A Girl, a Guy, and a Ghost

by Patricia Mason

  Perhaps she could afford an addition to her collection of animal-figure shakers despite the fact she was close to losing her job. There was always unemployment insurance. She laughed when she saw a pair of cute skunks with smiling faces and porcelain flowers in their skunk hair. Oooh no, not skunks. Too many annoying connotations. But there were two darling puppy shakers she would consider.

  Giselle browsed the store’s collection of old books. She found an etiquette book from eighteen fifty-three and amused herself with the chapter about the recommended behavior of gentlemen bachelors and unmarried ladies.

  “‘A lady should never allow a gentleman to entertain her in his home without the presence of a chaperone,’” she read. That’s where she’d gone wrong. She’d allowed Ry to entertain her in his home alone. Although, Ry was clearly not a gentleman. And his mama had been a pretty effective chaperone this morning. She should have read this book before meeting Ry.

  “Margaret, look but don’t touch.” A man’s harsh voice issued the order from behind Giselle. She peeked over her shoulder, expecting to see a child being admonished. Instead, she saw a well-dressed and coiffed woman of at least fifty years. The woman’s hair had been dyed an unnatural dark brown and swept into an elegant chignon style. The woman wore large diamonds in her ears and a ring of at least four carats on her hand.

  Her graying husband, at about five foot six inches, was a bit taller than she and much older, but just as well turned out. He had a ruddy, bullying face. Although not fat, he had a close resemblance to a pig.

  The woman, Margaret, saw Giselle watching them. The woman blushed and turned her doe eyes downward.

  “Did you hear me, Margaret?” the man said with a belligerent and bullying tone.

  “Yes, Charles.”

  “You know how you are.”

  “Yes, Charles.”

  The doe eyes, now wounded, peered at Giselle again. She gave an embarrassed smile and a small shrug.

  Giselle turned back to the book, but she no longer saw the pages. The bully! Ordering his wife around like a toddler. The arrogance. Just like a man. He probably ordered his wife to stay like a dog. No doubt he had a Napoleon complex, brought on by an overbearing mother. The jerk. His poor wife. She seemed like such a lovely woman.

  “Margaret,” the man warned in a low voice, drawing Giselle’s attention back to the couple. She saw the woman remove the skunk shakers from a large pocket in her expensive pants suit and put them back on the shelf of the cabinet. The woman blushed.

  Omigod. Margaret was a klepto. And Giselle had assumed poor Charles was the villain. So much for assumptions. Had she made any other stupid assumptions this weekend?

  Giselle returned to the curio cabinet, removed the puppy shakers, and took them to the store counter. “I’d like to buy these shakers.”

  “Will there be anything else?” the store clerk asked.

  “Yes. Tell me about your ghost.”

  By the time Giselle finished at Estoria it was 3:10 p.m., and she had her ghost. Now she just had to prove it…and write an article. Things were looking up. And all without the help of Ry Leland. Oops, she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about him. From now on he would be known as “he who is unremembered”.

  Chapter Eleven

  Retail therapy worked wonders for Giselle’s frame of mind, but nothing compared to the mood elevator provided by the prospect of a ghost for her article. The owners of the antique shop agreed to allow Giselle to return with some monitoring equipment after closing in a few hours. A phone call later and she’d arranged for rental of the equipment. Everything was ready to go. Giselle felt revitalized, reenergized, reinvented and ready to conquer the world, or at least Savannah.

  Since she had already scheduled a meeting for later that night with suspect number one—the Vampire Lester—she decided that she might as well do some investigation of suspect number two this afternoon. Giselle would pay a visit to VICTIM headquarters, aka Kopeleski’s house.

  She decided to avoid the Drayton Street route as she walked to Kopeleski’s place, not wanting to revisit the scene of her abduction, not to mention her walk of shame. No sense in jeopardizing her good mood by inviting more shouted insulting appellations by someone who might have seen her walking there earlier. No, it was back to Rational Angel Giselle. Wanton Vixen Giselle was in firm lockdown and wouldn’t be appearing again anytime soon. No reminders of the angel’s earlier fall from grace were necessary.

