Am I aiming my gun at a ghost?

But there was something else inside, huddled shivering in the cramped interior.

“Don’t move!” shouted Chevie, using her most serious FBI voice. “Freeze, or I will shoot.”

A weak voice came from somewhere inside the orange cloud. “Iamfreezing, miss. My word on it.”

Before Chevie could wonder why the strange accent had her brain singing “Consider Yourself,” the cloud dissipated, revealing the figure of a boy huddled over an old man.

The boy was alive but the man was not, probably because of the knife jutting from his chest. Being dead was not the only thing wrong with this guy: the blood congealing on his torso was yellow, and one of his arms seemed to be that of a gorilla.

Don’t think about it now. Do the job.

“Okay, kid. Move away from the dead... thing.”

The boy blinked, searching for the source of the orders. “I never done it, miss. We need to leave this place. He’ll be coming for me.”

Chevie made a split-second decision, reaching into the pod and yanking the kid out by his collar.

Chevie held him on the floor with the palm of her free hand.

“Who’s coming, kid? Who’s coming for you?”

The boy’s eyes were wide. “He’s coming. Garrick. The magician. Death itself.”

Great, thought Chevie. First a monkey guy, and now Death itself, who is also a magician.

Chevie felt another presence in the room and looked up to see Agent Orange in all his gray glory moving down the corridor toward the pod.

“That’s a good way to get yourself shot, Orange. What are you doing here anyway? I never pressed the panic button.”

Orange pulled off his silver sunglasses and surveyed the devastation. “Well, Agent Savano, when half of London blacked out, I guessed the WARP pod might have been activated.” Orange hesitated six feet from the hatch. “Did you look inside, Chevie?”

“Yes. I looked. Am I gonna die from radiation poisoning now?”

“No, of course not. Is there... a man in there? Is my father in there?”

Orange’s father? This posting cannot get any weirder.

Chevie returned her gaze to the restrained boy. “There were two people inside. This boy and a man. I really hope the man is not your father.”

But the way this day has been going, I just bet that monkey guy is Orange’s dad.

Chevie realized that she had never really trusted Agent Orange, but at this moment she actually felt sorry for him.

Macho-Nerds

BEDFORD SQUARE. BLOOMSBURY. LONDON. 1898

Albert Garrick sat slouched on the cold basement floor, eyes tightly closed, preserving the ghost image of the orange sparks branded on his eyelids.

Magic is real.