“Are you ready for this?”
“Do you really think anything you tell me can move the register on my surprise meter any higher after the events of today? Divulge or I go back to my hotel room.”
“I was a spy.”
My head cocked to the right while his words nested in my brain. “A spy as in private investigator, Inspector Clouseau…or a spy like the spy in the show Alias?”
“Oh, definitely an Alias-caliber spy. Sydney’s my hero.”
Visions of Sydney Bristow danced through my head. Images of this faceless man, with his educated, succinct words and light disdain, wearing a wig for a disguise, swiftly followed.
“You’re very quiet, Stevie.”
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek. While intrigued, I was far from sold.
“Well, here’s the thing. You could tell me you were the King of Prussia and I’d have no way to prove you weren’t, right? I can’t see ghosts anymore, so visible identification is out. Do you have a driver’s license or something? Some kind of ID?”
“I have ten. Or I had ten. I also had ten matching passports, a killer Aston Martin and lots of zeros at the end of the numbers in my various bank accounts. Of course, that was before I was dead. Who knows what’s happened to my locker back in London by now though. Oh, and the King of Prussia looks nothing like me. His name was Wilhelm, as a point of reference.”
Ignoring his glib history lesson, I plowed ahead. “So your home base was in London?”
“It was,” he purred. “Rather a command central, if you will. A place where all good spies go home to rest after they’ve finished a grueling mission wherein one is shot at from a helicopter while hanging by the skids.”
I fought a roll of my eyes. Win was coming off like the crackpots on the Internet who wove tales of great heroism when in real life they were plumbers. Everyone was a superstar until you could prove otherwise.
“Sounds like the stuff Mission Impossible movies are made of.”
“I’m better looking than Cruise,” he said on a chuckle.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I asked, “So, is that how you died? Were you shot while hanging on to the skids of a helicopter?”
“The time will come when I tell you how I died. For now, just know I’m pretty dead.”
I found it almost laughable he thought I was supposed to just accept his explanation because he said I should. I added arrogant to my list of rapidly growing Winterbottom characteristics.
But I wasn’t letting him off so easy. That he expected me to simply take his word for it was, in another word, insane.
Planting my hand on my hip, I lifted my chin and gave him some of his arrogance right back. “Can I call someone at spy command central and ask about you? Get references?”
“You could, but no one would answer your questions. That’s why I was called a spy, Stevie. Secrets and lies are heartily encouraged.”
Of course they were. “Again, I’ll remind you, you can pretend to be whoever you want to be and I won’t know any different.”
“Would you like an afterlife reference? Someone who goes by the name Digby Reynolds?”
That stopped me cold. Digby had died a particularly untimely death back in Texas. While witches and warlocks were immortal, if taken by surprise, we can still end up really dead.
Digby died when an oak tree in the center of Paris was split by lightning and fell on him. His cat, Maynard, was the only family he had, and Digby came to me, asking that I rehome him.
“Okay, ask Digby what his cat’s name was?”
There was a pause and then Winterbottom’s voice echoed in my ear. “Maynard. A tabby you were kind enough to find a new home for with a woman named Greta, who runs some sort of halfway house for witches in Paris, Texas, with a friend of yours named Winnie Yagamowitz.”
Hearing Winnie’s name made me smile. I missed Winnie and her daughter Lola.
Okay, so he could talk to some of the people I’ve helped. That proved nothing. “Do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Tell Digby to stop waffling and make a decision. He passed well over eight months ago. It’s time to choose a path to the light, or accept the afterlife plane he’s on as his eternity.”
“He stuck his tongue out at you.”
I chuckled. That definitely sounded like Digby. Yet, it still didn’t change much. “So you can talk to people on the other side. I didn’t doubt you were on the other side. That still doesn’t prove you were who you say you were.”
“But it does prove I know some of the ghosts you were in contact with. You came so highly recommended. I thought you’d be thrilled to your knickers to help me.”
“Ghosts are a chatty lot. If you’re on the plane where people who are undecided land, they love to gab in order to put off making a choice. You might be a spy, but I know ghosts. And my knickers have skeptical written all over them. How do I know you’re not setting me up?”
“We’re getting nowhere fast.”