“Hi. Sorry. I sure hope I didn’t startle you. Are you… Rachael Barnes?”

Rachael stared with her mouth gaping, not sure what to say. The person she saw before her absolutely, positively did not exist. And yet… here he was. Standing in front of her door while her cat, finally content after a full of day of craziness, purred and rubbed herself along the leg of his jeans near the black leather boots she had helped Chell--his dead girlfriend--pick out for his birthday last year.

“Is… now a bad time? I called your office, and they said you were home sick. Clearly, you’re not feeling well. I should just come back… a different time.” The guy wearing Graham Halloway’s face took a step back, Scrappy stuck to his leg as if her fur were caught on one of those inhumane mouse glue boards, the kind that made the animal lay there and jerk around for while before it finally starved to death.

“My office?” Of all the utterances to make its way past her parted lips, that’s what she’d come up with? Questioning what this person who didn’t exist meant by her office? “What--do you mean? I work from home.”

His perfectly sculpted dark eyebrows raised slightly beneath his also perfectly sculpted dark hair, wavy and molded to a peak above his right eye--his right, lavender eye. “Uh, I thought you worked at an accounting firm--Merek and Merek? Is that not right. I’m sorry--you are Rachael Barnes, right? I have the right address?” His eyes shot to the number by the door, and then he fumbled for a scrap of paper in the pocket of his black leather jacket. He read it over and crammed it back in, nodding slightly that he’d written down the right information.

“Yes, I am Rachael Barnes, and yes this is my apartment. And I used to work at Merek and Merek, but I don’t anymore. I quit about a year ago. To write a webnovel, a very popular one, one I’m sure you’re very familiar with, assuming whoever put you up to this went into enough detail to let you know who you’d be portraying.”

Once again, his forehead crinkled, and for a moment, Rachael thought perhaps this guy didn’t exactly understand what she was referring to, but then, a wave of reality washed over her, and she actually started laughing. It was an odd sound, even to her own ears, a sort of heinous giggle, not quite a cackle, but nothing a sane person could produce either. Graham stood there across from her, looking down from his six-foot-two frame, as puzzled an expression on his handsome face as he could come up with until she managed to catch her breath long enough to speak again.

“Who put you up to this? It had to be Ebony, right? That bitch! Man, she got me good. How did she manage to get in here and clear my computer? Was it while we were at lunch yesterday?” She clapped her hands a few times and then dropped them to her thighs, realizing that she was dressed like an eight-grader who’d forgotten she had to dress out in gym and was sent to the lost and found to find anything that sort of fit and might work for dodgeball that day. She straightened up a little then. Even if this actor had freaked her out initially, he was still hot--steaming hot--and she hated that she looked like a Texas-sized mess in front of him.

“Miss, I’m not sure who you’re referring to. Unless you mean your ex-college roommate. Her name is Ebony… Gibbons? Correct?” He shook his head slightly. “I didn’t look at your info that closely before I drove over. I apologize. I just… I know you’re not feeling well, and you weren’t expecting company, but if I can have a few minutes of your time, I have an opportunity I’d like to tell you about, one that I think you will find quite interesting, especially if you’ve recently considered giving up your work at Merek and Merek.”

Rachael stared at him for a long moment, her arms folded beneath her chest. “Still not giving it up, then, huh? Man, you’re good. You should ask for double whatever Eb’s paying you. Okay, sure, Graham Halloway, come on in to my humble abode. We’ll sit down, and you can tell me all about Silverwood Academy and how I’d make a fine addition to your team.” She tried not to roll her eyes as she made a grand, sweeping gesture with her arm, attempting to usher him inside. May as well see how far he was willing to take this. She had nothing better to do after all, except for re-write 2 million words of story and figure out why it wasn’t published. Surely, when this was all over, Ebony and Lark would put everything back the way it was before this little prank, wouldn’t they?

Except, Graham wasn’t moving. He looked even more confused now than he had during her fit of insane laughter. He turned and looked behind him, toward the stairs, as if there might be someone else there, someone giving her information. “Did you say… Silverwood? How did you…? And… I don’t think I ever told you my name, did I?”

“Nope,” Rachael said, still holding her arm in the air, waiting for him to come in. “I’m just highly skilled in the area of mind reading, that’s all.”

“Uh… while that would make an awesome addition to our team, I’ve got to say, I’ve never met a mind reader before, and I’ve met all kinds of people.”

