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Looking like a guy on vacation.

Shit. I’ve heard of this happening, where you rent a place and it turns out to be double-booked.

“Ms. Laughton?” he says as I hurry over.

I slow. “Yes?”

He extends a hand. “Davos Cirillo.”

“Dr. Cirillo,” I say, shaking his hand.

I’d been so engrossed in the conversation that I’d forgotten we were expecting him after dinner. I also should have looked up a photo of the guy. Stereotypes again. I’m accustomed to mediums like Leilani, with her jangling bracelets and flowing dresses. This guy looks like a doctor or lawyer or… college professor? Yep, because that’s what he is.

“Glad you could make it, Dr. Cirillo,” Jin says as he comes forward.

“Davos, please.”

Jin smiles. “I’m Jin, Nic’s brother-in-law. And this is Shania, our ‘outsider’ for the week.”

“Thanks,” Shania says.

“Hey, that’s your role, right? The designated outsider.” Jin grins at her and then turns to Cirillo. “Come join us. We’re having pie and waiting for the sunset.”

SIX

We sit on the porch with the propane heater taking the chill off as the sun sets, and it is a spectacular sight, pastel blues and pinks darkening as the sun disappears into the lake.

We ask Dr. Cirillo about his work. That seems a safe topic. It’s a bit of an odd situation, with him spending three days in a house with strangers. It’s supposed to give him time to settle and get to know us, rather than ushering us into a room for an hour-long séance. It does mean, though, that he’s here as a professional, and we can’t treat him like a fellow houseguest. I don’t want to ask anything personal, so we stick to work questions.

His actual degree is in psychology. As a discipline, parapsychology is considered fringe science, even junk science. One professor at his college had specialized in an offshoot of parapsychology called anomalistic psychology. It wasn’t what Cirillo imagined studying, but he found himself intrigued.

Anomalistic psychology examines common paranormal experiences and attempts to explain them. I know a bit about it from my spiritualist research, as I girded myself against the predators. As a scientist, I found the explanations fascinating. Like the one that explainsthe common phenomenon of seeing a dead loved one at your bedside, watching over you. I remember a friend telling me she’d seen her dead grandmother and I will fully admit that, at thirteen, I was a little bit horrified by the thought of my grandmother in my bedroom at night, catching me doing… whatever I was doing while awake in bed at thirteen.

Seeing a dead loved one in your room might be the most common ghostly experience. The scientific explanation is that when we’re falling asleep, we sometimes drift into a hypnagogic state, where we’re still transitioning to sleep and think we’re awake. In that state, we dream of seeing a loved one and mistakenly believe we’re awake.

I remember one time when Anton was away at a conference. Shortly after I went to bed I swore I heard him come home early—open the door, take off his shoes, walk into the kitchen. I’d gone to sneak up and surprise him and found myself alone in the condo. I texted and discovered he was still in Montreal. He’d wanted me to call the police, certain we had an intruder. But the door was locked and the alarm on. I understand now that I’d had a hypnagogic hallucination.

That’s the sort of thing Dr. Cirillo studied under his advisor. Scientific debunking, though he winces at the term when Jin says it. Debunking suggests you’re on a mission to prove people wrong. What Dr. Cirillo’s advisor did was accept people’s experiences and look for the explanation beyond the paranormal.

Many supernatural experiencesdohave a natural explanation. But our brains are wired for story, and we try to create it where none exists. Our sports team won twice while we were wearing our blue shirt and lost when we wore our green one? The blue shirt is lucky. We notice an ad for a vacation to Cuba, and suddenly we’re seeing ads for Cuba everywhere? It must be a sign. We hear voices in our empty condo? It’s ghosts, not real conversation conducted through the vents. Creaking boards upstairs? Ghosts, not the plumbing system. We wantto believe that luck exists, that signs exist, that ghosts exist, and so we find proof.

Dr. Cirillo had been happily pursuing his doctorate, investigating paranormal phenomena and leaping on scientific explanations like a detective solving crimes. At first, they all did have explanations. Then came a few where the explanation felt like jamming an octagonal peg into a round hole. It almost fit… but not quite. That didn’t bother him much. Science doesn’t always perfectly explain everything.

“Then, I had an experience myself,” he says. “One that I couldn’t explain away.”

“Story time?” Jin says.

“If you want it.”

“We absolutely want it,” Shania says.

Jin’s gaze shoots to me, suddenly cautious. “If it’s okay with Nic.”

“Fine with me. I like ghost stories.” I flash a smile that sells the lie and turn to Dr. Cirillo. “Please continue.”

Dr. Cirillo settles deeper into his wicker chair. “I was investigating a haunting at a recently purchased home. The new owners claimed to hear crying and the sound of someone pacing in the attic. They discovered that the former owner had ended his life, quite violently, in that attic.”

“They discovered thatafterhearing noises?” Jin asks.