Emily's Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page B

upcoming s é ance. Part of her, a big part,
wanted to one-up Stanley Cooper once and for all. And unless her
phone had been tapped by him the other day, that's exactly what she
would do.
    When Tuesday came, Emily
was very careful to dress and behave exactly as she always did.
That meant a plain white shirt, a casual jacket, and stone-washed
jeans. That meant showing up early, eating lunch at her desk, and
exchanging sharp-edged banter with the boys all day. The only break
in routine -- it couldn't be helped -- came when she announced she
was ducking out early.
    "Where to?" asked
Stan.
    "Library," she said
briefly, pulling a vinyl cover over her computer screen.
    Stan gave her a sharp
look. "Where's your book bag?"
    "In the car."
    "You brought your car? The
library's a block away."
    "Not for that. I'm meeting
someone--Cara. For supper." She locked her desk.
    But Stan was feeling
suddenly expansive. "Hey, how's Cara doing? God, it's been a
while," he said, leaning back in his chair and
stretching.
    Stan had met Cara exactly
once, in the newsroom. At the time he'd called her a
silver-spooner. Now all of a sudden he was talking as if they'd
been raised in the same orphanage. He
knows I'm up to something , she thought,
dismayed. How did he do it?
    "I'll tell her you said
hi," Emily said with a tight smile, and fled.
    She shrugged off the
thought of Stan Cooper the way she would a wet sweater. He could
guess all he wanted, but he'd never actually know, not before she
was good and ready to let him know.
    By the time she'd grabbed
a hamburger and shifted the Corolla into fifth gear on Route 128,
her mind was focused completely on the evening ahead of her. It
seemed to her an extraordinary thing that a U.S. Senator was
willing to risk looking like a jerk a week before a scheduled
interview. Where was the angle here? He couldn't be hoping to
impress her with his sincerity. Being a sincere believer in ghosts
wasn't exactly a character asset.
    Was he hoping to
make her a
believer? Impossible. He must know that. Unless .... A wildly
irrational fear seized her. What if he belonged to some kind of
cult, and they were going to brainwash her, and she'd come out of
the haunted house some kind of, whatever, some kind of zombie or
something ....
    Get a grip, girl. He's a
senator. You're a journalist. You're not driving into the Twilight
Zone; you're headed for Westford, Mass., a no doubt nice little
bedroom community to a bunch of yuppies from
Boston .
    Still, a person couldn't
underestimate the hypnotizing power of sheer personality. The
senator had it to spare. And more. What a charismatic man, she
thought, a little depressed. So that's what people really vote for:
the smile, the voice, the low chuckle. He'd certainly caught her off guard once.
Well, twice. But he wouldn't get away with it a third time. She was
ready for him tonight.
    Which led her to another
possibility. What if the evening were set up as an elaborate
hoax--screens and rapping tables and flying trumpets, that kind of
thing? Obviously some of these people were really good; too many
otherwise intelligent observers had been sucked in by them. She
smiled grimly to herself. Try pulling a
fast one, Senator, and our gentlemen's agreement is null and
void.
    She played around with
various scenarios in her head, and by the time she turned off Route
495 onto the road to Westford, she was actually hoping for
something outrageous to happen. A haunted house and a debutante
medium -- it gave whole new meaning to the phrase coming out .
    Emily found Easton Lane,
which was unmarked, but she had an awful time finding the house.
She travelled the mile of potholed road up and then back down again
before she noticed a car turn into a driveway that was all but
hidden by overgrown shrubs. The car was a BMW. The senator had said
he'd be in one. She turned in after it, sidled around a huge
exposed rock in the center of the winding drive, rolled up her
window to keep out the scratchy branches that