He still wasn’t budging, so Rachael dropped her arm. “Okay, lucky guess then. I don’t know. I suppose I just figured it out.” She rolled her eyes so hard, for a moment all she could see was the inside of the back of her head. “Look, Mr. Halloway, I’m not sure how long it might take before those colored contact lenses become adhered to your eyeballs, so if you’d like to come in and sell me on Silverwood, best get to it. I ain’t got all day.”

His expression shifted slightly as he took a tentative step forward. “I’m not wearing contact lenses,” he said, as if she had run him through with a silver-tipped wooden stake. “My eyes just happen to be this color. Like Elizabeth Taylor's.”

“Well then, Cleopatra, have a seat.” She gestured at the chair across from the tattered couch she’d gotten off of Craigslist, silently wishing she’d sprung for new furniture instead of a new car, and did her best to keep up the facade. He was good, and she was interested in seeing what he had to say, though for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why in the world Ebony would go to so much trouble to bring a fake Graham Halloway to her doorstep. Didn’t the woman have better things to do than come up with elaborate schemes to make her think she was losing her mind?

Graham’s jeans squeaked against the leather of the chair, and he somehow managed to look even more uncomfortable. Scrappy jumped up into his lap, and he stared at the cat as if it might shift into a werewolf at any moment, not that those were real. Not that any of this was real. Rachael took a seat across from her guest, pulling her shorts down slightly before she crossed her legs, trying to look dignified in her slovenly outfit. She didn’t even bother to bat at her hair. She folded her hands across her knee, waiting to see what Mr. Halloway had to say, but when Scrappy served to be too much of a distraction, she shouted for her cat to get down. Reluctantly, the kitty leaped off of Graham’s lap but went back to rubbing against his leg, and he looked from cat to owner and then back again, bewildered.

“Now, Mr. Halloway, what is it you’d like to tell me about? Let me guess, I secretly come from a long line of vampire hunters, and the world needs the likes of me, Rachael Renee Barnes, to train with the elite professionals from Silverwood Academy in order to keep all humans safe from threats they never knew existed. Is that about the gist of it?”

He stared at her for a moment, his mouth slightly open before he rubbed his stubble-free chin. “Has someone else from our organization reached out to you already, Rachael? Or did your grandfather make contact with you before he passed? We were under the impression you were estranged from him. Is that not the case?”

“Oh, no. Me and Gramps were best pals. It sure was a terrible thing when he passed. No one wants to get stampeded by a herd of water buffalo at the local drive-through animal park, especially not when you’re eighty-seven, but Gramps lived a long and healthy life--except for those last few minutes. Those were ghastly.”

Once again, Graham was quiet, contemplative. “Miss Barnes, clearly I’ve come at a bad time. You seem like a nice woman, though a little… stressed perhaps. I could come back tomorrow, or the next day if that would serve you better.”

“That’s a great idea,” Rachael said, standing up and taking a few steps toward the door. “I do think you should go. You should probably just go ahead and jump in your Ferrari and head on back to Pennsylvania. I’m sorry--but I happen to like vampires. In fact, I think one day, I might like to be one. I certainly wouldn’t want to go around killing any of them just for sport.”

She may have gone too far. He looked a little offended now. The fake-Graham paused by the door. “Miss Barnes, I don’t know what you’ve heard about Silverwood or who you heard it from, but I assure you, we take our work very seriously.” He shook his head and ran his hand through his hair. She almost felt bad for making fun of the fake society she’d made up three years ago. “If you change your mind, here’s my card.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a business card, handing it over.

“Ooh! A card! Now that’s one detail I thought Eb might’ve overlooked. Impressive." She took it and considered tearing it up, but clearly this dude was taking his role to heart, and there was no sense in making him feel any worse than he already did. “Thanks so much for stopping by, Mr. Halloway. It was lovely to meet you.” She held the door open for him and watched him head down the steps, confusion all over his handsome face. In a way, she was slightly sad to see him go. He was awfully easy on the eyes, after all. Of course he was--she’d created him to be that way. But whoever had gone to such great lengths to find a guy who looked exactly like Graham Halloway did in her head had done a fabulous job.

She almost wanted to go look in the parking lot to see if they’d actually sprang for a Ferrari rental. Now that would be impressive. But she didn’t. She let fake Graham go, shaking her head as she closed the door before Scrappy could make a hasty exit behind him.

Rachael looked at the card. Everything on it seemed perfectly legitimate, and whoever the culprit was had gone to great lengths to make it look as if Graham really did work at the exact same Silverwood Academy from her books--the one that didn’t exist. “Too bad,” she said, crossing back over to her laptop and pondering what in the world she was going to do now. Besides call Ebony and get her to confess. “If only Graham Hallway were real. Now, that would be a universe I could get on board with.”