Mindy's shock upon finding out how much Amelia, and also Henry, had paid for her 'services.'
At that point she couldn't even care whether Lulu could in fact see ghosts or not…not when that much money could potentially be earned.
Perhaps the adrenaline from all of the zeros made her work fast, because soon enough a digital form was set up that all of Lulu's callers were instead directed to.
Mindy called it a 'digital intake system'. Which would sort requests based on 'urgency', assess the difficulty of the requests, and offer a tentative quote automatically.
Her phone buzzed. A new push notification from the Spectral Solutions form portal popped up due to a seemingly urgent request:
Client Urgency Level: High
Request Source: Unknown (In-person Contact Required)
Notes: "Prefer to discuss the details of my unique situation in person".
Lulu blinked at the vague request and frowned. A walk-in?
But before she could think on it further, an eerie feeling of being watched overcame her, and the hairs on her arms lifted.
She wasn't alone.
Turning slowly, she found a tall man standing quietly near her window. He was maybe in his late forties or early fifties, dressed in a paint-splattered linen shirt and trousers, with sharp cheekbones and sad eyes that shimmered like fresh oil on canvas. There was something familiar about him—not personally, but in the way famous people sometimes felt like old acquaintances.
Then it clicked.
"Wait… you're Marco Bellini," Lulu said, her voice barely above a whisper. "That famous painter! I'm a HUGE FAN. I was so upset when you died last year and they said you left no final works—"
His smile was thin and wistful. "I didn't leave nothing. I left everything. But none of it ever saw the light."
-------------------
Ten minutes later, she was halfway to falling out of her chair.
Marco Bellini, one of the most enigmatic modern painters of the last three decades, had created dozens of unreleased works meant to be donated to galleries after his death. But his former manager, a man named Dante Moretti, had stolen them. Dante had keys to one of Marco's old storage units. Instead of delivering the art as instructed, he had hoarded it.
"He was obsessed," Marco said, his voice tinged with regret. "He said my art spoke to him. That it was too valuable for the world. Too precious to be left to people who wouldn't understand it."
"So he… just kept it?"
Marco nodded. "He visits the locker late at night. Sits and stares at the paintings. Sometimes talks to them…sometimes to me. He can't see me, of course. But I think he likes to talk to me through the paintings."
Lulu felt a chill crawl up her spine.
"Wait," she said slowly. "That night in the storage facility… when I was helping Amelia… I felt like someone was watching us."
Marco nodded. "It was me. I had been following Dante, hoping he'd sense me and his guilty conscious would make him fulfill my final wishes—no luck so far—and he'd visited that facility to look at the paintings the same night you were there.."
Lulu swallowed hard. "I thought I imagined it."
"You didn't. I saw you talking to that other girl and realized that you could see us." Marco's gaze was steady. "Now I hope you can help me too, like you did her."
"I'm not doing anything illegal again…" Lulu began to refuse. She'd gotten away with her last visit to Amelia's storage locker, but wouldn't risk a second visit. Flying too close to the sun would definitely result in her getting burned.
"You don't have to…in fact aside from his love of art, there was one more thing that Dante loved…the paranormal and occult."
"….?"