"You say you want the secret to life? I'll tell you. It's simple. If you know which way the wind is blowing, you can go anywhere and become anything. Don't worry about Imposter Syndrome. Most people are shadows. They make a lot of movement and they seem mysterious, but they are all products of their environments and there's no depth to them."

~ Zandra, to a client, Sneak Peek

Zandra gives Hank's hair another pull. He gets to his feet, and Zandra whispers in his ear, "Run and hide, and don't come out."

Hank doesn't need to be told twice. He scurries out of the lounge in the direction opposite Sunglasses.

Sunglasses, his hand still in his jacket pocket, cocks his head in surprise and says, "You're going to let him get away?"

Drop the act.

"Please. We're adults, child," Zandra says and coughs, this time without muffling the blast in her sleeve.

"I don't understand," Sunglasses says.

Zandra points the lawnmower knife at the pocket with the Spirit Box inside. She says, "It'd be obvious you were recording me if you used your fancy phone. You thought you'd be clever and catch me on the Spirit Box. You're not that clever, Sunglasses, or whatever it is your real name happens to be."

Sunglasses slides the Spirit Box out of his pocket and places it on a nearby table. The revolver fills his empty hand.

"Put the knife down, Zandra. Let's talk about this," Sunglasses says, maintaining his usual robotic professionalism.

I'm only 20 feet away from you. Even with my bad ankle, I can still get to you with the knife before you shoot me dead.

"No, here's what I think you'd actually like me to do," Zandra says. "I think you'd like to record me saying I think Hank was out to kill me. That gives you a fall guy to use after you actually kill me, but not before I tell you where the discreet assets are hidden in this place. Because that's what this is all really about, isn't it?"

Sunglasses remains unconvinced, even though the revolver is now pointed Zandra's way. He says, "I understand part of who you are is connecting disconnected information, but I'm here to protect you."

Zandra rolls the paracord-wrapped handle of the knife in her hand. She says, "Come on. It's over. You lost. Let's clear the air so we can get on with deciding which one of us is going to haunt this gaudy mansion for the rest of eternity."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Here, does this help?" Zandra says. She reaches with her free hand into the pocket of her purple gown and pulls out a plastic sandwich bag that appears empty.

"It might if I knew what was in it," Sunglasses says.

Upon closer inspection, Zandra realizes she can't see whatever is in the bag, either. She gives the plastic a shake, and a long, yellow-gold sliver prints against the bag.

"It's hair," Zandra says.

"Are you feeling alright?" Sunglasses says.

Never better.

"Do you know where I found this hair? This one little strand of hair?" Zandra says.

"A barber shop?"

"No, smartass. It was stuck to the inside of a tunnel at the hotel, in the room that you booked for me," Zandra says. "It's the last, physical piece of evidence I needed to prove what I knew the second we first met. Put that on your fancy smartphone, chucklefuck."

To be fair, it took me longer than a second, but the hair completed the picture anyway.

Now Sunglasses's mood changes. It shows in his posture. His whole body relaxes, as if he'd been wrapped inside a corset up to this point. His voice changes, too. The robotic professionalism is gone. A darkness drops down over him like swinging shoes below a noose.

"I guess you're not just a two-bit fraud peddling horoscopes to the idiots of some forgettable city in flyover land after all," Sunglasses says.

Well, I am also that.

"Oh, yes, child. Able to read the world of living and the dead, a true stenographer of the gods," Zandra says.

She waits for Sunglasses to respond. He raises the barrel of the revolver level with Zandra's head.

Zandra doesn't budge. "Come on. Don't you want to know how I know before you kill me?"

A tear runs down Sunglasses's cheek. He swallows.

Crying? Really?

"I'll spare you if you tell me where the money is buried," Sunglasses says through gritted teeth. "Because it sure as hell isn't the wine cellar, is it?"

Zandra tightens her grip on the lawnmower knife and stands so straight her back cracks. The intensity of the moment made her forget about the pain in her ankle, if only for now.

"What makes you so confident I know where the money is hidden?" she says.

"Everyone knows you know. You've got psychic powers, like they all say," Sunglasses says. "They're going to sell this place soon. Could be the last chance. I'll even split it with you."

Zandra laughs. "You're only mentioning this now? You put in all this work, wasted all that time with your stupid backstory, only to be willing to walk away from half the prize once you hit a bump in the road? Whatever your name is, don't quit your day job."

Another tear.

"Let me give you a little feedback for the next time you try to make a mark out of a world-famous psychic. Have a seat," Zandra says, pointing the knife at a pair of upholstered chairs near the wall.

Sunglasses flinches in hesitation.

"Go on. You're the one with the gun. You know what they say about knives at gun fights," Zandra says.

Sunglasses's flinch turns into steps to one of the chairs. He drags it across the floor so it's 30 feet opposite Zandra. Taking a seat, he keeps the revolver trained on Zandra.

"Let's hear it," Sunglasses says.

Zandra sheaths the knife as slow and deliberate as she can, and then lights a fresh cigarette. She takes a few drags, coughs something fierce, and then starts.

"Your pitch at the car was believable enough, but your aura was all wrong. Wrong color, wrong frequency, everything. I just know," Zandra says, blending her debriefing with supernatural nonsense and fact. "Now, if you were a client at Sneak Peek, it'd end right there, but the stakes were too high. I needed more. Plus, you were willing to pay for breakfast and smokes and a hotel room, and I was sleeping in a random car I broke into. Like I said before, I didn't have anything else better to do."

