Keeper

XI. Dead Man Talking

No one knocked on Morgan's door this late other than her colleagues. It was one of those universal truths, a state of affairs as constant as taxes and death. The human keeper fell more than rolled off the couch, still exhausted. She hadn't caught much more than a catnap before this racket started up. It was an insistent, loud banging. She groaned and rubbed at her eyes.

She unlocked the door and then opened it, a rebuke ready to leap off her tongue. The words died there, and suddenly Morgan didn't feel at all asleep. Maybe she'd hit that horrible stage of sleep deprivation where she was seeing things. Nothing else made sense.

Morgan was looking at a dead man.

Death had apparently been kinder to Mark Wilson than the autopsy report from Velez had suggested. If he'd been ripped to shreds, he looked damn good. The young man looked little different than his profile picture: alive, well, smiling self-consciously. "Hello."

She stared at him for what felt like forever as she tried to process what was going on. If he was a hallucination, he was a very convincing one. His voice sounded like the videos, his face looked like the pictures, he smelled like Old Spice, and she was certain that if she was stupid enough to reach out and touch him, he would feel alive. "You're dead," she said. It was not her finest moment, but she didn't know what else to say.

"Can I come in?" he asked.

"Why?" Morgan asked. Even if he was a hallucination, it paid to be careful.

"Because someone wants you dead," Mark said. He paused for a moment before adding, "And because it's cold out here."

"I'm too tired to tell if that was a threat," the human keeper said, rubbing her eyes. He wasn't menacing her other than the comment, but the most dangerous things seldom had to. "Look, can you come back later?"

He looked slightly baffled, as if he hadn't expected that response. "I only have an hour. We need to talk."

"Probably," Morgan said. She scrubbed at her eyes again, this time to see if he would go away. Instead, he was still standing there when she opened them again. "But I know a guy with an ouija board, so really any time works for me."

Mark shook his head. "That won't work anymore."

"Why not? The veil's plenty thin, apparently," Morgan said, contemplating whether she had the energy to be irritable. "Why should I let you in? You were ripped to pieces and that's usually incompatible with life, so as far as I know, you're Satan's imp. I don't like the idea of a pitchfork to the face."

He sighed. "I don't have a pitchfork. Please, can I come in? It's not safe for us to talk about it out here."

Morgan looked up at the iron horseshoe over her door. Its protection was likely intact if he was asking. That, or he was a particularly polite entity. "What are you?"

"A ghost," Mark said.

Ghosts could wreak serious havoc on a living being if they chose to. They were more rational and less powerful than a poltergeist, but the undead usually had chips on their shoulders the size of redwood trees. It took a lot to shackle a human spirit to life. Morgan contemplated her options. She knew she should talk here, where it was safe, but she also really wanted to sit down. The keeper groaned. "Fine. Come in. But if you so much as sneeze wrong, I'll bludgeon you into the hereafter again with a horseshoe."

He looked relieved as he stepped across the threshold, bringing with him the unmistakable cold of the grave that had been kept at bay by iron's blessings. "Thank you. I was worried they'd see us with all that talking."

"They?"

"The people who killed me. Or their master."

Morgan waved to the chairs at her small kitchen table and went over to her coffeemaker. She started adding grounds. "Have a seat."