Charlie exhaled a sigh of mild annoyance. This child had seemed so level-headed when he met her. Excited, young, like a kid on Christmas morning, but sensible, too, a good head on her shoulders. Then came the nightmare and all the joy had gone out of her.

“If there is such a thing as a killer on the loose, what makes you think he will target you?”

“I don’t know. Fear maybe. This knife was, like, huge.”

“Personally, I think it was too much pepperoni on our pizza the night before.”

“Pepperoni?” Aleisha queried, her tone sharpening. With nimble grace and a burst of frustration she sprang up, arriving at his desk and landing in one of the chairs opposite him. “That is an insult, Charlie. Did you dream about him, too?”

“Don’t be silly, I don’t suffer from nightmares. Perhaps it was the cheese.”

“I know the difference between clairsentience and cheese! Anyway, I was wide awake.”

“You thought you were wide awake.”

“I know what wide awake is, Charlie. I was wide awake.”

“Not when it began, right?”

“Yes, when it began.”

“You dreamt you were awake.”

She glowered at him. “Did I dream that I got out of bed, that I disturbed you and you came to find out what was wrong? We had mugs of hot cocoa, at what point did I really wake up? Wouldn’t I have gotten out of bed twice?”

Charlie tried a scowl of his own. “Okay, Oh Smart One. Why don’t you accept what an old man says and put all this worry behind you.”

“What about the alien-native? Didn’t that confirm the experience to you? They’re real, you said so.”

“I said no such thing! Anyway, you said it was a ghost.”

“And you said they had a reputation for appearing and disappearing.”

“Which doesn’t exactly make them real. They’re a myth.”

“I didn’t know about the myth, Charlie.”

*

An excerpt from The Khekarian Threat, book One in the Khekarian series.

Cheers, all! 😀