The Ghost Who Ate Grits

by Amy Boyles

  I was not an idiot.

  I toed my shoes off and gracefully complied with the free lap waiting for me. He settled the glass on the table and kneaded my feet gently.

  I closed my eyes and allowed a tiny moan of pleasure to escape my lips. “You pamper me.”

  “Some girls deserve to be pampered.”

  I peeked out from under a closed lid. “And you’re saying I do?”

  Roan smiled wickedly. “Absolutely.”

  Roan Storm was deliciously tall, built like a professional lumberjack with strong shoulders, a tapered waist and long arms. His dark brown hair was generally ruffled at the crown, which gave him a boyish look even though his tongue was sharper than a dagger.

  In a good way. Not in an intimate one. Not at all.

  “You know,” I said, “we could take this to the bedroom.”

  He smirked. “And miss seeing how your tongue hangs out when I massage you? No chance.”

  I kicked him.

  “Ouch.” His fingers tightened on my foot. “One day you’ll thank me that we’re taking things so slowly.”

  “There’s not something physically wrong with you, is there? Like you don’t have a baboon’s body from the waist down, do you?”

  He tipped his head back, and a barrel laugh rumbled from his chest. “No, but I’ll have to remember that one. A baboon’s lower half. You think so much of me.”

  I hitched a shoulder. “Better that than the alternative.”

  “Which is?”

  “You’re just not that into me.”

  In one swift motion Roan dropped my feet and pulled me over until I straddled his waist. His palm slid to cup my head, and when he dragged his lips to mine, I didn’t complain.

  Yeah. That kiss was hot. It tasted of wine and the bread from dinner. Roan’s lips drank until I had nothing left to give.

  Kidding. I always had more to give, especially when it came to Roan.

  When we parted, he stroked my chin. His dark eyes sparkled; his lips were tinged with saliva. I wiped it away with the pad of my thumb.

  “Promise you will never doubt my feelings for you.”

  My stomach squirmed. There was literally only one answer for this, and it wasn’t no. No matter how I felt, there was one choice.

  “Okay.” It came out wimpy.

  “That was completely believable.”

  “So it wasn’t? Is that what you’re saying?”

  The flash of anger in Roan’s eyes made my chest tighten. He shook his head. “Why do we have to move at lightning speed to be intimate? I want to savor every minute with you, Blissful Breneaux. Once we rush it, we rush it and there’s nowhere else to go. I want there to be a galaxy to explore.”

  “Are you calling me fat?”

  “I might break up with you if you keep this up.”

  I gasped. “Don’t you dare. I’ll haunt you.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “Hug me and squeeze me and call me George?”

  His jaw clenched. Roan tugged me down until our foreheads kissed. “I want to savor you like a wine at peak. I want to know where to touch you. How my touch affects you.”

  His finger traced the line of muscle in my forearm. Flames licked my skin under his touch. I shivered.

  “Why do you have to make jokes?” he mused.

  “Because it’s easier than facing the truth.”

  He tipped his head to rest on the back of the couch. “Ah. The evil truth. Feelings can be such pests, can’t they?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Only where you’re concerned.” I untangled myself from him and slumped onto the couch.

  Roan ran his fingers through his hair and rested his elbow on the armrest. “See? I don’t get that. I don’t understand what’s so scary about me other than the fact that I’m a giant compared to you and you have a fear I might eat you for breakfast.”

  “I thought I was big enough to be considered dinner.”

  “No. You’re a breakfast snack bar, if anything.”

  We stared at each other until we cracked into laughter. “Oh, Blissful,” Roan said. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “I thought you already asked that question.”

  He scowled. “What I mean is—what am I going to do with me being in love with you?”

  I swallowed a giant knot in the back of my throat. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I went temporarily deaf. It’s a condition. Only afflicts me when people say emotionally charged things about me.”

