Lexi woke up some time in the middle of the night--she could tell, because she'd fallen asleep without pulling the curtains and northern Michigan's uniquely black night sky seemed to have leaked into the room.  She didn't wake from a nightmare, but calmly.  She could feel Malice sleeping on her chest; the cat woke when she did, and looked down into her face.  Lexi's eyes adjusted quickly to the dark, and when they did she was looking at a ghost.

Was she quite awake?  Maybe not.  The fact of a ghost in her bedroom bothered her not at all.  Should it have, though?  She'd been seeing so many ghosts lately, although none of them had glowed cool blue like the woman at the foot of the bed did.  She was mistier than any of the others had been, too.  Fuzzy, almost.  Lexi could make out the woman's face, except for her eyes (it could have been the woman from her dream, except that she couldn't see if the eyes were sad), and her upper body became clearer as she watched, but the woman's legs never coalesced into anything more solid than mist.

"Nihao," Lexi said, not that the ghost would get a reference to anime, but there you were.  Malice looked at the ghost and stepped primly off of Lexi, tail very discreetly fluffed (quite an impressive display for a long-haired black cat) and a low growl in the back of her throat.  "S'okay, cat," Lexi said softly.  Malice stopped growling.

The ghost drifted backward across the room, then through the door that led to the kitchen.

Lexi didn't think; she followed the cool blue light downstairs.  She half-expected it to be gone when she got there, but it was in the dining room, drifting slowly around the table as if it were setting places.  It moved nonchalantly, as if it didn't care if Lexi followed or not.

As she passed the refrigerator, the phone rang.  Lexi nearly jumped out of her socks.  She grabbed it off the hook without a second thought (or a second ring) and then promptly lost it.  She couldn't feel the phone in her hand, but she didn't hear it hit the floor, either.  It took her a moment to focus in the dark and see that the silly thing was in her hand after all.  So the drugs were still working.

The ghost moved in the dining room.  It had finished its circuit of the table and was moving toward the ballroom.  Lexi took a few steps in that direction, moving as far as the telephone cord would let her.

Oh, right, the phone.  It was saying, "Hello?  Lexi?"

She lifted it to her ear.  "Nihao," she chirped again, not too loudly lest she wake the doctor.

"Hi, Lexi, it's Ajax.  I was hoping I'd catch you awake."

"General Ajax!" she said happily.  "How are things at the front?"

"Not too bad.  Listen, I heard from Molly, and she had some questions.  I'm glad you're awake still."

"Still?"  Lexi couldn't see the clock on the wall.

"It's almost two.  But listen, do you know what's going on at the factory?  Molly told me there were questions about the remaining inventory of cars and parts, so I took a drive by there, and saw--"

"What, you just happened to be in Detroit?"  Ajax wasn't usually the type to make random road trips.  Nashville was a bit of a haul for him.  Maybe he could come to Arcadia, too. 

"I'm up for the holiday," he said.  "Do you know if anything's happening at the plant?"

The factory.  Oh, yes, the Crane-Packards.  Lexi felt the beginnings of a howl at the back of her throat.  It was almost Thanksgiving, they should've had about a thousand cars built by now.  She fought it back, forced the feeling down.  She had to get herself back into now.  Into the real world.  The one without Ren, the awful place with no colors or sounds.  "It's late," Lexi said.  She was happy to hear from Ajax, so happy, but it was hard to get the happy to the surface.  "I haven't..."  She lost her train of thought completely as the ghost passed out of sight into the ballroom.  "There's something strange and wonderful happening, Ajax."

"What's going on?"

"I don't know," she said dreamily.  "I haven't figured it out...if it's real or not.  I'll let you know."  She squinted and could just barely see the blue glow fading in the ballroom.

"Are you okay, Lexi?"

"More or less...more more than less," she replied.  "Just pre ock.  Pre.  Preoccupied," that was the word.  "Can I call you later?"

"Sure."  Ajax sounded disappointed.

"I'm sorry.  I just--"  She wanted to talk to him, too, but he could call back tomorrow.  The ghost wasn't waiting.  "I...have to go, 'kay?"  She left the phone on the counter and walked away from it.

