There was a knock on the door and a second later it opened. Two teenage boys stood in the doorway. One was a chubby Hispanic boy with dark hair and thick glasses that made his dark eyes enormous. The other was a redhead that looked scarily like a short, skinny Napoleon Dynamite.
“Bench, can we set up another table for the card players?” the redhead asked. “The Warhammer dicks claimed all the tables again.”
“Sure, sure. You know where they are,” Benchley answered in a rush, obviously trying to get rid of them.
“You look like Megan Fox,” the boy with the glasses blurted out.
Amaliya scowled.
“No, she doesn’t!” the other boy protested. “She totally looks like Eliza Dushku.”
“She doesn’t look like either one, dumbasses,” Benchley said testily. “Now out!”
The boys started to argue, but Benchley pushed them firmly out of the office, shut the door, and locked it. When Benchley looked at her, Amaliya dramatically rolled her eyes.
“Sorry about that. Yeah, so, where were we?”
“I’m not going to eat you.”
“Right!”
“And we were about to talk about why I’m here.”
Benchley shoved his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants and paced behind his desk. “Look, if you’re here to tell me I shouldn’t be crushing on Samantha, I know you’re right.”
“Well, yeah, you shouldn’t be, but no, that isn’t why I’m here.”
“Oh.”
“I’m here because I need your skills.”
“My skills?”
“Jeff says you’re the guy to go to when it comes to researching spirits, ghosts, and that sort of thing.”
Benchley visibly puffed up. “Well, yeah. I am. I’m totally that guy.”
It was amazing what a little flattery could do to a guy’s ego, Amaliya thought. She fished her list out of her pocket. “I need some information about possession. Like...when a person is possessed, how much are they aware of what is going on around them? Can they find a way to communicate past the...uh...entity possessing them.”
Benchley sat at his desk, hunched over, and started scribbling on a pad of paper. “Okay. What else?”
“If a dead body gets possessed, is the spirit of the person still attached to it? I did some internet research, but it didn’t make sense to me.”
“Most of the stuff on the internet is just old wives’ tales. The real information is hidden from the general public.” Benchley grinned at her. “People get into enough trouble with the occult just screwing around with low-end spells. Can you imagine what would go down if the hardcore real stuff was on the internet?”
“You mean like bring on the end of the world?” Amaliya flipped her hair over one shoulder and winked at him.
Benchley’s face reddened again. “Yeah. Something like that. So, what else do you need?”
“Everything about Josephine Leduc and her daughter. Everything. Especially details about her powers. I need to know how to do the stuff Bianca’s mother did, especially astral projection. I tried looking this up online, but it seemed like bullshit to me.”
“Like I said...” Benchley nodded.
“Exactly. I don’t have a handbook on how to be what I am, so I need you to help me piece it together the same way you’re going to help Sam.” Amaliya handed the list over to Benchley. “Here, just take this. I have some more notes on there. Stuff I’m not too keen on Cian or Jeff seeing. It’s between you and me.”
With quivering fingers, Benchley took the paper and started to read it. “Amaliya, this is some serious shit.”
“Yeah.” Amaliya shrugged dismissively though she was just as unnerved as Benchley appeared.