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any unfounded misgivings.
    These late nights alone at the office were the only times he felt safe enough to satiate his curiosity over these abnormalities. He pushed his chair away from his current project, rolled over to an adjacent workstation and keyed in a query for any additional news of recent odd electrical activity within reach of the NSA’s network. He searched through a sea of mundane data to glean anything that matched what he was studying. Reports of isolated odd electrical glitches and blowouts around the world that couldn’t be explained by weather abounded. He quickly skimmed over a story summarizing an unexplained power surge in some slum in northeast Rome a couple of days ago, before he logged off and returned to his real work.
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    Jude woke up to a white light shining into his eyes from overhead and a pain that blanketed his entire body. He groaned, fighting the stiffness in his joints from being motionless for so long and stretched out as best he could. As his mind sharpened, he realized he was lying in a hospital bed between a sunlit window and a drawn green privacy curtain.
    “He’s awake!” He heard Father Gallo yell down the hallway. “Welcome back to the world of the living, Jude.” Gallo exclaimed smilingly, as he drew back the curtain.
    “What the hell happened, Father? How did I get here?” he asked. The memory of what Emily did came rushing back to him, but it was too surreal to be true. He decided not to talk to Gallo about it.
    “You and Contri had quite a brawl, Jude,” Gallo explained. “He locked the door on me before I could get inside, and by the time I was able to force it open, you had both knocked each other out.”
    “Yeah…. That’s right…,” Jude muttered absently.
    “Jude, I hope you can forgive me,” the priest said, on the verge of tears. “I wasn’t cautious enough, and I put you in danger. It seems I am becoming nothing more than a burden on those around me.”
    “No need to ask forgiveness, Antonio,” Jude assuaged his friend. “I’m just glad everything is okay now. What happened to Contri? Did he make it?”
    Gallo nodded through his tears. “Contri woke up back in his right mind. Whatever happened between you two managed to force out the spirit. The medico on duty when you arrived said you had no serious damage besides a concussion and a generous amount of bruising.”
    “I didn’t need a doctor to tell me that,” Jude laughed softly, wincing at the pain.
    “Emily is waiting for you outside too,” Gallo said. “She hasn’t left the hospital the entire time you have been unconscious. Shall I send her in?”
    Jude hesitated. Gallo mistook it for shyness.
    “Come now, Jude. If she’s waited this long, she won’t care how you look. I’ll leave you two alone. I have some other business to attend to anyway.”
    Before Jude could stop him, the priest had left the room. A mix of curiosity and fear overcame him. The anticipation slowed the time it took for her to enter the room to a crawl. When she finally arrived, she closed the door behind her and smiled at him. “Hello, handsome. You’re looking much better than you did two days ago. Before long you’ll be your regular, dashing self!”
    Jude suppressed his nerves and tried to convince himself that what he had witnessed back at the apartment was nothing more than a hallucination from the concussion.
    “I’ll definitely work on making the recovery as quick as possible. How are you doing, Emily?”
    “I’m much better now that you are awake and talking, thank you for asking,” she replied and sat down next to him. She attempted to hold his hand, but he jerked it away instinctively, blushing once he realized what he had done. She did not look offended or surprised. She merely pursed her lips and said, “I suppose we have some things to talk about?”
    “What you did back there…” he whispered. “What are you?”
    “All in due time,” she deflected, as she sat back in the chair.