Page 81 of Death and Do-Overs

“You had to bodysnatch him,” I said.

“Yeah,” Imogen said through Caspian’s mouth, in Caspian’s voice. “He’s too big to wrestle and guns make me itchy.”

That was fair.

We both stared at Guy as he thrashed and screamed.

“You seem to have an interesting situation of your own happening here,” Imogen-controlled Caspian said.

“I barely touched him,” I said. “I didn’t even get to ask him anything yet. That’s fine, I guess, since you can take all the answers out of both of them. It’s less satisfying than getting them myself though, you know?”

“Makes sense.” Imogen-controlled Caspian gently set Imogen down. “This place is gross.”

“Yes, it is.”

Guy continued his shrieking tantrum.

“I should be getting the whole run-down right now from inside this purple guy’s head, but it’s like no one I’ve ever been inside before.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s quiet. Like he doesn’t think anything at all.”

Silence? A stark contrast to the awful noise filling the apartment.

“Can you try him?” I pointed to Guy.

It was difficult to tell with the tentacles blocking Caspian’s mouth, but I thought she made him frown. Imogen-controlled Caspian sighed. “I’ll do it.”

Caspian dropped down to the floor almost as quickly as Guy had, only he didn’t flop. He curled into a ball and covered his head.

Imogen blinked on the floor, before closing her eyes again.

And the screaming stopped.

Guy lay still, limbs spread like a starfish, nose flattened against the floor.

“Guy Jones doesn’t remember you,” Imogen-controlled Guy said. “He thinks he’s never seen you before. He’s not Nie’s killer.”

Well, that was disappointing.

“He doesn’t knowanythinghelpful?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“So we came in here and attacked these guys and they didn’t even know anything?” I asked, feeling way less awesome about myself.

“Pretty much. We should probably leave.”

I pointed at Caspian, still curled up on the floor. “You saw Nie. If you’d have told me, I wouldn’t have come back here.”

“Nothing,” he said, shaking. “Nothing.”

Clearly, intimidation wasn’t going to work. Bodysnatching wasn’t going to work. If he did know something, which I was seriously starting to doubt, he wasn’t going to give it up.

“This sucks,” I told Imogen-controlled Guy.

“Yeah. I’m going to go back to my body now.”

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