by Vivi Andrews
She gave a startled little yelp to find him so close to impact. Eliot yelped at her yelp, his confidence evaporating. His eyes flew open and his body flew backward—right into her lamp.
Lucy watched, stunned and not a little impressed, as Eliot accidentally knocked over a physical object, sending it flying to the ground with a resounding crash.
For a moment, the only sound was of Lucy’s breathing as they both gaped at the shattered lamp.
“Wow. You knocked over my lamp.”
“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,” Eliot dithered, kneeling on the floor and sweeping the shards into a little pile with his hands. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know,” Lucy said—but she wasn’t trying to comfort him, she was too busy being in awe of what he had done. “You weren’t even paying attention to it and you sent it flying. Most ghosts have to concentrate to make people feel a cool breeze, but you can move physical objects without even meaning to.” She blinked at him, openly amazed. “Eliot, you’re incredible.”
He looked up at her, a slow, shy smile starting to spread across his face. As the smile grew, his glowing presence dimmed and flickered. Lucy would never know what would have happened next—that single moment of validation might have been enough for him to transcend—but before he could move on, her bedroom door flew open and Jake came charging through, gun drawn.
“Lucy! Are you all right? I heard a—What the hell?”
Lucy had told Jake a little bit about ghosts that afternoon. Based on her description of wispy white wraiths, he had no reason to expect a green-glowing nightlight of an accountant. And Eliot was his first ghost. That, at least in part, explained his reaction.
Jake stumbled back a couple steps until his back slammed up against the wall, his gun trained on the glowing specter kneeling beside her bed.
“What the fuck is that?” he shouted, never taking his eyes off of Eliot Mellman’s ghost.
Eliot’s head snapped up when Jake burst into the room. Confusion dimmed his expression. Lucy scrambled for words to explain Eliot to Jake and vice versa, but she never got the chance.
She knew the exact moment Eliot saw the gun. Fear flashed across his face, followed quickly by an eerie resolve.
“I’ll protect you, Lucy!” he roared, surging up from his knees.
Eliot swelled in size until he towered over Cox, his glowing, greased-down hair brushing the ceiling fan. Light shot from his fingertips, and his glow grew brighter and brighter until Lucy had to shield her eyes to look at him.
The windows were all closed, but a howling wind suddenly tore through the room, whipping the drapes around like flags flapping in a hurricane. The doors to the closet, bathroom, and hall all began slamming, only to fly open and slam again.
Jake Cox braced himself against the wind, sighted on the blinding nimbus of light that was the Eliot poltergeist, and began firing, the sound almost entirely drowned out by the wail of the wind and the thunder of the slamming doors.
Lucy leapt to her feet on her bed and shouted to be heard over the keening howl. “Eliot! Eliot! Bad ghost! Bad! Jake, stop shooting him! Eliot, stop it this instant! Put down my nightstand! If I wanted it on the ceiling, I would have put it there myself. Put it back right now! Eliot!”
Neither of the beings in her bedroom listened to her.
Jake systematically emptied his clip—the bullets passing right through Eliot and lodging in her floral wallpaper—then smoothly reloaded and raised his arms in preparation for putting a dozen more holes in her wall.
The mountain of pillows piled on her bed took flight, whipping around the room and bursting in a series of feathery explosions until her perfectly neat bedroom looked like the site of a bloodless chicken massacre.
“No, no, no!” Lucy yelled. She jumped off of her bed and directly into the line of fire between the two combatants.
Jake immediately pointed the muzzle of his gun toward the ceiling. “Lucy! What the hell are you doing? Get out of the way!”
“No!” Lucy shouted back. “No more shooting!” She spun around to squint up into the strobe-light brilliance where she suspected Eliot’s eyes must be. “No more slamming doors and howling winds and absolutely no more floating furniture! I have had enough. Do you understand me?”
The storm inside her bedroom died down suddenly. Eliot shrank down to his normal size, his blinding radiance dimming back to his usual friendly green nightlight levels—though he continued to glare militantly at Jake, who returned the favor.