The glowing blue woman was going out the front door when she reached the ballroom.  Night air delightful and crisp on her face, Lexi followed her out into the dark.  It was the middle of the night in October, about forty-five degrees in Arcadia, Michigan, whose biggest retail outlet was a very small party store which doubled as the post office, and Lexi Crane was outside in pajamas and socks, chasing a ghost.  It was a good life.

No, chasing wasn't quite the right word.  She was following the faintly glowing, faintly woman-shaped specter, and it was leading her down the weed-choked circular driveway, past Dr. Zheng's Saab, and toward a dilapidated carriage house whose drive was so overgrown it had all but vanished.  Clay roof tiles had suffered from years of neglect, but the walls looked more or less solid.  The doors were another matter.  When the ghost passed through the ancient wood, Lexi was able to slip through a Dolph Lundgren-sized gap rather than test the rusted hinges.  She'd never explored the carriage house, come to think of it.

The weak nighttime light died completely once she was inside.  The concrete floor was uneven (and cold!) beneath her feet, and the ghost was gone.

"Well, what?" she asked the dark.  "Going to jump out for a surprise birthday..."  She could see her breath clouding in front of her.  No, she couldn't, that was her imagination, she couldn't see anything, and besides, it wasn't that cold.  It was quiet, though.  All of the summer bugs were gone, of course--the woods were sparsely populated with animal rustlings and the ssshhh of bare-branched trees socializing.

She put her hands out in front of her and took a careful, sliding step forward, mindful of her toes (she hated stubbing them) and any sharp object she might encounter.  She walked for a long time, moving slowly but finding nothing.  She was beginning to think she'd gone farther than the opposite wall (you are entering a new dimension...) when her fingers touched dusty, vertical metal.  It wasn't the far wall of the carriage house, which would have been brick in any case.  Lexi pressed her fingertips, then palms to the cold surface, knowing right away from the slick glass and painted steel that it was a car.  A shiver of excitement went through her.  A car!  In her garage!  It had been there all along, probably calling her, and she'd been too busy (preoccupied really, or was that the same thing?) to go and look for it.

She traced the vehicle in the dark, creating a mental map of its shape with her fingertips.  It was old--she could tell by the mostly flat, very upright side panels, and, after a moment, from the way it smelled, like dust and ground oil and something else she'd never been able to place.  Kind of like an antique shop, a good one.  There were running boards, too, and they led up to big fat fenders at both ends.  Lexi's mind sketched out a long-nosed touring car, 1930s or early '40s.  If only she had thought to bring a flashlight!  The grille  was fluted at the top--the notched corners made her guess that it was a Packard, and that made her heart hurt and giggle with joy at the same time.  Ren would have been so happy, but he was dead.  Lexi ran her fingers over the sculpted chrome of the hood ornament and down the broad, vertical slats of the grille.  Yes, it was a Packard.

"This cah belongs to the Pah-kee-stah-nee ambassadah," she said, doing a poor Michael Caine imitation.  She sat on the floor in front of the car and rested her head on the blade-like edge of the bumper.  Lexi Antoinette, she thought.  She fell asleep like that, and dreamt of a guillotine descending with impossible, grinding, scraping slowness down a hundred-foot execution frame toward her throat.  A crowd cheered through tinny speakers, and Ren was the red-hooded executioner.  It had all the elements of an awful nightmare, but somehow it wasn't.

The blade never did reach her neck.  She woke up curled against the car's front tire on the cold floor.  Sunlight squirmed in through the cracks in the ceiling and doors--the car was a Packard, after all.  A '39 Twelve, to be exact, a massive touring sedan.  Judging by its condition (dust, bird and mouse poo, flat tires) it had been in here since before the drive had succumbed to weeds.  But why was it still here?  Twelves were among the most desirable Packards; surely if someone here had owned one and then died, some relative would've dragged it out and sold it off during the speculation wars of the Eighties?  Lexi sat up and considered the Packard for a while.