  He coughed into his fist. “Bull crap.” Roan extended his free hand and entwined his fingers in mine. “I said just what you think.” He pivoted his face until both eyes were fixed solidly on me.

  “Yes, I love you. I’ll admit it. I’m probably an idiot for feeling it, but you’re something else, Bliss. I’m not afraid to tell you what I think. Though I have to admit you might chop me off at the knees because of it, I’m still going to tell you.”

  He shifted his body until it aligned with mine. Roan cupped my face in his hands. “You don’t have to tell me. I don’t care.”

  “You don’t care what I think? That’s rich.”

  “You know what I mean.” His lips grazed mine.

  I curled my hands around his wrists. “Why don’t you care?”

  His words came between kisses. “For one thing, you love me, too.”

  I pulled back. “Wait a minute. What gives you that idea?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I’m not looking.”

  Mental note to self—do not sneak lovey-dovey glances at Roan anymore. “I’ve never done that in my life.”

  He barked a laugh. “You’re kidding, right? Okay, don’t admit it. Secondly, you haven’t run for the door since I admitted it. Knowing you—and I’m pretty sure I do—if I was wrong, you would’ve already been out the front door, down the steps and into your Land Cruiser within five seconds.”

  “Party pooper,” I said bitterly. “You think you know so much?”

  He shrugged. “I think I know a little. Listen, I only told you that so you’d understand. I’m taking my time with you because of how I feel.” He raised a palm to stop an argument from tumbling out of my mouth. “I’m not asking you to say the same thing. I don’t care. Sooner or later you will. When it happens, I’m pretty sure I’ll have to call an ambulance because the very acceptance of those feelings will give you a heart attack.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Needless to say, I’m not rushing it. Take your time. Explore your feelings. We’ll do whatever you want. But I’m not sleeping with you. I’m not a trophy for you to win.”

  I scoffed. “I’ve never said that.”

  He kissed me again. “You didn’t have to. The way you want to rush suggests it.”

  I scowled. “I know you’re not a trophy.”

  He took my hand, turned the palm over and brushed his lips against the inside of my wrist. “Prove it.”

  I leaned away. “Fine. I’ll prove it. I will gladly just so you know I think of you as more than a hunk of meat.”

  His eyes widened. “I hadn’t even called myself that.”

  “Just doing it for you. I mean, you might as well have. That’s what you think I think of you.”

  Roan’s hands flared. “Whoa. When did I ever say you think I’m a piece of meat?”

  “I think you’re a trophy. What’s the difference?” I tipped my hands like scales. “Meat on one side. Trophy on the other. Who’s going to win?”

  He rubbed his face. “You can be really difficult to talk to about sensitive things.”

  “I’m not sensitive.”

  “Right.” Roan rose and gulped down his wine. “Are you ready for me to walk you out?”

  “Are you kicking me out?” Now I was fighting mad. First he tells me that I think he’s a trophy—I mean, the nerve of this guy thinking he knows my innermost thou
ghts. It doesn’t matter that he might actually be right about the whole rushing thing. The point was that I didn’t want him to know I had issues and that I thought rushing it might be the best way to go.

  He didn’t need to know my hang-ups. Heck, I didn’t know his. Why was I so easy to read?

  It annoyed me.

  Roan stood, eyes wide like I was a panther about to jump on him. He hadn’t bothered to answer my question, so I repeated it.

  “Is our date over? Are you kicking me out?”

  He shook his head. “No. No, I’m definitely not. Don’t let your mind start wandering where it shouldn’t. It just seemed that our conversation had hit a bump.”

  “Right. Because I think you’re a piece of meat.”

  “I never said that.” He rested his hands on his hips and tapped his fingers against his belt.

  “You are agitated.”

  “You think? A conversation that was supposed to put you at ease exploded in my face.”

  “I don’t see any pie.”

  He cocked his head in confusion.

  “If something was going to explode,” I explained, “it should be a pie, not a conversation.”

