by Misty Simon
“At least let me look at your hand. I realize it’s not a paw or claw, so not exactly my specialty, but I can tell if a human hand is broken the same as any bone at the vet clinic.”
He knelt in front of her chair, and she let him. She wasn’t being stubborn. Honestly, she was just flabbergasted as to why the book had hurt her. She wasn’t lying when she said that had never happened before. Not even down the history of previous owners had she heard of the book being anything but helpful and friendly.
“I was trying to see if there was anyone out who shouldn’t be, and the book would not let me get the page to turn.” She took the pince-nez from the bridge of her nose and used her good hand to rub the skin between her eyebrows. A headache was brewing behind her eyes. From past experience she knew it was going to come out full-fledged at any minute. And she still had to figure out what the book was hiding from her.
“That doesn’t answer why your hand was stuck in a book.”
“Well, technically it does. I said it wouldn’t let me see what I needed to see.”
“And who did you call?”
“Someone who could help me get the book to let me go.” Oh, yeah, that headache was coming on. She winced and rubbed her temple.
Becker was behind her in an instant, rubbing her neck and her shoulders. The headache that was blooming like a wild trellis of roses faded into nothing as she moaned. “God, that feels good.”
“Keep talking, and I won’t stop.”
His thumbs dug into the muscles right under her shoulder blades and, though it hurt, it was a special kind of heaven. She could feel the muscles loosening around the pressure that always built right there when she was stressed. And she was way stressed. More than she had been in years.
The book’s response to her told her this wasn’t some rogue running around loose she had to find but something from her very own property causing this chaos. None of the ghosts she had here would act like this, though. Hell, she didn’t even really know what this was. Two old people were missing, and their likenesses were carved into marble. She had a book that wouldn’t answer her, and her hand throbbed as if one of Becker’s patients had chomped down on her.
Her brain stopped for a moment and rewound, like a pencil in the toothy hole of a cassette tape. Were they really likenesses, though? The statues? Could they be the actual people turned into stone?
She gasped. Becker must have thought he hurt her because he immediately apologized.
“No, it wasn’t you,” she assured him, reaching out to grasp his hand on her shoulder. “It was a thought.”
“Care to share it?”
“This junkyard has been in my family for years. My dad collects the souls and brings them to me, and I keep them. The name of every ghost we’ve ever had goes in the big book, and I can tell if they’re where they’re supposed to be. Someone obviously is not where he or she is supposed to be. The only reason I can think of, the only reason for the book to refuse to tell me who that is, is that it’s been spelled or something to make sure I don’t find out. This tells me maybe that particular ghost is out causing mischief. I asked the book to tell me where anyone who could cut stone was. The first two were fine where they are, but the third I never got to see, and then the book tried to cut my hand off with a paper cut and pressure. So what does that mean?”
She bounced out of her chair, the muscles in her back bunching up again.
“I’ll say it again, like I did when you first told me about all this. It’s a good thing this wasn’t on your dating profile. Imagine the loonies you would have had banging on your door, wanting to ghostbust.”
She laughed helplessly, and he kissed her breathless.
****
Ten minutes later, she finally got her breath back. Sitting in the chair again, she contemplated what to do next.
“So let’s go back into the room and see if the book has calmed down enough to give you the answers you need.” He paced back and forth with his hands behind his back.
She would have preferred those hands on her shoulders again, but after that kiss the only thing bunched up was a hot pocket of lust sitting low in her stomach. Every other muscle in her body was relaxed. Her headache was gone. She was ready to take on the world…or at least whatever ghostly asshole was roaming her town and ruining a perfectly good Tuesday.
She rose from the chair and met him midstride in one of his turns. Kissing him was the most natural thing in the world, and she wanted to keep doing it for years to come.
“Okay, so we have to approach this gingerly. I have to wear the glasses, and before we get in there I have to tell you I tore off the corner of the page. I don’t know if that will help me find the page, since the book is so freaking old, but maybe it will at least get us into the right area.”
“I’m game.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his heart. “Thank you.”
“I still say it’s a good thing you didn’t put this on your dating profile. Think of how many amateur ghost-hunter guys would have been beating down your door.”
She snorted. “That’s exactly why I didn’t put it on there.”
He laughed, taking her hand in his. “Let’s get this done.”
Entering the room again gave her a chilled feeling on the back of her neck. The only way the book would have bitten her was if it had been tampered with. And who would have had the power to do that?
She was about to find out.
She walked up to the desk and sat down slowly, keeping her eyes focused on the book. How was she going to approach this?
She looked around the room for inspiration. The butter-yellow walls had been that color since she was five and her mother went on a painting binge. Every room had been given an overhaul. Colors and rugs and curtains, but the furniture always remained the same.
The French Louis-XV-period antique walnut canapé sofa settee from the 1700s had been the place she’d played and drawn pictures when her mom was working. Bernie, the earl of some place or other resided there and would sometimes come out and tell her what color she should use for the clouds. The Art Deco lamp in the corner spotlighted her homework, and Penny, who lived in it, always gave a helping hand when needed. And Chester inhabited the snuff box sitting on the end table. He was the biggest gossip in the entire junkyard, always in and out of the house, searching out clues and figuring out what was going on, sometimes even before the people who were involved knew what had happened.
