A Ghoul's Guide to Love and Murder

  She began haunting the Commons shortly after she tripped down the stairs of the apartment building and snapped her neck. Initially, she stuck to her former apartment, sending the new tenant screaming in terror on his first night there. Five other tenants had come and gone since then, and Mrs. Ashworth had given up trying to rent out Apartment 4B in 2000. But then, about a decade later, Mrs. Grady figured out that she could travel easily through walls. She started checking out other apartments in the building, found the extra room appealing, and began to terrorize all the other tenants until they left too. One by one every renter moved out until the place was abandoned. Enough one-star reviews on the Internet—all with the notation that the place was haunted—had halted any prospective tenants from even applying.

  In desperation, Mrs. Ashworth had called us to tell us about the Commons, but she was also wary of our actual abilities. She tasked us with helping to rid two other apartments she owned of their spectral tenants (far tamer than Mrs. Grady), and based on that test she’d let us have a crack at the Commons.

  We’d passed her test with flying colors, of course, and she’d given us a key to the building. We entered that place on the first day, all confidence and bravado. Within a few hours, however, we’d realized this spook was playing for keeps.

  Mrs. Grady refused to cross over, and we’d no sooner chased her off the first floor than she’d moved up to the second. Then the third, and finally the fourth. We thought we had her cornered then, but she outsmarted us by heading back down to the first. The Commons had twenty-four apartments. They were large and spacious, with plenty of closet space. Lots of places for a spook to hide. The task quickly proved to be way bigger than we’d ever anticipated.

  So, we’d offered Mrs. Ashworth the only solution we could, which was a proposal to haul in several hundred pounds of magnetic spikes and drill them into the walls and floors of every single apartment and each of the central hallways. Our estimate had been nearly ten thousand dollars, and it was no surprise to us when Mrs. Ashworth balked. She’d told us that she’d have to think on it, but it’d been over a month, and she hadn’t gotten back to us, and no new tenants had moved in, so it was a pretty good assumption that Mrs. Grady still had free run of the Commons.

  So I considered Heath’s idea. And I liked it. The worst Mrs. Grady had ever physically done to one of us was to shove Heath into a wall, and me to the floor. She was a pushy bitch, that Mrs. Grady.

  Meanly, I thought Olivera could do with a little shoving. I’d probably enjoy watching it. “Yeah,” I said with a wide smile. “Seeing is believing, Detective. You don’t believe we’re actually dealing with the supernatural? Well, how’d you like to meet a spook up close and personal?”

  Her brow furrowed and I saw her move her hand subtly to the gun in her shoulder harness. “What’s the deal here?” she asked.

  “We know of an apartment building where there’s a very active ghost,” Heath said. “She’s basically harmless, but she doesn’t like visitors. We’re thinking that within a few minutes of making her acquaintance, you’ll be convinced we’re not making this stuff up.”

  “That sounds a lot like a setup,” she said.

  “Not at all,” I said sweetly, turning away for a moment to scribble Mrs. Ashworth’s name and number and the apartment building’s name and address onto a piece of paper. Handing it to Olivera, I said, “Make a few calls, Detective. This is the name of the owner of the apartment building, and that’s her phone number. Check her out. See that she’s legit and then meet us at the Commons in an hour.”

  With that, I motioned to Heath and we stepped out into the hallway, shut the door, and left Olivera to stand on the front mat, probably confused and frustrated.

  • • •

  Once we were in the car, Heath said, “What now?”

  “I have to get ahold of Gilley,” I said, tapping my iPhone. “I’ve got to tell him about Ayden and warn him about the portal.”

  “He’ll freak out about the portal,” Heath said.

  “I know, and I was against telling him about it last night, but now, after the Grim Widow’s attack on me and Ayden’s attack at the airport, we can’t not tell him, sweetie. It’ll leave him too vulnerable.”

