“Is this… Were you… Did you…” What the hell was I trying to say? More important, why now? I’m in my own mind, trying to help a non-corporeal living person who had taken up residence there to find out who she was, and I wanted to flirt?!

She looked back. “What was that?” she asked. Her voice had an odd accent to it. Like a mashup of English, Irish, Iranian, Japanese, and Indian dialects. It was amazing.

Hold on a sec. “You’re actually speaking?”

“Well, of course I am.” She laughed. Until now, I hadn’t noticed how musical that was. “How did you expect me to communicate with you?”

“Well,” I said, “I just thought, since you’d always talked in my head before…”

“Yes, and we’re inside your head, silly.” She smiled.

“Oh, right.” That was the best I could do? Christ, I’m not fifteen anymore! Women don’t have this affect on me!

Then again, women didn’t usually show up in my mind. Especially women who could start a discussion of the Tower of Babel with, “I remember when…”

But, God, I felt like a dork!