“Okay, get ready.” She sat back in the chair without the glasses on.
“For what?” Becker sat on Bernie’s couch. She wasn’t about to tell him that the ghostly man was a relentless flirt regardless of gender.
“Just brace yourself.” She looked at the snuff box and took a big breath. Sometimes Chester would come when she called. Other times he was out and about until all hours of the morning and didn’t like to be bothered.
He’d just have to get over it this time.
“Chester, I need to talk to you.” She steepled her fingers under her chin, waiting. If he was out in the junkyard, then it might take a moment for the ghostly grapevine to work. It wasn’t like they had cell phones or walkie-talkies to signal each other.
“Have I met Chester before?”
“No, but give it a minute.” The weight of Becker’s gaze on her face made her want to turn and reassure him, but she was concentrating too hard on the snuff box to divide her attention.
“Chester,” she called again, after two painfully silent minutes crept by and Chester still wasn’t there. The grapevine moved a hell of a lot faster than this on a slow day. Where was he?
She hadn’t taken her eyes off the snuff box yet, so she saw the tiny shake it gave, twisting the doily beneath it. What the hell was that?
“Chester.” She looked helplessly at Becker, who was just staring at her with a doubtful frown and questions in his eyes.
Okay, she was going to have to produce something soon, or he’d really think she was
loony. Not just for wearing gloves made of netting and hair-spraying her permed bangs, or enjoying a good pair of legwarmers, but for saying she had something to show and then not being able to show it.
The box gave a little jump this time. Scooting out of her chair, she crept to the end table. Becker’s gaze followed her every step of the way. Something felt very wrong about this situation.
Taking the snuff box from the end table, she almost dropped it because it was hot like the metal roof on the barn out back in mid-July. She wrapped the edge of her off-the-shoulder T-shirt around it, which made the heat a little more tolerable, and pried the lid open. It didn’t want to budge at first, but she was not giving up.
Becker was probably rolling his eyes at her or growing more certain with every moment that she was an imbecile, but she could feel the vibrating energy inside the box. The only other time she’d ever felt that was when her father had brought in a ghost trapped in a metal lockbox. The poor ghost couldn’t get out because when his wife—who had been a witch, literally, and not one of the good ones—had killed him, she’d sealed him in the box to finish up the job. It had been almost a hundred years since his entrapment when they’d finally pried the thing open and wiped it with a cloth soaked in holy water to banish whatever she had done.
She didn’t have any holy water handy, and one quick glance at Becker told her not to ask him to go to the refrigerator to get it.
“Can you hand me the letter opener?” She wasn’t sure if he had heard her, since he didn’t move. “Please.”
That seemed to get him moving, though slowly. He handed her the letter opener from an arm’s length away instead of coming into her space.
It wasn’t the best thing, but certainly it wasn’t the worst, either. At least he hadn’t started running yet. It was one thing to know what she did, but he didn’t often see what all that entailed.
Keeping the box in one hand, which was getting pretty darn warm, she used the other to jimmy the letter opener under the rim of the hinged top. At first there was a lot of resistance, but she finally got it to stick, and she levered the thing with all her might.
The lid popped with an audible sound like a bell. A slight rushing sound filled the office, and a breath of wind stirred the hair at her temples and jangled the feather earring dangling almost to her shoulder. And then Chester, in a bowler hat and pinstriped suit, appeared, sitting right next to Becker.
“Mr. Becker, how nice to finally be able to meet you.” Chester’s booming voice filled the room, bouncing off the walls and settling around her ears.
Melanie sat back in her chair to get her breath back from all that exertion.
Chapter Five
Becker, who’d seen many of the ghosts around the house throughout the time they’d been together, had never really interacted with them. They waved to him or nodded at him but never had anything to do with him, exactly. This was actually his first confrontation with the dead.
“Your knuckles are turning white, Mr. Becker. The blood circulation is important to your hands when you’re doing surgery on those beautiful animals. You might want to unclench before you explode.”
A soft breath left Becker’s mouth as he loosened his grip. That soft breath turned into a soft laugh that got louder and louder until Mel was afraid she was going to have to get out Mrs. Jericho’s bottle of smelling salts.
But then all noise abruptly stopped. It was if the whole house held its breath, waiting to see what Becker would do.
“It’s nice to meet you too,” Becker said, leaning away from the ghostly apparition beside him.
“I won’t bite.”
Becker huffed out another laugh. “I don’t think that’s what I was afraid of.”
“I won’t slime you, either. You’ve been watching too many of those movies from the 1980s that Melanie tortures us with on Saturday nights.”
With his mouth hanging open, Becker looked baffled for a moment. “Ah, no, I wasn’t worrying about that either. I just have never spoken with a ghost, and while I’ve seen them around here, I haven’t exactly had long talks with anyone.”
