He waved at the screen. “As you can see, we weren’t prepared to have you kids with us here, but we’re adjusting. While it will never be as cozy as Lyle House, the five of you will be comfortable here, perhaps more so, with all those unfortunate misrepresentations corrected.”

Five of us? That must mean he didn’t plan to put Derek “down like a rabid dog,” as Aunt Lauren wanted. I breathed a soft sigh of relief.

“I won’t apologize, Chloe,” Dr. Davidoff continued. “Perhaps I should, but we thought setting up Lyle House was the best way to handle the situation.”

He waved me to a chair. There were two, the one the security guard had vacated and a second, pushed against the wall. As I stepped toward the second one, it rolled from the shadows and stopped right in front of me.

“No, that’s not a ghost,” Dr. Davidoff said. “They can’t move objects in our world—unless they happen to be a very specific kind, namely the ghost of an Agito.”

“A what?”

“Agito. It’s Latin roughly translating to ‘put into motion.’ Half-demons come in many types, as you’ll discover. An Agito’s power, as the name might suggest, is telekinesis.”

“Moving things with the mind.”

“Very good. And it is an Agito who moved that chair, though one who is still very much alive.”

“You?”

He smiled and, for a second, the mask of the doddering old fool cracked, and I caught a glimpse of the real man beneath. What I saw was pride and arrogance, like a classmate flashing his A+ paper as if to say top that.

“Yes, I’m a supernatural, as is almost everyone who works here. I know what you must have been thinking—that we’re humans who’ve discovered your powers and wish to destroy what we don’t understand, like in those comic books.”