“He was shooting at you, Lucy,” Eliot whined peevishly. “I had to protect you.”
“He was shooting at you,” she corrected, then turned to glare at Jake. “But he shouldn’t have been shooting at anyone. He’s supposed to be on our side.”
Jake held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, don’t look at me. I didn’t start firing until the furniture started flying.”
Lucy turned her glare back on the peevish ghost. “That was a childish and completely unnecessary display, Eliot.”
Eliot shoved out his lower lip in a pout, somehow managing to sulk and glower at Jake at the same time. “He started it,” he insisted petulantly. “Bursting in here, waving a gun and screaming.”
“I heard a crash,” Jake snapped. “I had to make sure Lucy was all right.”
Eliot started to puff up again, just a little. “That’s my job. Lucy is none of your concern.”
Jake snorted. “I hate to break it to you, buddy, but you’re dead. How can you protect her if you don’t even have a body?”
“Don’t answer that, Eliot. Mr. Cox is not trying to goad you into showing him how you would protect me. In fact, as difficult as it might be to believe, Mr. Cox is actually the person I was talking to you about—the one who wants to talk to you. About your murder. Don’t you, Mr. Cox?” Lucy snarled the last directly at the vexing PI.
“Yeah,” Mr. Cox said grudgingly. “I have a few questions.”
Chapter Six: You Just Can’t Trust a Horny Poltergeist
Sitting at her kitchen table with a petulant ghost and grouchy detective was not how Lucy had envisioned spending her night—especially after Jake Cox had walked through her door that afternoon like a walking, talking gift from Cupid.
Lucy sat as far away from the two idiots as possible. Out of the line of fire, according to Jake’s orders, and beyond Jake’s reach, according to Eliot’s insistence. Her little accountant nightlight took protectiveness to new levels, puffing up and turning up the wattage whenever Jake touched her, even if it was just a casual brush on her arm. Other than that, Eliot had shown no further signs of going poltergeist on them, and Jake’s gun was back in his holster, although one of his hands hovered over it constantly.
Now if only she could get the two pig-headed men to stop bickering and cooperate long enough to get them both out of her kitchen.
“I’m not a rat,” Eliot insisted stubbornly, his lower lip puffed out in classic kindergarten style.
“No, you’re a ghost,” Jake snapped irritably. “Joe Morrissey had you killed.”
“Exactly! What do you think he’d do to me if he found out I’d ratted him out?”
“He can’t do anything to you! You’re already dead.”
“You don’t know Big Joe.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s not God, Eliot,” Jake growled.
“No, he’s the devil.”
“He’s a small-time mafioso with psychopathic tendencies and delusions of grandeur, and as his former accountant—”
“Hey, who said I was former?”
“You’re dead, Eliot. Big Joe killed you. Get it through your head. As I was saying, as his former accountant, you are in a unique position to put him away for the rest of his life. And you don’t even have to confront him. You can be the chicken-shit coward you are and still do your part for justice. All you have to do is tell me where Joe Morrissey’s financial records are.”
“And you’ll do what?”
“I’ll turn them over to the Organized Crime T
ask Force. The cops can’t very well say they got tipped off by a dead guy, but if I get Morrissey’s books for them, they won’t look a gift mobster in the mouth. So where are they, Eliot?”
“What about Candy?”
“I’ll do what I can to make sure she’s prosecuted for your murder.”
Eliot was shaking his head before Jake finished speaking. “I don’t want her to suffer.”
Lucy couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “Eliot, she murdered you!”
“Yeah, but she also, you know.” Eliot made a crude gesture with his hands. “I appreciate that.”
“She only slept with you so she could kill you!” Lucy protested.
“Yeah, but she still slept with me. She shouldn’t be punished for that.”
“She should be punished for murder!”
“It wasn’t her idea,” Eliot pouted. “I’m sure she didn’t want to. It was Big Joe.”
Lucy couldn’t help but roll her eyes. There were some things about men she would never understand. “Then will you let Jake put Big Joe in jail? Please, Eliot, tell him where to find Big Joe’s books.”
