not even been unpleasant. He had a responsibility to ERP and to the colonists, and I was interfering with his ability to do his job.
I had almost worked up the courage to speak to him when it happened—the last thing I expected.
“Why are you here?”
My breath caught. I questioned what I’d heard, or what I’d thought I’d heard.
He turned from the window and fixed his eyes on my face. “Why are you here?”
He was talking to me. I gave a slight shake of my head, afraid to answer. Never mind that I didn’t have an answer.
He crossed to me in three long strides and took hold of my arms. I yelped with surprise and staggered back, but he pulled me against him. His lips clamped down hard over mine.
I splayed my hands against his chest, shoving at him, but his mouth and his body were unyielding as stone. It wasn’t a kiss that cared about an answer.
Wrenching my head to one side I choked out, “What are you doing?”
“Isn’t this what I’m supposed to do?” The words came out throaty and desperate. “Isn’t this why you’ve come?”
“You don’t buy that any more than I do.”
My gaze locked with his and I saw the subtle melting. The flicker of doubt.
His grip loosened. But instead of releasing me, he bent to kiss me again.
I meant to move away, but something in me faltered, like a careless step onto black ice. This time his lips were soft against mine. Tentative. I relaxed my forearms against his chest, allowing him to close the slight distance between our bodies. My lips warmed and merged with his. His hand slipped into my hair, fingers sliding up the back of my neck as his tongue pressed gently into my mouth.
Are you crazy?! The question lobbed across my brain and exploded between my eyes, jarring me back to reality.
I broke from the kiss. We remained locked together for a single, breathless moment before I ran to the bathroom, closing myself inside.
I stood in front of the mirror panting, confusion boiling up and over. My heart thumped in fear, but not of Murphy.
I looked at the wild-eyed woman in the mirror and wondered for the thousandth time who she was.
* * *
I passed Murphy on the sofa, sitting with his head in his hands.
Retreating to my own space, I sank down on the bed, hugging my knees to my chest.
What was that?
Clearly Murphy had been angry and frustrated, and had either lost or given up the battle to control his emotions. That was explanation enough for the first kiss. But how to explain the second?
Tempting as it was to believe I had become human to him, if only fleetingly, it was more likely he’d forgotten himself in the moment and was out there self-flagellating now.
But Murphy’s not really the problem.
There was no escape for me in this. I had responded to his kiss. Had very much wanted to keep responding. Yet he was the last man with whom I could afford to become emotionally entangled. It shouldn’t have happened. I couldn’t let it happen again.
In truth, it wasn’t likely to.
Scooting back against the wall, I reached for the flat-reader, intending to exorcise the last fifteen minutes with productivity. I decided to follow up on what had become of Murphy’s patient, Joshua Robbins.
A quick search turned up two items of interest: a news article about the return of h
alf a dozen ERP scientists from Ardagh 1 for medical reasons, and a foreclosure notice on a home belonging to a J. L. Robbins. I might not have connected the two events except they were both reported by a northern California news service.
When I narrowed my search to the West Coast, a death notice for a forty-two-year-old Joshua Robbins bubbled to the top. Drug overdose in LA. I returned to the list of ERP scientists from the news article, and soon found two more matches in death notices from other parts of the country—one heart attack and one suicide.
Relocation training had alerted me to the fact ghosts could be lethal, but we’d been told suicides were the result of emotional shock brought on by seeing resurrected loved ones. In Joshua’s case it had obviously been more complicated than that.
I heard cupboards opening and closing in the kitchen, and I glanced at the dryer clock. Teatime. You could set your watch by Murphy. I laid the flat-reader aside and stretched, thinking tea sounded good. Murphy would finish in a few minutes and I could make some for myself.
“Elizabeth?” My heart sprang like a startled frog. Murphy was just outside.
I rose and stood staring at the door. There was no lock. He could open it if he wanted to. But I had turned off the proximity sensor so it had to be opened via the touchpad.
“Would you come out for a minute?” he continued. “I’d like to talk to you.”
Fingers trembling, I touched the pad. The door slid open.
Murphy’s eyes flickered to mine, and he nodded toward the dining table. “I’ve made tea, if you’d like some.”
He moved to the other side of the table and sat down. I took the chair opposite him as he filled two cups and slid one across to me. I added milk, watching it swirl and settle into the color I liked. I recalled that Murphy drank his tea straight—he must have set out the carton for me. Apparently intending to ignore someone and actually doing it were two different things.
I glanced up, and his gaze lifted at the same moment. I flashed right back to our kiss—the second, softer version. Heat rose to my cheeks as my eyes traced the curve of his lips. A counseling psychologist really should not have lips like that.
“I want to apologize to you,” he said. “I know it was wrong to treat you the way I did. I won’t do it again.”
It was my turn to say something, but the pterodactyls in my stomach interfered with my ability to think. I fiddled with the handle of my cup instead.
“Can I ask you a question?” Murphy continued.
“Okay,” I said, breathing out with relief.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened to you. I’ve wondered whether you feel at all … different. I mean…” I knew what he meant. And there was a shocking implication in the fact that he had asked.
“No. I don’t feel different.”
He stared at his cup, eyebrows angled down in thought. “Suppose you had a choice … a choice between dying—completely—or coming back—as you are … Which would you choose?”
I blinked at him, astonished. At the question itself—because it cast my existence in a whole different light—and at the fact he had asked it.
“In one sense it seems cruel,” he continued, sliding his cup from one hand to the other. “A human reincarnated as an alien, with no sense of alien-ness. But at the same time it’s a second chance, isn’t it? A new life.”
“A dependent alien,” I reminded him. “A different kind of life.”