  “He already knows about Oruç’s dagger,” Heath persisted. “Telling him more of the freak show is coming after him is only going to make him go all squirrelly on us, babe. He’ll pack a bag and get out of town faster than either of us can say ‘cupcake.’ And away from us he’ll really be vulnerable. Especially if Sy the Slayer was one of the spooks who came through the portal with Oruç.”

  I sat with that for a second before placing the call to Gilley. Heath was actually right. Keeping Gilley in the dark to a degree wasn’t a bad idea, for him or for those of us who had to deal with him when he got freaked-out and tried to flee. “Okay,” I relented with a sigh. “I’ll make that part subtle. But I’m still telling him about Ayden.”

  Heath made a motion for me to go for it and I placed the call. “Go for Gilley,” he said by way of answering his phone. He typically answered like that only when he was with someone he wanted to impress. I wondered where he was.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Hi, me,” he sang playfully. “Listen, I can’t talk right now, I’m with my dear friend Catherine-Cooper-Masters, and we’re just sitting down to some brunch, so, unless it’s an emergency . . .”

  “It’s an emergency.”

  There was a pause; then I heard Gilley’s muffled voice say, “Catherine, would you excuse me one teensy minute? M.J.’s having some sort of wardrobe crisis.” I didn’t hear her reply, but I did hear Gil say, “Girl, I know you know what I’m dealing with!”

  I could guess that Cat had made a mention of her sister’s wardrobe choices too. Abby and I weren’t fashionistas, but we sure as hell weren’t slobs either. I could’ve gotten all snotty with Gil about it, but I decided to pick my battles.

  “Okay, what’s up?” he said after a moment during which I assumed he’d removed himself from Cat’s presence. Wise, as I didn’t really want her brought into the drama we were currently dealing with.

  “Olivera was just at our condo.”

  “That hot detective lady?” Gil said. “What’d she want?”

  “Well, honey, I’m going to need you to brace yourself. It turns out that Ayden didn’t make the red-eye last night because he’d been attacked in the parking garage at the airport. He’s hurt pretty bad, from what I understand.”

  “Wait, what?” Gil gasped. “Start from the beginning.”

  I did, and told him everything that Olivera had said to us about Ayden’s attack. “Ohmigod,” Gil said breathlessly. “Poor Ayden! Has anyone called the hospital?”

  “Not yet,” I confessed. “I was hoping you could do that and maybe see if his next of kin has been notified?”

  “I’m on it,” he said.

  Fearing he was about to hang up on me, I called out to him. “Gil, wait!”

  “What?”

  “I . . . I just wanted to check and make sure you’re wearing your gear.”

  “My gear?”

  “Yeah, you know, your vest and boots and stuff.”

  “I’m wearing khakis a white shirt and a blue blazer, M.J. What one wears in the springtime for brunch with Catherine-Cooper-Masters.”

  With effort, I kept my voice light. “I’ll bet you look gorgeous.” (When in doubt, go with flattery.)

  There was a pause during which I imagined Gil looking down at himself. “Well, duh,” he said.

  “And I hate to ruin what must be a fantastic look for you, but maybe you could humor me and put a couple of magnets in your pockets.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Oruç’s dagger is still out there somewhere, and we did have that attack last night.”

  “The blanket?”

  “Yes.”
r />   There was another pause. “You think Oruç’s demon could come after me?”

  “Well,” I said quickly, “it’s not likely. I’m pretty sure he’s still focused on me and Heath, but it wouldn’t hurt anything to be extra, extra cautious, you know?”

  Gilley sighed. “Fine. I’ll stop by the office after brunch and pick up some magnets. Is Doc there?”

  I did a face palm and said, “Yes. And I forgot to call Teeko. Dammit!”

  “Well, reach out to her after you hang up with me, and tell her I’m bringing the bird to her around two o’clock. I’ll call the hospital and get the deets on Ayden right now and text you what I find out.”

  “Thanks, honey,” I said with relief. Sometimes Gilley really came through for me, and I had another little pang of sadness thinking that we wouldn’t get to see each other every day.