Eliot blinked at her limpidly. “For you, Lucy. I’ll do it for you.”
Jake rolled his eyes so hard he nearly fell off his chair. “Well? Come on, Romeo, where are they?”
Eliot sniffed indignantly, but when Lucy smiled encouragingly, he said, “There’s a warehouse. Big Joe keeps all of his records there. There will be more than enough evidence to convict him.”
“Where is it?” Jake demanded.
Eliot rattled off an address and Jake was on his feet before he finished. “I’m going to check it out.” He pointed a warning finger at the ghost. “No transcending until I get back. You got that, Romeo? I don’t trust you not to send me off on some wild goose chase, only to skip off to the afterlife while I’m off chasing my own ass.”
After the front door slammed behind Jake, Lucy sent Eliot a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry we can’t work on resolving your issues until he gets back. I know you must be eager to move on.”
“Not really.”
Lucy’s attention snapped to lock on him. “Not really?”
Eliot shrugged. “I don’t care if I ever transcend. Why would I want to? I love you, Lucy. I want to stay with you. Forever.”
Forever. Lucy had a sudden vision of spending the rest of her life sexually frustrated because a neurotic, possessive poltergeist wouldn’t let a real man near her. It was not a happy vision.
Knowing precisely how powerful Eliot was, she didn’t want to piss him off, but neither was she going to promise him a lifetime. Or deathtime. Whatever. They needed to get back on professional footing.
“Eliot,” she began slowly, but he cut her off.
“We’re meant to be together, Lucy. Can’t you feel it?” He was glowing more brightly, giving off little pulses of energy that shivered across her skin, raising goosebumps on her arms. He shoved back his chair and walked toward her—no wispy floating for Eliot Mellman. He ran his fingers along her jaw and Lucy fought not to shudder. His touch was freezing, like an icy caterpillar crawling across her skin.
She swallowed her nausea. “Eliot, it’s natural to want to cling to life. Your attachment to me is just a symptom of that. Death is a big transition. No one expects you to move on before you’re ready, but you can’t stay in a plane where you don’t belong just for me. I won’t let you do that to yourself.”
“You’re worth it, Lucy,” Eliot swore. “I would haunt the world a thousand lifetimes just to be with you for yours.”
“Eliot, that’s very—” creepy, terrifying, appalling “—sweet of you, but it wouldn’t be right.”
“If loving you is wrong, baby, I don’t want to be right.”
Lucy winced. She’d created a monster. A love-starved, green-glowing, pulsating nerd of a monster. “Look, Eliot, why don’t we just wait until Mr. Cox gets back? I bet things will look differently after you know Big Joe will be punished for what he did to you.”
Eliot snorted. “Sure. Let’s do that. Let’s just wait until Mr. Cox gets back, shall we?” He strutted across the kitchen.
Warning bells went off in Lucy’s head.
“Eliot, what did you do?”
“Do?” he repeated innocently. “Why would you ask that?”
Lucy stood, shoving her chair back so quickly it toppled over. She didn’t pause to right it. Instead, she marched over to where Eliot was admiring the way his light played across her crystal stemware. “Eliot, where did you send Jake?”
“To a warehouse,” he replied with a catty smile.
“What’s in the warehouse?”
“Records,” Eliot said, then his face split into a grin as he went on. “And enough guards with Uzis to turn your mortal boyfriend into Swiss cheese.”
“Eliot! Why didn’t you tell Jake that?” Lucy was already running toward the bedroom, stripping out of her pajamas as she ran.
“He didn’t ask,” the ghost said, floating along behind her, pulled by the link between the two of them.
Lucy quickly yanked on jeans and a black T-shirt, ignoring Eliot’s avid gaze and his little mumbles of protest as she clothed herself. “What were you thinking?” she asked him angrily. “He’ll be killed.”
“So? I don’t see what the big deal is if he dies. I’m already dead. It isn’t so bad.”
