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serial killer.”
    “Oh, yeah?” Well, truth was, she didn’t. At least, she mostly didn’t. Every instinct she possessed shrieked that he was innocent of the heinous murders of seven young women for which he had been convicted and sentenced to death. Although the whole legal system, a number of eyewitnesses, and every scrap of physical evidence available said he was guilty. Except for his watch, which she touched now like a talisman. As evidence went, it wasn’t much, but it was enough to give her a concrete basis for her growing belief in him.
    On the other hand, there was the whole afterlife in Spookville and black-eyed savagery thing to think about.
    “Yeah.” His lips quirked at her.
    She made an impatient sound. “Could you please just finish telling me what happened to you in Spookville?”
    “A hunter got me.”
    He said that in such a matter-of-fact way that it took her a second. Then, as his words penetrated, her eyes widened on his face. “A
hunter
got you?”
    Remembering the unblinking yellow eyes of the massive, ten-foot-tall creatures she had glimpsed in the horrible purple fog of Spookville, she shuddered.
    “Yep.” He grimaced. “First time one’s ever caught me. Hurt like hell, too. Actually, when I went through the wall after I jumped on that bastard Spivey I shot right into it, and that’s how it was able to grab me. The claws—they’ve got some kind of poison in them, I think. Once they dug in, I kept getting weaker and weaker until I could hardly move. Fortunately, the … things it had been dragging away when I caromed into it took advantage of my bad luck to escape. They got away and it dropped me and went after them. I was so weak I collapsed where I stood. At first all I could do was just lay there on the ground, but I could feel that rubber band thingy we got going on between us tugging at me and after a little bit I managed to get up and stagger away in the direction it was pulling me. Then I saw the hunter coming back and I took a chance and dove at the wall and made it through. Those things that the hunter had when I hit him—they must’ve been somewhere nearby, because they dove through the wall after me and ended up in that room in the infirmary with us. One of ’em got into Creason. And I’m pretty sure the other one got into that trustee.”
    “You called them evil spirits. Why?” Charlie asked in a constricted voice as horror dried her throat. The monstrous hunters she had glimpsed still haunted her nightmares; it didn’t help that she was pretty sure that their mission was to drag errant souls—an example would be Michael—down to hell.
    He shook his head. “All I can tell you is, that’s how they struck me. They were shaped like humans, only they were kind of twistedand gray. A blackish, burnt-looking gray, with smoky wisps floating around them and—no faces. No features at all. I don’t know what the hell they are, to tell you the truth. I ain’t seen nothing like them before. Bottom line, though, is they’re not anything you want to mess with. Hell, they’re not anything
I
want to mess with. Which is why we’re getting out of here just as quick as we can.”
    Charlie fought to maintain some perspective.
    “You know what, I had a fairly uncomplicated life before I met you,” she complained. “Aside from a few random encounters with dead people, it was boring. I like boring.”
    “I was sitting on death row waiting to bite the big one before I met you,” he retorted. He was sounding more like himself now. Some of the harshness had left his voice. “You want to talk boring, it doesn’t get much more boring than that.” That devastating grin of his made another quick appearance. “As far as I’m concerned, though, boring sucks.”
    As they rounded the corner into the hall where her office was located, Charlie realized that the time for coming clean about what she meant to do was at hand. She shot him a sideways look. “Michael … I’ve got to