  “Well, it must be invisible because I’m pretty sure I’m wearing it.”

  We stared at each other until we laughed. Roan sank back to the couch, and I wrapped my arms around his waist.

  “I don’t think you’re a trophy.”

  He stiffly ran a hand down my back. “Do we have to keep talking about this?”

  “No.” I squeezed harder, and Roan pulled me into an embrace.

  He leaned back and knuckled hair from my neck. “Did I, daresay, hurt your feelings?”

  “No,” I quipped.

  He nibbled a spot on my jaw. “Promise?”

  I shivered. “Okay, maybe a little, but maybe you’re right. Maybe I rush things and think about things the wrong way so that I don’t have to face the emotional impact of a situation.”

  “Wow. Deep.”

  I punched his arm. “I’m being serious.”

  He raised his hands in defeat. “So am I. Sorry. Sometimes things just come out wrong. But what you said is great because I’m impressed that I was right.”

  I punched him again.

  He glanced down at his arm. “I’m going to bruise.”

  “I hope so.”

  He laughed and tugged me to him. “Oh, Blissful. I’m so glad you’re in my life.”

  I opened my mouth to say the same thing when my phone buzzed from my purse. There were only two people who ever called me—Ruth or Alice—and usually it was about work.

  They never called after eight, and since it was almost nine at night, I worried an emergency had happened.

  I untangled from Roan. “I need to get that.” I picked up my purse, which I’d left dangling over a chair, and sorted through it until I found my phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Blissful!”

  “Hey, Ruth. What’s going on?”

  “I hope I didn’t disturb you.”

  I shot a smile to Roan. “You didn’t.”

  “Oh, I did. Didn’t I? Are you on a date? I hope you’re not on a date. I just hate to disturb you.”

  I sighed. “Really, it’s fine. What’s up?”

  “We just got a call.”

  I couldn’t keep the worry lines from digging into my forehead. “This late?”

  “They called the emergency number.”

  “Emergency number? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “It’s my number.” Alice was apparently on the call as well.

  “Alice, stop talking,” Ruth snapped. “You’ll confuse Bliss.”

  “You won’t confuse me. Alice can talk.” I raked my fingers through my hair. “Okay. So someone called the emergency line. What’s going on?”

  Ruth’s heavy breathing filled the line. “Blissful, these folks sounded scared.”

  I hitched a shoulder. “They all sound scared. That’s what happens when someone lives in a haunted house.”

  “It was more than that. They sounded like they’d done everything and were now coming to us.”

  “Again there’s nothing unusual about that. That’s how everyone is when they make the call. We’re the last hope.”

  “There was something different in these people,” Alice said.

  “How so?” I shot Roan a smile. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Why couldn’t this have waited until tomorrow morning?

  “They said”—Ruth inhaled deeply—“that the ghost had shown them an image of you, Blissful.”

  My heart stopped. “What?”

  Alice cut in. “That’s what they said. That the ghost showed them a picture of you.”

  “That makes no sense.” Was I supposed to be scared? Worried?

  Ruth spoke up. “Then the spirit asked for you, Bliss. The spirit said you need to come.”

  “When?” I wasn’t sure I liked being called by spirits.

  “Now,” Ruth said. “The spirit wanted to see you right away.”

  Well, I guess my date was over after all.

  THREE

  If ever I had seen a haunted house, this was it. By far this was it. The home looked like someone had plucked the Addams family’s house from wherever it currently resided and dropped it outside of Haunted Hollow.

  Here was the thing—Ruth, Alice and I were committed to cleaning up the bad ghosts in Haunted Hollow—those who hurt people or made their lives generally unbearable.

  Most of the spirits in town were happy and kind. They didn’t harm folks. But some of the ghosts who lived in houses—now they were a different story.

  A horse of a different color, as it were.

  The three of us approached slowly. Alice clutched her handbag as if the thing were an AK-47, which it most certainly was not, nor were any weapons hidden inside.