  After clicking off with Gilley, I took a look around and saw that Heath had driven us to one of my favorite Thai restaurants. Realizing again how famished I was, I beamed a smile at him. “You’re the best husband slash father-to-be ever!”

  He put a hand on my cheek and leaned in for a kiss. “I’ll always take care of you, babe.”

  We grabbed our lunch to go and headed over to Mrs. Ashworth’s apartment building to see if Olivera would make an appearance. “How’re we getting in if she does show up?” I asked in between bites of my red curry dish with tofu. “Do we call Mrs. Ashworth?”

  Heath smiled slyly. “I never gave her back the keys,” he said. Reaching over my legs, he opened up the glove box and pulled out a set of keys I recognized. One was to the side entrance; the other was a master to all the apartments.

  “Thief.”

  “She can have her keys back anytime she remembers to ask for them,” Heath said.

  “Why’d you keep them, anyway?”

  Heath leaned forward to look up at the four-story apartment building. “I guess it’s always bothered me that we couldn’t convince old Gertrude to move across to the other side. I think I was trying to figure out a way to get through to her.”

  “Honey,” I said, “there’s no getting through to full-on crazy. Gertrude Grady was mentally ill in life, and she carries that in death too.”

  “Only for as long as she remains stuck here, Em.”

  “True,” I agreed. There’s no crazy in heaven, thank God. “But we’d still have to be able to get through to her enough to convince her to go to the light, and we tried and tried that and she wasn’t having any of it.”

  “I kinda feel sad for her,” Heath said, his gaze trained on the fourth floor of the apartment building.

  “Yeah, I know, you big softie. But if she won’t listen, then I don’t know what we can do to get her to leave.”

  “Me neither,” Heath said. “Which is why I kept the keys. If I ever find a new technique or something that might work, I want to come back here and try again.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But let’s not tell Olivera, if she makes it over here, that technically, we’ll be trespassing.”

  “I won’t if you won’t,” Heath said with a wink. “She probably won’t show anyway. She’s too suspicious of us.”

  “And yet, this address is in the middle of a nice part of town, with plenty of foot traffic. She’s got to know that if we wanted to cause her trouble, we sure wouldn’t do it here.”

  “Let’s hope she knows that,” Heath said.

  We ate silently for a bit and then my cell rang. “Gil,” I said, picking up the call. “What’d you find out?”

  “Ayden just went into surgery,” he said, getting straight to the point. “He had a punctured lung and they had to wait to inflate it again before proceeding with the surgery to close the wound from his rib.”

  I made a face. That sounded terrible. “So he’s hurt really bad, huh?”

  “No, actually. Other than the punctured lung, a concussion, a busted ankle, and several cracked ribs, he’s not doing too bad.”

  I made another face. “Yeah, other than a broken body, he’s in great shape.”

  “M.J.,” Gil said. “He’s not dying. He’s expected to make a full recovery. It’ll just take time.”

  “How’d you find all this out?” I asked.

  “I pretended to be his brother. They ask you a few security questions to make sure you’re family, but lucky me, with my mad typing skills, I have access to all of Ayden’s personal information, like his birthday and his address and stuff. The nurse totally bought it. Anyway, the bummer is that, according to her, Ayden didn’t see his attacker. She said the cops were in with him for almost an hour, and he couldn’t give them a description of the guy because the first blow was a crack to the head. He says he blacked out and doesn’t remember getting all the other injuries.”

  “That’s a small blessing, I guess,” I said.

  “Yeah, in a way, but without a description, the cops have nothing to go on.”

  “When will we be able to talk to him?” I asked next.

  “Hopefully tomorrow. I know you’re worried about him, but his nurse assured me that his surgery was pretty routine and that he should be able to take visitors and phone calls starting tomorrow.”

  I relaxed a little. I’d been very worried about Ayden. “Okay, Gil. Keep me posted if you hear anything else.”

  “Will do. Now call Teeko and let her know I’m bringing Doc over.”