“Why have you not introduced the man around?” Chester demanded of Mel, bracing his hands on his thick knees. He had been three hundred pounds when he was alive, and though he was now weightless, he still kept his girth in that pinstriped suit.
“It’s not exactly a thing that came up in the first months of dating. I was getting around to introducing. I’m lucky enough he stayed after he realized that he could see the ghosts. I was taking it a step at a time.”
Chester harrumphed and addressed Becker again. “Can I assume that you are a believer?”
“You can, not that it matters. We’re getting off topic. There’s something going on that Mel needs you for.”
She was desperate to find out if Chester had heard or seen anything about the book and maybe brainstorm ways to get it to open.
“All right, Chester. Enough chitchat. Why were you hiding in your box?”
He scoffed at her. “I would never hide in my box. Some schmuck stuck me in there and sealed me in. Thanks, by the way, for getting me out, doll.”
“Sure.” But that led to a whole new train of thought that she didn’t have time for. Who had done this? Was it the same person? Or ghost? Had someone been in her house? Were any of the other ghosts trapped in their possessions?
Her head spun with the possibilities, even though she really needed to address one thing at a time. If they could get the book to work again, she’d be able to ask if any of the other residents were in distress. Until then, she had to concentrate on getting the damn book to open in the first place and not try to bite her hand off again.
“Did someone come in here and do something to my book?” She had to be careful, because who knew what would trigger the book to slam shut again? She hadn’t even opened it yet to see if she could get the pages to come apart. Without this resource, though, she would be lost, and she couldn’t afford that.
“Not that I’m aware of. But there was a piece of gossip I kept meaning to tell you but couldn’t seem to find the time.”
“And that is?”
“Let me think.” He fingers rubbed his chin as he stared up at the ceiling.
She let that go on for a moment until she wanted to burst out of the chair. “Chester.”
“Hold on a minute there. Something’s holding my tongue. I can hear the words in my head, but I can’t get them out of my mouth.”
How the hell were they going to get around that? She sighed. There was a way, but introducing Becker to a ghost was probably enough for today. She didn’t know if she wanted to get into automatic writing. Auto writing was not exactly the most comfortable of things to do, plus it could be weird to watch.
“You can’t talk about it at all?” she asked.
“No. Even now my tongue is tingling as if someone has put a block on it.”
Mel sighed. They were going to have to do this the hard way.
“You might want to step out of the room, Becker. You can go get us some more coffee, if you don’t mind.”
He stared intently at her, enough to make her flinch. “I think I do mind. I want to know what’s going on here. I don’t feel safe letting you try whatever that mind of yours is clicking away about enough that there’s almost steam coming out of your ears.”
“Very astute observation, Mr. Becker.” Chester beamed at him. “I knew I would be able to tolerate you from your previous comings and goings, but I believe I might actually like you after that.”
“Uh, thanks, I think.”
“Now.” The ghost gripped his hands together between his knees and leaned forward. “Are you thinking of something specific, doll, or are we just going to do random things until we figure out the key to this lock?”
“There’s only one thing I can think of, but you might not want to do it.” She winced. Not every ghost was keen on possession. And those who hated it would never do it. The subject had never come up with Chester,
so she didn’t know how he was going to react. Not to mention how Becker was going to react, since he hadn’t moved a muscle after she’d asked him for coffee. She was going to ask him again, but he’d crossed his arms, settled more firmly back against the couch, and appeared to be welded to the thing. Okay, so he was staying no matter what. Well, then he was about to get an education like he had never thought possible.
“And that is?” Chester peered at her down the bridge of his nose.
“Auto-writing.”
He exploded off the couch to plant his hands on the front of the desk and lean over into her space. Becker was up right beside him.
“No,” they both said at the same time.
“It’s perfectly safe.”
“It violates your privacy,” Chester barked.
“I don’t know what the hell it is, but it doesn’t sound right if Chester doesn’t want to do it.”
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Mel prepared for battle with some of her best arguments. Instead what came out wasn’t weak, but it was true. “Look, Chester, I don’t know how long you’ve been locked in your box, but I have two stone statues out in the town square. Both naked, both old, and no explanation as to how they got there. Both possibly dead or dying. I need to do whatever it takes to save them. When I looked for who was where doing what, the book slammed on my hand, and I need to know the name. I need to get the book to work for me again, too, or we’ll all be screwed. Now. Please…”
Chester grumbled. He and Becker looked at each other with that universal expression of, “Women, what are you going to do with them?” In the end, though, Chester agreed to do it, and Becker didn’t ask what exactly they were doing. He did, however, refuse to leave the room, just in case something went wrong.
Mel chose the high-backed throne chair in the corner, which Mrs. Gobblett had inhabited before she’d chosen to go on to the next level, giving up her ghostliness to rest eternally.
Pulling a notebook toward her, she kept her pen in her left hand even though she was right-handed. She felt like at least some explanation might be in order before she zoned out to let Chester invade her body.