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fire. The ghosts, of course, didn’t care about temperature, but Alison, Melissa and I huddled by the fire and threw blankets around ourselves. “Luckily, his sheet covered up most of his bottom half.”
    “What position was he in?” Paul asked, his eyes narrowed. He expected a certain answer, I could tell, though I couldn’t imagine what.
    “Uh, the candle was blown out, so I couldn’t see much, but it looked like he’d landed on his left side. He didn’t seem hurt.” Maxine had her eyes closed to think. I often wonder if the ghosts can see through their eyelids, which are somewhat transparent, but this didn’t seem the moment to ask.
    “What else?” Paul asked.
    Maxine opened her eyes. “His left arm was stretched out in front of him, but it was dark. I couldn’t see if he had something in his hand, or anything.”
    Paul’s jaw moved back and forth. “Good. Nice work, Maxie.”
    “Oh, but that’s not the weird part,” Maxine offered.
    Alison, eyebrow cocked and lips twisted, said, “Okay, Maxie. What’s the weird part?”
    “I saw someone like us—a woman—making her way out of the room and through the wall to the outside,” Maxine grinned. She loves knowing something others don’t.
    Melissa’s eyes widened. “Another ghost?”

Chapter 5
    “It’s all speculation,” Paul said. “Maxie saw a ghost in Mac’s room, but she didn’t see the ghost do anything, and didn’t really get a good look, other than to say it was female. We don’t know anything yet.”
    After some discussion about Maxine’s description of the scene in Mac’s room, Paul had suggested he and Maxine search the house for unknown ghosts, but they found no one at all, not even Sergeant Elliot. Now, in the den as the fire started to die down, he was cautioning us not to jump to conclusions.
    “We have no evidence,” he went on. “In fact, we don’t even know for sure that anything happened other than a person like Maxie and me was passing by just when Mac happened to fall out of bed. For all we know, he does that twice a week.”
    “Yeah, but isn’t it a big coincidence?” Melissa asked. “Aren’t you always saying we shouldn’t trust coincidences in an investigation?” She’s so grown-up.
    “I’m not saying we should trust it, and I’m not saying the spirit in the room didn’t do something to your guest, Alison. What I’m saying is we don’t know what happened yet.”
    There was little that could be done before morning. Without electricity, Maxine could not do any Internet research; even if the battery on the somewhat outdated laptop could hold out for more than a few minutes—and Alison assured me it wouldn’t—there was no working Internet connection in the house. We’d have to venture outside to find one, and the radio’s news reports grew more and more dire as the night went on. Alison had been right—we’d stay inside for the duration.
    We could hear the wind howling outside. Maxine reported on the damage she’d seen, which in this area seemed to be mostly downed branches, but large ones. “It’s pretty bad. I couldn’t see any lights on for miles around, no streetlights, no traffic lights, no neon signs, nothing. Maybe you should have evacuated.”
    “There was no evacuation order, or I would have,” Alison said. “You could see all that from the roof?”
    Maxine shook her head. “The sign on top of the Dunkin’ Donuts on Route 35.”
    “We can’t expect power to come on too soon. What can we do now, Paul?” Alison asked. I think she was trying to change the subject, because Melissa looked just a little scared, and Alison hates frightening her daughter.
    “Sleep,” the ghostly investigator suggested. “It’s not going to do you much good to sit up tonight, and we can’t do any searching or research until tomorrow. Let me know if you see Maxie’s female ghost.”
    “I don’t want to go upstairs with the fire still burning,” my daughter said.
    “I’ll take care of it,” I