  After hanging up with Gil, I called Teeks, who was on her way out the door for an appointment, but luckily she was more than happy to take my bird for a few days and told me that she’d inform the doorman to let Gilley in with the bird when he came over.

  After that, I relayed all the details to Heath, who said, “When are you gonna tell Gil and Teeks that we’re pregnant?”

  I offered Heath an odd look. It always sounded weird to me when expectant fathers offered up the “We’re pregnant” thing. Heath wasn’t going to get fat, have swollen ankles and raging hormones, and pop a watermelon out of his vajajay.

  “What?” he said as I continued to furrow my brow at him.

  “Are we really pregnant, honey?”

  Color tinged his cheeks. “I thought that’s what you were supposed to say.”

  “I think it’s okay to say that your wife is pregnant, and you’re the supportive, understanding, ice-cream-with-a-side-of-pickles-fetching father-to-be.”

  Heath saluted. “Got it.” Then he added, “For the record, it sounded weird coming out of my mouth.”

  That made me laugh. “Well, now that we’ve cleared that up . . .” And then I sat up in the seat. “Well, would you look at that?”

  “What?”

  I pointed across the street and down a row of cars. “Olivera just showed up.”

  “Huh,” Heath said. “I didn’t think she’d come.”

  I reached for the door handle. “She has enough curiosity and skepticism to be a pain in the ass,” I muttered. Like I said, I’ve had to convince a lot of detectives that paranormal doesn’t mean fake—it simply means “other than” or “beyond” normal.

  We reached Olivera just as she stopped in front of the apartment building, hands on hips, assessing it from the sidewalk. “Good to see you, Detective,” Heath said cordially.

  It could’ve been my imagination, but I swear she jumped a little at the sound of his voice. “I spoke to the owner,” she said. “She said it’d be okay if we checked out the place as long as you two accompany me, which I think is a little weird.”

  I snuck a meaningful look at Heath and said, “This way, Detective.”

  Leading the way inside, I headed straight for the stairs. The elevator was always iffy, and I’d long wondered if Gertrude had anything to do with that—I suspected she did.

  We hoofed it up to the fourth floor, and I paused on the landing, waiting to feel anything out of the ordinary with my intuitive feelers.
A moment later Heath placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “I doubt we’re gonna pick up anything with all this armor.”

  Looking down at myself, I realized how right he was. There was no way anything was coming out of the woodwork while we were wearing so much protection. “What do we do?” I asked him. “I mean, the point of all this is to show the detective that we’re for real, right? But if we take off our protective gear, then we’ll be vulnerable.”

  “Only to Gertrude,” he said with a shrug. “And she’s a crazy bitch, but she’s not gong to kill anyone.”

  He began to shrug out of his jacket and peel off his boots, and I started to follow suit when he said, “Why don’t you keep your stuff on. I can escort the detective around the apartments. You can stay here where I know the two of you are safe from harm.”

  I chuckled. “Are you going to be this protective my entire pregnancy?”

  Heath looked me in the eyes and said, “Count on it.”

  “Did I hear you right?” Olivera suddenly asked. “You’re pregnant, Mrs. Whitefeather?”

  I turned to her and noticed she was studying me again with those same calculating eyes that hadn’t let up their suspicion for even a minute since we’d met. “I am,” I said. “We just found out this morning.”

  She focused her next comment on Heath. “I used to work a beat, and the worst domestic abuse cases were always when the wife or girlfriend was pregnant. There’s something about a pregnancy that seems to put men on edge.”

  She’d said that so casually, you might’ve thought she was merely making small talk, but given the bruises on my neck and where she clearly suspected they’d come from, it was very hard not to spit something mean at her in reply. I did my best to keep my voice level when I said, “I understand your concern, and I know your heart is in the right place, but Heath didn’t hurt me, Detective. He’d never hurt me, but you’re right about the bruising on my neck. I was attacked by something that would blow your mind if you knew how very real it was. We’ll save those details for later. Right now, I’d like you to meet Gertrude. She seems most unhappy to meet you.”