“Yes.” He raised his eyes to my face and waited for me to answer.
My mouth hung open for a moment, but in my mind there was no hesitation. “I’d choose life.”
He nodded. “So would I.”
Murphy sipped his tea and replaced the cup on the table. “Now that you’ve chosen to live, Elizabeth, what do you want from your life?”
I wondered how in hell we’d ended up here. It was just like the kiss. In the last five minutes he’d flipped the way I’d been thinking about myself completely on its head. So was it genuine, or was he trying to manipulate me? Regardless, I figured I had little to lose.
I continued to hold his gaze, ignoring the way my heart tried to scramble the opposite direction. “I think I probably want the same things you would want in my place. To understand who and what I am. To find a way to separate from you, if I can. If I can’t, to figure out whether some kind of balance can be struck between us. I can’t go on living as someone else’s shadow.”
He smiled at that. “Is that what you’ve been doing?”
Something fluttered in my stomach, something more subtle than a pterodactyl. Swallowing a mouthful of tepid tea, I took a moment to organize my thoughts.
“If you could see the rest of them—the ghosts—like I see them … I’d rather die than end up like that. I’ve fought it as hard as I can, but I know I could have been smarter about it. It’s been a mistake to make things so difficult for you with your colleagues.”
Murphy picked up the teapot and refilled both our cups. He leaned an elbow on the table, rubbing his temples.
“I don’t know what to say to you, Elizabeth. Yes, you’ve complicated my life. Immensely. Maybe even put my career at risk. But I can hardly cling to my position and my comfortable office at the expense of facing the questions you’re raising.”
I swallowed—loudly. “Where does that leave us?”
He dropped his hand and looked at me. “You heard what Lex said about you today?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve wanted to believe you were sent here to manipulate me. It fits in with all my beliefs about you—about the aliens. It makes everything much easier. But I’m watching you in this very personal, very committed struggle to understand your own existence, and it would be sheer arrogance to go on thinking it’s somehow all about me.”
Murphy had been paying attention. More than I’d ever imagined.
“What happened earlier,” I began, flushing again, “were you just fed up, or was it some kind of test?”
He laughed bleakly. “Possibly both. Or neither. I’m not sure I’m that sophisticated in my thinking when it comes to you.”
Our eyes locked as the thin smile faded from his face. My heart abandoned both fight and flight and just froze like a floodlit deer.
“So what do we do now?” I asked softly.
His gaze settled on the tabletop. He fidgeted with his empty cup. “Are you hungry?”
I raised my eyebrows, glancing at the darkened windows. We had opened a discussion that could change my life, could change his life—had the potential to change life on the planet. Yet we’d sat drinking tea. The world had kept spinning. The sun had gone down. And now he wanted to know if I was hungry.
“Well, yes.”
“I could make us dinner.”
I smiled. “Like every night.”
“We could eat it together.”
“Interesting idea. How would that work, exactly?”
A smile played at the corners of his mouth as he continued to stare into his cup. “Much like we’re doing now.”
“But with food.”
“Ah, you’re quick.”
“Top of my class.”
“So I understand.”
“All right, sounds like fun. Can I help you?”
Murphy sat up, resting his elbows on the table. “You tell me.”
I winced inwardly. No way he could have missed all those burnt toast scrapings in the sink. Or that sponge I’d shredded cleaning a scalded skillet.
“Are you the sort of man who takes a risk now and then?”
“Not generally. But people can change.”
“Maybe I should set the table.”
Murphy grinned. “Can’t be as bad as all that. Come on.”
* * *
“No, no—you’ll cut your fingers off, love. Let me show you.”
Love? I knew it was an Irish thing, but his hand grazed mine as he said it, and my stomach flipped like a pancake.
I surrendered the knife and he deftly halved the onion, then pres
sed one half onto its flat side. He curved his fingers in and let the knife fly, and seconds later the thing was neatly diced into a million translucent pieces. He scraped them into a skillet coated with hot oil, where they began to sizzle. He shoved the pan forward, giving it a quick jerk, and all the pieces flew up a couple inches before landing right back in the oil.
Murphy pushed the cutting board, with the remaining half of the onion, toward me. “You try.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m supposed to follow that?”
He handed me the knife. “You can go slower.”
I struggled under his gaze, feeling very much like I was back in school, compiling lab data with a professor looking over my shoulder. I was making decent progress (I thought), though with painfully less uniform results, when the knife slipped and nicked the index finger of the same hand I had injured wielding the tea mug.
With a sympathetic groan, he took the knife from me and handed me a dishtowel for my finger. “How bad?”
I stuck the wounded finger in my mouth. “I’ve had much worse.”
“Hmm,” he murmured. I was pretty sure he was trying not to laugh.
Murphy made quick work of the remaining bits, including repairing my ragged efforts, and tossed them into the skillet. “Want to do the pasta?”
I scowled at him. “You’re bumping me down to the remedial class.”
“Not at all. You can boil water, right?”
I flung the towel at his head.
He ducked and caught it. “Honestly, how do you manage?”
Plunking the pot onto the burner, I muttered, “Takeout.” I could hear him chuckling over the sizzling of the onion. “And careful selection of roommates.”
I watched him chop vegetables until the water came to a boil. As I slid the linguini into the pot I steamed my fingers, then bit back a yelp as I strode casually to the sink and ran cold water over my hand.
This was not the first time I’d been humiliated by my dysfunction in the kitchen. It made no sense to me—I was reasonably intelligent, and a quick study. Cooking was following step-by-step instructions. Any idiot could do that. But nothing I made ever tasted like I imagined it was supposed to. And anything more complicated than a baked potato (I ate a lot of them) left me covered with nicks and burns.
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