“Did you want to make an appointment?” she asked again, forgetting our prior conversation. “I’m afraid Dr. Blaine isn’t in today. ”

I tried to get her back, but her attention faded from me and she started going through her daily routine, oblivious of my presence now. I wanted to ask her if she knew what had happened to her, even if she didn’t know what had happened to my dad, but I couldn’t get her off her loop again.

Disappointed, I set myself back to my original task. I had no idea which part of the suite Dad’s body had been found in, but I guessed that his personal office was most likely to hold some shade of him, even if it was just a loop of time playing over and over.

As I made my way through the glimmering fog-forms of corridors and treatment rooms, bright shapes darted past me, trailing blazing threads in every color. They weren’t ghosts as I knew them, just bits of energy and not quite like anything I’d seen before. They moved erratically and one or two hit me, zipping through my body with a sizzling, burning sensation and leaving a short-lived tremor in my limbs and a touch of nausea in my belly, as if I’d been mildly shocked. I couldn’t find a source for them. And I couldn’t find my dad.

I searched the office, increasingly tired and frustrated and dragging myself through the thickening Grey. The harsh little energy bolts took a greater toll on me with each strike until I was shaking constantly. I sat down on the shimmering floor, panting.

“Dad,” I called out. “Dad. are you here?” I wasn’t sure it would have any effect, but I was getting desperate. There was no trace at all, not a shadow, not a loop, not a glimmer that was Robert J. Blaine shaped, not a voice or a reflection. I even tried stepping out of the Grey and back in with a piece of mirror in my hand to try to catch any image of him that might be lingering around. I almost didn’t make it out, much less back in to look for him.

The ghost of Christelle drifted into his office, unaware of me, and bent over the desk, talking as if he was there, but he wasn’t. He should have been, since her lack of reaction to me this time indicated I was seeing a memory loop, and there was no reason he shouldn’t have shown up in it. I was feeling sick, and my whole body was quivering with fatigue and the effects of the energy blobs that zipped about like drunken insects.

I struggled out to the hall and collapsed onto the floor, gathering the normal back and rolling onto the ordinary wood of the corridor. The thumping from Belles Sauvages was still going on. What had felt like hours wandering in the memory of my father’s office had been about forty minutes of normal time, and I felt starved and sick, as if I hadn’t eaten in days. I levered myself up enough to prop my back against the nearest wall, panting and shaking.

“Hey,” came a voice from the stairwell end of the corridor. “Hey, you’re not supposed to be down here.”

I could see a dark-skinned man in a uniform coming toward me with care. He held a flashlight in his hand, not a gun, so I guessed he was a security guard.

“Sorry,” I croaked back. “I wasn’t feeling well, and I took the wrong door. Is there a restroom.?”

“There’s one upstairs in the studio,” he said, drawing near. He stopped and peered at me. “You don’t look good.”

“I feel awful.” I could tell he was debating whether I was dangerous, drunk, or just ill. I tried to smile and I knew it was pathetic. “I just want to get some fresh air,” I added.

He grunted and made up his mind, putting out his free hand. “C’mon, I’ll get you out of here.”

I accepted his help getting to my feet and made my way out of the building under his aegis. It was frustrating to have nothing after looking so hard but I wasn’t sure there was anything to find. I might come back in the daylight and see if I could get at Christelle or the temporaclines, but I wasn’t convinced the result would be any better. There was something wrong with the space my father had once occupied, and the hole frightened me and left me with more questions than ever and a feeling of loss more profound than any I could remember.

I didn’t know what the energetic balls of light were, but I was pretty sure they were connected to whatever strangeness was going on in the office. As disturbing as it was, I thought I’d like to see if they appeared again in the temporaclines. Not that I’d know what that meant if they did, but it was information, and with so little else to go on, I’d grab for whatever data I could get. I walked slowly down the spanking clean street to a small coffee shop, sad and exhausted.

I bought hot chocolate and a sandwich, feeling the need to raise my blood sugar fast and bask in the warmth and life of the busy little restaurant. The shaking in my limbs was visible to anyone who cared to look and my hands trembled so hard I had difficulty holding the cup at first.

The waitress, a large woman in a bright blue dress and frilly apron with the name LILA embroidered on it, paused to watch me. “You all right, miss?”

“Very hungry,” I mumbled.

“Eat slower, or you’ll make yourself sick. That’s too good a sandwich to waste. I’ll get you some more chocolate.”

Lila whisked my cup away and brought it back refilled and overflowing with whipped cream. I’m not usually fond of sweets or chocolate specifically, but this was hot and stopped the quivering. I thanked her and asked for some water.

“You sure you want water now? It gives you cramps if you drink too fast.”

“This is good, but sweet.”

“Oh, yeah,” she agreed. “I’ll get your water. You eat that sandwich while I’m gone.”

I’d forgotten that you have to ask for a glass of water in California. The state’s so frequently in a drought that even in good years, a glass of water is treated like a luxury to be doled out one at a time. Some places even charge for the glass to offset the cost of washing it.

Lila returned and put a red plastic tumbler filled with water near my hand. “You came down from the dance studio?” she asked.

“Umm. yeah.” I’d have sworn no one saw me or that it was not even possible to see from the diner to Dad’s building. “How did you know?”

“Oh, lots of folks come in after class. Replace those calories they sweated off. But you. look a little more serious. ” she added, giving me a speculative look.

I’m not one to ignore an opening. “Well, really,” I started, “I’m scouting stories. I heard the place was haunted. ”

She gaped and made a squeaking sound. “You mean like on Ghost Hunters?”

I only shrugged. People will fill in their own blanks if I keep my mouth shut and it wouldn’t hurt to let her think I might work for a spooky TV show if that got information flowing, though I felt a bit grimy for the ruse.

She nodded to herself before speaking again. “I guess that’s not so strange. I mean. after what happened there, you’d think it would be haunted, right? Not that I’ve ever seen a ghost over there and my chiropractor is right in the office it happened in, you know.”

“Really? So what did you hear about it?” I asked.

Lila glanced around to be sure no one wanted her attention and then turned back to me and lowered her voice. “Well, back a while ago there was a doctor up on the second floor. Must be. twenty years ago—before I moved up from Long Beach, anyway. So, anyhow. He was having an affair with his nurse and then one day she just up and disappeared. No one knows what happened to her, but they say he killed her and hid the body somewhere. But whatever happened, she was never found, and one day he just shot himself. Dead.”