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fascinating conversationalist.”
    “I suppose he might seem that way. To someone who finds ghouls and goblins fascinating.”
    “Nate is a little bent,” Alexis admitted. “But I’ve always thought that was one of the most appealing things about him. It’s fascinating to watch him think his way around corners.” Picking up a rubber band, she put it away in a drawer. “Of course, his gorgeous gemstone-green bedroom eyes aren’t so bad, either.”
    “What are you doing noticing his eyes? You’re engaged.”
    “I’m engaged, not dead.” Her expression sobered. “You know, he’s very nice.”
    “Oh, really?” Tess replied with feigned disinterest. “Personally, I found him tiring.” She shook her head. “Besides, his behavior could only be classified as bizarre. He actually spent the entire lunch telling me a ghost story.”
    “I’ve always enjoyed Nate’s stories,” Alexis countered easily. She took a drink of coffee from the ever-present mug on her desk. “You know, there’s something to be said against being too choosy.”
    “That’s easy for you to say. After all, you just happen to be engaged to one of the smartest, as well as nicest, men I’ve ever met. Not to mention him being super hot.”
    “Matthew and Nate are the opposite sides of a very attractive coin,” Alexis agreed. “And I hadn’t realized you’d taken such notice of my fiancé’s attributes.” Alexis’s smile was calm and confident.
    “I’m choosy, not dead.”
    The women shared a laugh before returning to their work. After ten minutes, Tess looked up from the lengthy transcript of the Kagan case.
    “Alexis?”
    “Mmm?” The other woman was lost in a law book, taking notes on a yellow legal pad.
    “Do you… Well, have you ever… Oh, skip it,” she said as she twisted a paper clip into figure eights. “The entire thing’s absolutely ridiculous.”
    Her atypical uneasiness had captured Alexis’s attention. “What’s ridiculous?”
    Tess shook her head. “Never mind. It’s not important.”
    Alexis put down her pen and waited.
    “Do you believe in ghosts?” Tess asked.
    Alexis took her time in answering. “No,” she said at length. “I don’t believe I do, although I can’t deny that I find the idea intriguing. Do you?” she asked. “Believe?”
    “Of course not,” Tess insisted, not entirely truthfully as she tossed away the mangled paperclip. “Forget it. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
    Alexis continued to observe her for another long moment. “Sure,” she said finally, returning to her research. “Consider it forgotten.”
    Nate Breslin’s ludicrous story about a ghost living in his house had to be a fabrication. There wasn’t any ghost of Captain Angus MacGrath because ghosts didn’t exist. They couldn’t. The entire idea of some lost soul, trapped between his earthly existence and some ethereal paradise, was nothing but a fantasy created by novelists and screenwriters.
    Tess told herself that over and over as she drove home at the end of the day. She reminded herself continually of the fact as she turned on every light in her townhouse before fixing a bowl of cereal for dinner.
    “I don’t believe this,” she moaned later as she turned her television to the Classic Film Channel. She had intended to put Nate Breslin and his ridiculously tall tale out of her mind by losing herself in an old movie, only to discover that tonight’s offering was none other than The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.
    “There are no such things as ghosts,” she said aloud, aiming the remote control at the television just as Rex Harrison, playing the spirit of an ancient seaman, appeared in the kitchen of Gull Cottage. The screen went dark. “They’re nothing more than fictional characters. Or figments of nervous minds,” she added as the wind coming off the river began to howl eerily down her chimney.
    Settling down with a romance novel, Tess vowed to put both the annoying horror writer and his ghostly friend from