  I mean, what good was a gun against a spirit?

  “I wish you’d let us bring the equipment,” Alice bemoaned.

  I zipped up my jacket. “You know how I feel about equipment on the first run. We might be able to talk to the spirit, see if it wants to glide on over to the other side. We might not need the equipment.”

  Besides—and I’d never told them this—the equipment was actually on loan from the Ghost Team. Technically I was supposed to be using it to help catch Lucky Strike, a big bad I’d actually assisted to the light a while back.

  My old boss didn’t know that, though. That’s how I wanted to keep things. Which also meant I had to keep Anita Tucker, director of the Ghost Team, dangling on my hook while I pretended to be searching for Lucky.

  No problem. I could do this sort of thing in my sleep.

  Ruth inhaled a whiff of air. “I don’t like it.”

  “Smell funny to you?” Alice said.

  “It does.” Ruth dipped her head toward the home. “Like evil.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It doesn’t smell evil. Evil doesn’t have a scent, y’all.”

  Ruth spit on the ground. “It does, and that there house has it.”

  Alice pushed her Coke-bottle glasses up her nose. “I can smell it too. Sort of like coffee and anger.”

  I palmed my forehead. Heck, I nearly slapped myself in the head. This was unbelievable. These women were standing here telling me that evil had a stench.

  “Y’all, I’ve been in plenty of haunted locations, and evil doesn’t smell. It might emit a feeling, usually described as oppressive, but a scent? No.”

  “I smell dog doo,” Alice said. “That could be seen as evil.”

  Ruth wagged a finger in approval. “I think you’re on to something there, Alice. The smell of poop goes hand in hand with evil.”

  “Y’all, the smell of poop doesn’t go with evil. I’ve never been to a house that smelled of number two.” I raised a hand. “Wait. Let me take that back. There was a crazy cat lady who had half a dozen litter boxes strewn all over the place. Now that—that was evil. Having to pick over them. If e
ver there was a scent of evil, six litter boxes will do it. But this, it just smells like the septic needs to be pumped.”

  Ruth’s eyes narrowed. “Evil. Mark my words.”

  “I’ll tattoo your words on my butt if you turn out to be right.” I hooked my hands through each woman’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  I had to drag them before they decided the stench of evil was too much and ran for the hills.

  I rang the doorbell. Deep chimes echoed through the house, rising and falling in an eerie gothic sound reminiscent of Guns N’ Roses “Welcome to the Jungle.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  I started to wonder if someone was pulling my leg. The stench, the obviously haunted looking house and then the eighties hair band song was almost too much.

  “What is it?” Alice whispered. “Does the house sound evil, too?”

  “Shh,” Ruth snapped. “Someone’s coming.”

  The door swung open, and standing in the frame was a tall, lithe woman who looked like she’d applied makeup in the middle of the night just to greet visitors. Beside her stood a dark-complected man with a receding hairline.

  “Are you the Ghostbusters?” The tension in his voice was so strong that if it had been a stick, it would’ve been able to poke through steel.

  “We’re not actually called that for legal reasons.” He stared at me, waiting for me to finish. “Um. Well. Technically we’re called Southern Ghost Wranglers.”

  “You could be called Duke and Hazzard for all I care,” the woman said. “Come in. We need your help.”

  She grabbed my arms and dragged me across the threshold. “I’m Brownie and this is my husband, Wallace.”

  “The Jarvises,” Ruth informed me.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said casually.

  My boot heels clacked atop the wooden parquet floor. I absorbed the house’s bones quickly. Floral wallpaper lined the skin of the foyer. Antique sitting chairs sat before a massive fireplace. A sweeping staircase polished to gleaming swept down from the second floor.

  Anyone walking down it would make a grand entrance whether they wanted to or not. Off to the right and left were open doorways. In one room sat a baby grand piano, and the other looked like a family room.