  Instead, she proceeded down Abercorn Street, past a beautiful pale cream-colored cathedral with blue-green spires and entered a square with an egret-themed fountain at its center. Perhaps if she verified the ghost tonight and finished the article tomorrow, she could use Monday for sightseeing and more retail therapy.

  Giselle stopped at the corner of Kopeleski’s street. She avoided acknowledging the presence of that other house, the house that belonged to “he who is unremembered”. She focused on VICTIM headquarters. The house bore no outward sign of its affiliation with the group. There was no sign that a wizard lived inside. No large billboard proclaiming, I tried to kill Giselle Hunter. But then again that would have been too much to ask.

  She quickly spotted Kopeleski positioned under the parlor window. He held a long metal contraption—metal detector—in front of him with both hands in a big-game fishing stance. The wizard’s hair sprang from his scalp, a kinky almost living thing around his head. No metrosexual barrette today. He wore a red brocade smoking jacket and sneakers. Ick. Was he nude under that jacket? No. Thankfully, he had on white running shorts just a shade whiter than his pale chickenlike legs.

  Giselle pulled a hat and dark sunglasses from her purse. Not a sophisticated disguise, but maybe covering her mop of red curls would keep Kopeleski from going berserk before she could even get close. Fortunately, Kopeleski didn’t notice her.

  He seemed fully concentrated on his task. From time to time the detector sounded a high-pitch beeping, which seemed to incite Kopeleski to excitedly paw through whatever was under the large circular head of the machine at the time. Then he would pull some fragment close to his eyes, examine it and toss it aside. Kopeleski mumbled to himself nonstop. She thought she could make out the odd word here and there.

  “Hunter fly.”

  Could have been die instead of fly.

  “Ditch.”

  Could be witch or b— Something else.

  “Stunt.”

  She didn’t want to think about the alternatives for that word.

  Nice to know she could still inspire such happy thoughts in Kopeleski. It only made it more critical that she find out about his involvement in the attempts on her life.

  She walked to the lane that ran behind the houses and turned. She counted each house until she reached what must be the back of Kopeleski’s. Unlike many of the properties, his did not have a separate carriage house at the back. A brick fence, which looked to be about eight feet in height, enclosed the property, with a wood gate to provide access to the courtyard. Giselle saw a covered porch up a flight of stairs. The back door of the house stood open with a screen door, closing out any direct entry from the courtyard.

  Giselle tried the gate to the courtyard. Locked. There were no footholds or handholds in the surface of the brick wall. However, a dumpster had been placed next to the wall to one side of the gate. It was a residential-type plastic affair, about two feet wide with two wheels on either side of the front half. It didn’t look at all stable, but at about four feet high it might be her entry ticket. If she could climb up, Giselle would be halfway to the top of the wall and virtually in Kopeleski’s courtyard.

  As Giselle looked around the lane, she could find nothing else that would act as a step stool, but she did notice someone watching her. At the base of an acanthus-leaf-adorned planter she saw a small black cat, a kitten really. It sat perched upright on its four legs, sleek and solemn with green-gold eyes. The kitten gazed at Giselle with interest. It blinked and for a second its eyes took on an almost human look. It
must be her imagination, but it seemed as if the cat knew what Giselle planned.

  Ignoring the nosy kitten, Giselle placed her purse on top of the dumpster and started to climb up herself. The thing lurched on its wheels, threatening to throw her on her, um, bum. She finally reached the top and it stopped moving.

  The kitten’s expression condemned her.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Giselle said. “It really isn’t wrong if you’re doing it for the right reason.” The kitten didn’t appear convinced.

  Placing her hands on the wall, Giselle pulled herself up to a standing position on top of the dumpster. It pitched to the right, but she grabbed hold and placed both hands on the top of the brick wall, waiting for the dumpster to steady. Then she looked up one way and down the other of the lane. No one in sight except the kitten. It meowed accusingly.

  “I know, I know, but it’s…self-defense. That’s it. Self-defense. That means it’s not criminal, right?”

