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thousands of documented cases of stress-related self-impressionism.
    Wyatt put the cap back on the marker, put it beside the sink like he might his toothbrush, and walked over to his desk to be ready for the call he was about to make. Every step of the way, he racked his brain for some explanation that did not include ghosts. It wasn’t entirely beyond the realm of possibility that he could have sleepwalked over to his vanity and drawn on his face in permanent ink. He was certain stranger things had happened. Just never to him.
    “Karmic on line one, Mr. Haines.”
    Jo. Jo will fix this.
    Wyatt shook his head. She wouldn’t fix this. Because this was not about ghosts. There was a sane, rational explanation. He was not haunted .
    Maybe she’ll fix it naked .
    Nothing to fix. Not haunted. He was a sane, rational man. Who had just drawn on his own face while he took a little catnap.
    Wyatt picked up the phone and punched the button for line one, trying to think of what he could possibly say that would sound sane and rational, and still get across the point that he was clearly losing his mind.
    He wasn’t haunted. Clearly not haunted at all.
    Stress-induced sleep-impressionism. Fine. Perfectly understandable. But the marker was in his left hand.
    And that one little thought would not stop repeating itself in his clearly addled brain. Wyatt wasn’t even left-handed.
     
     

Chapter Six: Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen
     
    Karma smiled smugly as she hung up the phone after her second conversation with KC’s newest hysterical client.
    Not that she took pleasure in her clients’ hysteria. Well, perhaps a bit, but certainly not an undue amount. It was always particularly gratifying to have them crawl back to her, begging and sobbing. The day the world learned to solve its own problems was the day she was out of a job, so she made a point of being amused by ignorance and gross incompetence whenever possible.
    Karma’s smile faded.
    Jo wouldn’t be pleased to learn she was going to have to deal with Haines again. Or perhaps she wouldn’t mind it too terribly much. Karma had a hunch that Jo and Wyatt were not quite as indifferent to one another as they would have her believe, and her hunches were rarely wrong.
    The image-conscious Mr. Haines was not the kind of man Karma would have chosen for Jo, who had enough difficulties with her self-image already, but people so rarely let her tell them to whom they ought to be attracted.
    Jo needed someone accepting. Someone who would be charmed by her apparent contradictions, paranormal skills and lightning-quick mood swings. Karma had only spoken to the man on the phone a handful of times, but she was quite certain Wyatt Haines was not that man. Quite the opposite.
    And there was definitely something odd going on in that house of his. Jo’s recounting of last night’s events had set off a number of warning bells in Karma’s mind, not the least of which was Wyatt Haines’s suspicious involvement.
    Still puzzling over the possible ramifications of last night’s anomalies, Karma picked up the phone and dialed Jo’s home number from memory. When her ghost exterminator answered groggily on the third ring, Karma belatedly recalled she had ordered her home to sleep.
    “Sorry to wake you, Jo, but I need you back on Wyatt Haines.”
    “Karma? What Haines?”
    “Wy-att Haines,” Karma enunciated precisely, waiting for Jo to wake up fully. Due to her tendency to call her employees when she needed them rather than during normal business hours, this wasn’t the first time she’d caught Jo napping. She knew from previous experience that it would be a solid five minutes and a lot of repetition before Jo was firing on all cylinders.
    “The stuck-up businessman?” Jo mumbled, and the sound of shuffling came through the line. Karma imagined her employee stumbling blindly toward the kitchen and hoped Jo had some coffee readily on hand. “D’you do a Vulcan mind-meld on him?”
    Karma bit