I bit back the urge to swear at her. Fighting with George used to be one of my best ways of blowing off steam. I’ve mostly tried to avoid it since she’s been gone; it doesn’t seem fair to start something when neither of us can really leave the room. Besides, in my saner days, I was always afraid I’d say something unforgivable and she’d leave me alone with the dark behind my eyes, and no more George, ever. I wasn’t so much afraid of that anymore. We just didn’t have time to fight.

“Hey, George, do me a favor, will you? Either go away, or stop pointing out how you’re just a figment of my imagination and help me find the damn booster. I can’t handle having you hanging around calling me crazy. I get enough of that from everybody else.”

“Your wish is y command,” she deadpanned, before climbing up to join me in the van. She couldn’t touch anything, naturally, but her feet still made soft echoing sounds when they hit the floorboards, and her shadow on the walls moved just the way that it was supposed to. I had to admire the realism of my hallucinations, even though I knew that probably wasn’t what most people would consider to be a good sign.

“Really? ’Cause right now, what I’m wishing for is a tank.” I paused. “Maybe two tanks. Becks will probably want one, too, and I don’t want to be greedy.”

“Always thinking of others, that’s you.” Her fingers brushed the back of my neck as she moved past me. I shivered. “The last time I saw the booster, Buffy was stowing it back here, with the rest of the backup network hardware.”

“We moved that around Valentine’s Day, when Becks did her ‘romantic places to take an Irwin’ article series.” I snapped my fingers. “The lockboxes!”

George leaned against the counter to watch as I dropped to my knees, rolled back the industrial rug covering the van floor, and pried up the trapdoor it had been concealing. We don’t have a complete second floor in the van—the weight would have been prohibitive, not to mention the structural instability it would have introduced—but we had a few extra storage compartments built in for a rainy day during the first major retrofit. They made good hiding spots for contraband when we were doing certain types of articles, and the rest of the time, they were a convenient place to hide snack foods… or excess hardware.

The first compartment held nothing but weird-looking cartoon porn and Russian girlie magazines. I smiled despite myself. “Damn, Dave. You had smarts and you had guts, but what you did not have was taste.”

“He was pretty much in love with Magdalene,” said George.