  ”Mmmrrrwww.” That sounded like a no.

  Hopping and pulling at the same time, she got to a sitting position on top of the wall.

  “I bet you thought I’d fall,” she said to the kitten.

  It blinked its eyes. Cat, human, cat again. That seemed to be a yes. It gave another accusing glare.

  “If you think about it you’ll see that this is really okay. Since this is VICTIM headquarters it is, in fact, a public place. You can’t break into a public place, right?”

  “Mmmrrrwww.” No again. The kitten looked away, a curl of disgust on its cat lips.

  “A lot you know. Did you go to law school?”

  “Hssssss,” the kitten protested.

  “I know I didn’t either. But doesn’t that seem like reasonable logic?”

  “Mmmrrrwww. Meow.” No, not at all.

  “Oh shut up!” Great. Out debated by a cat.

  Giselle edged her legs over to the courtyard side of the wall and jumped down to the ground below.

  “Ouch.”

  Her legs didn’t make good shock absorbers.

  The “Mmmeeeeoooowwww” from the lane sounded suspiciously like cat laughter.

  “Stupid cat.”

  Giselle crossed the courtyard and tiptoed up the back stairs. She tried the screen door handle. Unlocked. Success. Pulling it open with one quick movement, she peeked inside. No one. She slipped through and let the door close softly behind her. She was committed to the mission now.

  She crept down a long hall that led from the back door to the front. Peering out a peephole in the front door, she saw Kopeleski still operating the metal detector. He stopped, examined an object and mumbled something. No doubt her name still figured prominently in the mumbling.

  Mollified that she would not be caught, at least not yet, Giselle crept back down the hall the way she’d come, all the while glancing into each room.

  Parlor. She’d been there.

  Next was the dining room. Nothing there.

  Powder room. Distinctly uninteresting.

  Next she discovered an office. Hallelujah.

  Slipping inside, Giselle began inspected the room slowly. It was lined on two walls with bookshelves crammed full of titles. Scanning the wall of books closest to her, she read the spines on the shelf at eye level.

  “Metaphysics and you.”

  Who me?

  “The Paranormal Pal.”

  Not my pal.

  “A Medium is Better Than Average.”

  Hmmm, average what?

  “Paranormal Sexuality.”

  Eeewwww.

  Giselle bent to examine another shelf. She scanned more book titles.

  “Spells For the Average Wizard.”

  Hmmmm, average again.

  “Special Occasion Spells.”

  What occasions are special to wizard?

  “Me, Myself and Nudism.”

  Yuck.

  Moving on, she found one wall of shelves seemed to be the United States tax code.

  Boring and useless to her.

  The only wall without bookshelves had framed certificates and diplomas. Giselle saw that one proclaimed The Wonders School of Wizardry and Metaphysics. It appeared to be a correspondence course. University of Georgia, Bachelor of Science, Accounting. Accounting? Then a license for a business at this address called An Accounting Wizard, P.L.L.C.

  Moving to Kopeleski’s desk, she saw every conceivable surface covered with papers and files. On the desk chair laid an open copy center box filled with multicolored flyers. She picked one up. Are you a VICTIM? Seen that one. Another box lay open on the floor beside it. Inside were pamphlets. Giselle took one from the box. Vampires are people too—the VICTIM Manifesto. Written by the Vampire Lester with contributions by Wizard Armand Kopeleski. Giselle stuck the pamphlet in her purse. There were so many that it wouldn’t be missed. Besides, it was obviously meant to be distributed to the public. She was a public.

  Pawing through the other items on the desk, she saw a file for VICTIM, which included bank statements. The statement for last month lay on top. She perused it. The account had a balance of almost zero. The organization was broke. Apparently not many people—or vampires—wanted to be a VICTIM. Continuing to search, Giselle found copies of IRS tax forms signed by Kopeleski as the accountant for VICTIM.

  Kopeleski’s calendar was at the top edge of the desk. She leaned over to view its entries and someone grabbed her from behind and jerked her backward. A rough hand covered her mouth and stifled a scream in progress that ended up as a muffled “Mmmmmm.” An arm clamped around her shoulders and chest.