“That is no excuse for sending him into a trap!” Lucy shoved her feet into her sneakers and grabbed her car keys, sprinting toward the front door.
“Where are we going?” Eliot whined, drawn along like a balloon on a string.
“To that damn warehouse to help Jake. I just hope we aren’t already too late.”
“Lucy,” Eliot moaned plaintively. “I don’t want to go. I just wanted him to get rid of him so we could be alone together.”
“So you lied.”
“I didn’t lie,” he protested. “The records are there. I just neglected to mention a few other details.”
“Well, thanks to your neglect, Jake’s life is in danger.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to go,” Eliot complained. Then he paused, thinking. “Wait. If you die, does that mean we get to be ghosts together forever?”
“No,” Lucy snapped. “If I die, I’m going on to whatever is next and leaving your sorry ass haunting my apartment for the rest of eternity. But I bet if Jake dies, he’s going to hang around just long enough to kick your phantom ass.”
Chapter Seven: The Warehouse of Death and Taxes
Being inside the warehouse sounded like being inside the world’s largest popcorn popper. Gunfire ricocheted and echoed in a nonstop patter of deadly explosions.
“This doesn’t seem smart, Lucy.”
“Shut up, Eliot.” Lucy ran with her head down and ducked behind a crate. She could see Jake’s legs sticking out from behind a crate in front of her. He was sprawled out on his stomach and she couldn’t tell if he was bleeding—she couldn’t see his torso at all, but she was sure it was him. There was no mistaking that ass.
Running into a firefight was stupid on more levels than she could count, but she needed to get to Jake—although by this point, he’d probably already figured out that the warehouse was used for more than just file storage. Still, if there was anything she could do to help, she was going to do it. She liked Jake and wasn’t about to give up the opportunity to use him as her own personal gigolo once they were no longer being bombarded with bullets on all sides.
During a lull in the gunfire, Lucy launched herself from behind her crate, dashing toward Jake’s legs. She skidded to a stop against the crate he was bent around, tucking herself out of the line of fire.
“Lucy! What the hell are you doing here?” Jake snapped, rolling behind the crate to sit beside her as he slid the clip out of his gun and jammed another one home.
“See? He’s still alive. Can we go now?”
“Shut up, Eliot!”
“Go draw their fire or something,” Jake growled.
> The ghost hmphed and drifted away.
As soon as he was gone, Jake turned to Lucy. “Are you hit anywhere?” His eyes raked over her. “How did you get in here? Are the cops outside? Why did they send you in? Jesus, Lucy, what were you thinking?”
Lucy blinked at him, her brain suddenly rebooting after the half an hour of thoughtless panic that had brought her rushing to his aid. “The cops. That would have been smart. Damn.”
Jake closed his eyes. “You didn’t bring reinforcements.” He groaned. “I’m down to my last clip, and you show up with no help other than the damned ghost who got us into this in the first place. How could you put yourself in danger like that?”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Lucy admitted. “I was worried about you.”
“I’m touched. Next time you’re worried, maybe you can bring me an AK-47 or two.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
Another volley of gunfire exploded around them, deafening them for a few minutes as they cowered together in the dubious shelter of the crate. When she could hear him again, Jake was swearing fluently.
“If that ghost wasn’t dead already, I’d kill him myself.”
“In Eliot’s defense, he doesn’t really see death quite the same way we do.”
“He sent me walking blind into fucking Fort Knox, Luce. I can’t believe I was so stupid. I thought ghosts couldn’t lie.”
“I think that’s demons. Ghosts are the imprint a person has left on the world after they depart it and people lie constantly, so it’s only logical that ghosts would be deceptive. Besides, Eliot didn’t technically lie. There is a lot of evidence in the warehouse. There just happens to be a lot of guards and a lot of guns also.”
“Not to mention Joe Morrissey himself.”
Lucy gaped at him. “Big Joe is here? Oh, no.”
“I don’t see that it matters. We’re equally dead whether he’s here or not.”
Lucy grabbed his arm to get his attention. “Eliot can’t see him, Jake!”