Give Up the Ghost
Page 27
Chapter One
You’d think I’d recognize murder when I saw it, but I didn’t always put two and two together quickly enough.
Like that job to retrieve an ill-conceived contract from a downtown Toronto office building. After hours, no one around, and I heard a woman’s passionate cry of “Do me harder, cowboy!” It wasn’t until after I stuck my ghostly head through the office door that I clued in what it meant: my target and his secretary getting their freak on. Twenty years later and I still couldn’t scrub their pony play from my brain.
Or when, on a bright afternoon in 1933, I’d blithely accepted my lover’s invitation for a daylight meeting—something he’d never asked for before. My only thought was that I’d get extra, unexpected time with Michael.
In hindsight, I should have expected the gun.
Murder was the last thing I thought I’d witness in the home of Meredith Montague, an actor and one of Toronto’s elite. The entire Forest Hill mansion dripped elegance, with pale neutral colors accented with white furniture and tons of natural light from giant windows.
The study in particular was a beautiful, serene space...except for the figures on the floor.
I remained frozen behind Meredith’s rolltop desk, despite the fact that neither figure would see me. I was invisible, incorporeal, one step removed from the living world, as insubstantial as a ghost. Hell, I was a ghost—just one who had a living body most of the time.
The bigger figure was on top of the smaller one—and, well, the first place my brain went was sex. Duh. Except...the language of loving wasn’t there. Their bodies didn’t undulate. They didn’t flow. There was no familiar rhythm, no distinctive butt-thrusts, no grunts of exertion, nothing. Only a man on top of a woman, though I couldn’t be sure. When I was in my ghost form on the otherplane, living beings seemed shrouded in cotton and fuzz, indistinct and detailless. But I could tell he was straddling her, his hands on either side of her head, his arms braced...
Wait—his hands weren’t on either side of her head. They were around her neck.
I never proclaimed myself to be a hero or even a good guy. For fuck’s sake, I sneaked into people’s private spaces as a ghost to “recover” items for interested parties—heirlooms my clients wanted back, contracts they shouldn’t have signed, or, occasionally, information they could use for leverage. I wasn’t ashamed of it. My abilities were a tool, and anyone else would use them the same way. On top of that, I found that most of my targets had done something not-so-nice to put them on the radar of the folks who knew how to acquire my services.
All that aside, deep down I’d thought that if I was ever faced with a life-or-death situation, I’d find some tiny thread of heroism rooted somewhere inside my psyche and act.
But fear—shock—rooted me to the spot. Logic said nothing could hurt me. They couldn’t see me, couldn’t feel me—other than a cold breeze if I got too close—and they damn sure couldn’t touch me. But I remembered dying. I remembered the disbelief, the fear and the pain before the shock of nothing.
That’s what she’s feeling. That thought broke the bonds holding me, and I lurched upward with a vague notion I’d grab something, anything, to use as a weapon—
Except it was too late. The woman’s legs kicked once more and she went limp. I held my breath, waiting for her to move again, but the life faded from her, peeling away the obscuring layers of the otherplane to reveal her features as she became as dead and inanimate as the furniture surrounding us.
Long golden hair. Iconic red cat-eye glasses sitting askew over dull, lifeless blue eyes. A fifties-style white blouse with tiny red polka dots and red stitching, one button popped at her neck.
My target—Meredith Montague.
I’d never been around someone at the moment of their death, so I had no idea if her spirit would join me on the otherplane. I didn’t know if I wanted that or not, to be honest. There should be something more than her body on the ground, as inert as the chair beside her, but what would I say? I didn’t want to be the one to explain to her that her life was over. But there was no mystical light and no indication that Meredith’s soul would come shake my hand on its way to her final destination.
The man sat back on his heels, his hands resting on his thighs, as he looked at the body on the floor. Then he got up. I watched him warily, shrinking back as he got close. His shape was...weird. On the otherplane, most people’s figures were muted and obscured, as though they were wrapped in layers and layers of translucent gauze.
But this man...his figure was the dark, slate gray of an impending storm. It had jagged edges, as though a thousand razors extended from his clothes and skin. An aura of danger surrounded him—not an actual, visual aura, since even in the otherplane I had no ability to see that kind of thing. It was more of a sense. A warning that this was someone I did not want to mess with, a warning that went beyond what I’d witnessed.
He gave no indication he saw me as he made his way to the side bar, looked out over the grounds lit in the late afternoon sunshine for a moment, and then poured himself a drink.
With a dead body on the floor behind him, he poured himself a drink.
In some ways, the casualness was more horrifying than the murder. I mean, I could be callous and self-centered, but not on the level of ignoring a dead body in the room. But the murderer—the monster—sipped his drink slowly. As though he had the right to be there.
I shook with the need to leave, to go, to pretend the past hour hadn’t happened. Rising from where I was hunched behind the desk, I started for the wall with the big window overlooking the gardens—only to freeze as I realized the murderer’s eyes were locked on me.
They were blacker than black, fathomless pits that would have probably looked like normal, everyday human eyes were I not in the otherplane. But they sent a chill racing through me—fear, horror, wrongness. I begged my feet to move, and this time, they did. I raced through the wall, out of the house, and away, welcoming the numbness that spread through my brain and body.
I managed to make it a block away before I threw up.
Don’t miss Not Dead Yet by Jenn Burke.
Available now wherever Carina Press ebooks are sold.
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Copyright © 2019 by Jennifer R.L. Burke
Acknowledgments
Writing is a solitary endeavor, except when it’s not. The support of a community of writers and readers is essential to keeping this writer sane!
Thank you to my beta readers, j. leigh bailey and Hannah Varacalli, for providing fantastic and much-needed feedback. And j., your regular sprint nights were invaluable.
Thank you to Annie B. for being a huge cheerleader even when she hadn’t yet read the first book in the series! Your enthusiasm never fails to make me smile.
Thank you (always!) to Kelly Jensen, who provides whatever encouragement and support I need.
Deb Nemeth, your edits regularly challenge me, and I know I’m a better writer because of it. Thank you!
To the Carina Press team, thank you for your quick responses to my burning question of the day (whatever it happens to be!) and your unwavering support.
And, per usual, my family gets mentioned last...because they are the best thing in my life. Thank you for understanding when deadlines force me to disappear into my office. I’m able to live my dream because of you. Love you all.
Also available from Jenn Burke
and Carina Press
The Not Dead Yet series
Not Dead Yet
Give Up the Ghost
And stay tuned for Graveyard Shift, the next book
in the Not Dead Yet series from Jenn Burke,
coming November 2019
The Chaos Station series
by Jenn Burke and Kelly Jensen
Suggested reading order
Chaos Station
Lone
ly Shore
Skip Trace
Inversion Point
Phase Shift
Also available from Jenn Burke
The Gryphon King’s Consort
Her Sexy Sentinel
About the Author
Jenn Burke has loved out-of-this-world romance since she first read about heroes and heroines kicking butt and falling in love as a preteen. Now that she’s an author, she couldn’t be happier to bring adventure, romance, and sexy times to her readers.
She’s been called a pocket-sized and puntastic Canadian on social media, and she’ll happily own that label. Jenn lives just outside of Ottawa, Ontario, with her husband and two kids, plus two dogs named after video game characters...because her geekiness knows no bounds.
Website: http://www.jennburke.com
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ISBN-13: 9781488036262
Give Up the Ghost
Copyright © 2019 by Jennifer R.L. Burke
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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