  Giselle’s heart took off like an explosion in her chest as adrenaline rushed through her. A tall, hard body pressed every inch of her back, from mid-thigh to the top of her head. Giselle reflexively reached to claw at the sinewy arm and the rough tanned hand.

  Hey, wait a minute. She recognized that hand. She knew that arm. And come to think of it, that hard body felt familiar pressed against her back. It was Ry. The jerk.

  Her heartbeat slowed from the heart-attack-imminent to a you-scared-the-crap-out-of-me-but-I’m-okay-now stage. Then it became an even more comfortable it-seems-only-right-to-beat-the-crap-out-of-you beat.

  Giselle quieted and quit struggling against the arm. Ry released her and stepped back, which put his shins within kicking distance.

  “Ow,” he hissed under his breath.

  Who could blame her for kicking him? He had practically offered up his shins. He was lucky he didn’t get kicked in a worse place.

  “You deserved it, you creep. Scaring me like that. What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here? I’m a professional.”

  “Yeah, a professional ass. And anyway never mind because I’m not speaking to you.” Giselle turned away and rifled the desk papers again.

  “We need to get out,” Ry started.

  “I’m not listening to you. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.” Silence. And then, “Hey, look at this.” Giselle pointed to the desk calendar.

  The previous day, between dental appointment and séance was G. Hunter—arrange. Ry looked at the entry from over her shoulder. Oooh, the jerk. He needed an elbow to the stomach.

  “Ooof.”

  “Back off, mister. I’m not speaking to you and I’m definitely not touching you.”

  “I’m sorry. Okay? I know I need to explain my behavior,” Ry whispered urgently.

  Giselle spoke over him. “Still not listening. La, la, la, la, la, la, la. I don’t hear a thing.”

  Ry took her by the shoulders and roughly turned her in his arms. He covered her mouth with an urgent kiss. His lips moved on hers. His tongue touched her tongue.

  For a moment, Giselle allowed herself to lean into him and rest against his hard—ooooh hard—body. His mouth tasted like mint with a hint of coffee. She liked coffee. His lips were so soft. His tongue was… Oooh, the jerk was French kissing her. She pushed him back.

  He blinked then focused. “Will you listen now? I’m sorry. I’
m sorry. I’m sorry a thousand times. I’ll apologize in more detail at a place and time where we aren’t in danger of being arrested for breaking and entering.”

  When Giselle would have interrupted, he stopped her. “I’ll grovel, I’ll do anything.” Anything?

  “I’ll kiss your ring. In fact, I’ll kiss anything you want.”

  Anything?

  “Let’s just get out of here,” Giselle said.

  Anything? Hmmm, sounded like a good offer.

  They both heard it at the same time. Kopeleski’s front door creaking as it opened. Ry put his finger to his lips. He’d shushed her. The jerk. She gave him a condemning 'you don’t have to shush me since I know to be quiet when the owner of the house we’ve broken into comes back. I’m not completely stupid' glare.

  Ry returned it with an arch glare of his own. Giselle slapped at his grabbing hand before allowing Ry to take her by the arm and pull her toward the doorway of the office.

  Giselle heard someone enter the house and stomp up the front hall stairway to the floor above them. Ry pulled Giselle into the hall and out the back screen door, which he closed with barely a click.

  They made it to the back gate within seconds. Ry threw the latch and they slipped out into the lane. While Ry closed the gate, Giselle walked purposefully in the direction of Abercorn Street. She surreptitiously glanced back to see if he would follow. He did.

  He caught up with her. “You’re coming with me.”

  Did he really think she would take orders at this point? Or, for that matter, ever? “No I’m not.” Giselle kept moving.

  “Don’t you want to watch me grovel?”

  That stopped her. It did sound appealing. “Okay. But we’re not going to your house.”

  “You want me to grovel in a public place?”

  His eyebrows converged in that cute frown she recognized. The frown of displeasure. Good.

  “Definitely a public place. The publicer, the better.”

  “Will it get me groveling points to do it in public?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Come on.” He scowled.