Sunglasses grunts, "Uh huh."

Zandra continues. "The first hint was how you kept opening the window curtains in my hotel room, even though I closed them a couple times. Who cares if the curtains are open? Well, you did. What was on the other side of that window? The first time, you wanted to see the john and the prostitute in the parking lot, the pair that walked out when we first arrived at the Holiday Inn. The second time, I tested you."

Sunglasses grunts again. "You noticed that?"

"Of course," Zandra says. She pauses to puff on the cigarette. "Why was it important you see those two people? Only one of them mattered, as it turns out: the blonde woman. I saw her on more than one occasion. She's not there on business, at least not officially. It didn't mean more than that to me until I discovered the tunnel in my room, with her hair in it."

Sunglasses gets up to mix himself a cocktail with one shaking hand, while the other keeps the revolver on Zandra.

At least he won't have trouble stirring the drink.

"Now why would you stick me in a room with a tunnel? Couldn't be a coincidence," Zandra says. "You had to have known about the tunnel's existence, because it was the perfect way to hire the blonde woman to discreetly break into my room. You needed to keep up your narrative that I was being hunted by a pissed-off client of mine, a would-be murderer. That begs a question, child. How would you have known about the tunnel if you weren't local? You wouldn't, unless you were already involved in some way with the sex trafficking that takes place at the hotel. My third eye is a little hazy on those details, but my guess is if you know about that tunnel, you aren't the straight shooter you make yourself out to be.

"You also write notes with your left hand to disguise your true handwriting on the off chance I'll pull some sort of handwriting analysis, but you operate your smartphone with your right. You couldn't even clear that low hurdle of amateur spy craft. Go back to the Boy Scouts."

My jaw is tired. Do I really need to explain all of this?

Sunglasses answers her question with, "You're smarter than I gave you credit for."

I'll pull through, jaw be damned.

"Your cover story of working for the Office of Naval Research is, therefore, a farce," Zandra says. "To wit, dimwit, you told me the Holiday Inn was an economical choice given your stewardship of public money. However, you rented out one of the most expensive places on Earth to host your dinner party, Carey Manor. Why? Well, there's only one reason anyone but a Saudi prince rents this place out. It's even in the newspaper in my hotel room. Carey Manor will be sold. This might be the last chance to get at those discreet assets, as Carter mentioned."

The cocktail disappears in a single tip toward Sunglasses's throat. He winces, but he never lets the revolver lose its place.

"You have to admit, it was a pretty good story," Sunglasses says. "You must have thousands of people who want to kill you for one reason or another."

I'm not giving you the satisfaction of saying that it is, but it's not half-bad.

"No, it wasn't a good story at all," Zandra says. "I receive death threats in the mail all the time. I haven't paid for toilet paper in years. I worry more when someone isn't out to kill me. It means I'm getting rusty."

Sunglasses tosses the cocktail glass to the floor. It cracks, but doesn't shatter. He rubs the side of his neck with his free hand.

"Times are tight, and it took almost every dollar I had to make all this work. Payoff should've been huge," Sunglasses says. "All I've got to show for it now is the government license plate I swapped onto the SUV."

Zandra flicks the cigarette toward the broken cocktail glass. To her surprise, it rolls inside the cracked sides.

"You've watched too many Vincent Price haunted house movies," Zandra says. "Your idea to record me saying who I thought the would-be killer was, regardless of guilt, and then pop me after I revealed the location of the hidden treasure, would've taken an awful lot of luck.

"And luck was never on your side, not even for a minute. Once the spirits let me know my suspicions were warranted, it only made sense to throw a wrench into your narrative as we were inviting attendees. That's how that freak show with The Crocodile ended up here, to sow a little chaos. Hank was right on the line, but he's clear now that I've had a chance to read him better."

Of course, I didn't know the complete picture when I was stuck with that merry band of dipshits in that garage, but I'll take hindsight credit anyway.

Sunglasses cracks his neck by pulling on his head. "Maybe I didn't have luck, but if you believe in something hard enough, it will manifest into reality. I got this far, didn't I?"

"That's called a wish, child. You make them when you blow the candles out on your birthday cake," Zandra says and ashes the cigarette. "No, the only one manifesting anything is me. I walked into this place not knowing how I would do it, but I knew I would find a way to separate these dinner guests, however unworthy of my mercy, from you to spare them your little blame game."

"What a saint," Sunglasses says.

"Far from it. Anyway, that's the difference between you and me, and most people and me," Zandra says. "I know not to get lost in the weeds of the chaos, of randomness. Most people think they can control the little things, because they're little, but little things are the hardest to predict. I only need to know which way the wind is blowing, not how every bit of breeze is going to rustle the leaves."

A little woo-woo babble to keep him distracted from thinking about our missing guest, the person in apartment 201. No need to mention that person. Not yet.

Sunglasses sighs.

"But the biggest tell of all was that you gave a shit whether I lived or died. In my experience, and I have a lot of it, that's very suspicious," Zandra says. "Did I miss anything? Leave something out?"

"Nope," Sunglasses says.

"Great. Now, are you going to kill me?"

"That depends. Am I going to walk out of here a rich man?"

Zandra slips the lawnmower knife out of its sheath once more and says, "Not a chance."

"Fine," Sunglasses says and fires the revolver at Zandra.