Between a Ghost and a Spooky Place (Ghosts of London Book 1)

by Saint,Nic

  Finally, he was released from hospital on his own recognizance, and Deshawn drove him home. This time he was returning to his own lodgings, the house of Em Sheetenhelm a little too dangerous for his taste. He was invincible, of course, and indestructible and all that, but that didn’t mean he had to go and push his luck. No, if he were going to defeat Jingoist he would be cunning. Clever. Devious, even. He was going to take a page from Sherlock Holmes’s book and enlist his own Baker Street Boys to root the man out.

  Over the course of his lifetime he’d gathered an impressive list of contacts, and those contacts would come in handy now that he actually needed them for something other than throwing a great party. The moment he settled in the back of his car, therefore, he was on the phone, putting his list on high alert. Dickie Smalt would tell his taxi drivers to be on the lookout for anyone fitting Jingoist’s description, while his friends in the restaurateur and pub business would do the same. By the time his head hit the satiny pillow of his trusty four-poster at the Ritz-Carlton, therefore, the city of London was abuzz with but one question: where was Jingoist?

  As a consequence, the minute he awoke, after a refreshing power nap, his phone contained the golden tip, and to his not inconsiderable surprise, Jingoist had been seen pottering about at Xing Ming, of all places!

  When finally he got off the phone with Franklin, who was in the business of delivering fresh flowers to dozens of restaurants in Chinatown and had caught a glimpse of the evil priest the night before, he stared before him for a moment, catching his breath and drawing up his battle plan. Now that he knew where Jingoist was, how to go about taking the man down? He wasn’t much of a hero and didn’t feel like confronting the priest all by himself. But then he didn’t want to involve the police either, seeing as how they usually managed to muck things up. So he did the only sensible thing, which was put in a call to Harry, his newfound friend and associate.

  “Harry? I found him. I found Jingoist!”

  Master Edwards was not in a good mood. First of all, he was sick and dying. Secondly, he liked to consume his beauty sleep undisturbed, and thirdly, he didn’t like to be summoned. He’d been the summoner, after all, not the summonee, for all of his long criminal career. And now here this guy had the gall to tell him to meet him in some godforsaken place at this time of night.

  His exact words had been, “Be there or I’m gone. This is your last chance to live, Edwards, so I suggest you take it.”

  Well, if he put it that way, of course…

  So now he was traveling through London in the middle of the night, in an unmarked ambulance, his two trusty goons slash nurses monitoring a smattering of complicated machinery that was designed to stop his heart from conking out each time the vehicle hit a pothole.

  The moment Edwards had fallen ill, he’d sent Philo and a bunch of his men to nursing school, so they wouldn’t go and do a dumb thing like prod him with the wrong end of a syringe for instance. And as he lay there, trying not to kill the driver of the ambulance, he knew he should rejoice, for finally he’d live again, and not die an ignoble death and be forgotten by history.

  When finally they arrived at destination’s end, he had to suffer the indignation of being carted in through the back door of the Xing Ming where Jingoist was holding court. Used to be he imperiously strode in through the front door of whatever place was under his protection, his body his temple, and now he was being lugged around like a dead haddock. It was disgraceful and humiliating, and he swore it would never happen to him again. So when finally he came face to face with the man who’d promised to save his life, his first words were, “This better work, bubba.”

  “Oh, but it does, Mr. Edwards,” said the man softly.

  They were in some back room of the restaurant, the place smelling of glutamate, and when he took a good look at Jingoist, he winced. The man’s face was a battlefield of cuts and bruises. “Christ, man, did you have a run-in with a truck or something? You look worse than me, and I’m almost dead!”

  Jingoist’s smile disappeared, and a cold, dark look came into his eyes. “Don’t ask about things that don’t concern you, Edwards. You’ll live longer.”

  He shrugged. “It’s just that you’re supposed to be this big healer, right? So why don’t you, you know, heal yourself?”

  His two goons chuckled at this, and he thought it was pretty good himself. He might be on the precipice of death, but at least he still had his sense of humor, unlike this bozo, who seemed to carry a stick up his bum.

  “I am healing myself,” grumbled Jingoist. “But it takes time.”

  And then, before the old crook’s very eyes, he saw that one of the cuts on Jingoist’s brow had suddenly disappeared as if scratched out by an eraser. He cried out in astonishment, “Hey! It works!”

  “Of course it does,” said Jingoist smugly. “Now please be quiet.”

  Edwards’s face creased into a wreath of dismay. “What did you just say?”

  “Be quiet! I need to focus!”

  If it wasn’t that he needed this guy to save his life, he’d have had him killed for such an impertinence, and it took everything he had to keep his cool. Nobody told Master Edwards to be quiet. Nobody!

  Except for this guy, apparently.

  And then his emaciated body was transferred to the small table Jingoist had set up, and his men were ordered to leave the room.

  Now it was just him and Jingoist and a woman clad in black, who assisted the priest in the ceremony by turning the pages of the voluminous tome resting on the lectern next to the makeshift altar. And then Edwards closed his eyes and listened to the monotonous voice of Jingoist as he started reading passages from the book, waving his hands in strange and fascinating gestures. And soon he felt himself tumbling into a deep, deep sleep…

  Darian was beyond despair. His crime scene unit had found nothing—absolutely nothing of any value. No fingerprints, no DNA, no trace evidence of any kind. It was almost as if this guy had never even been here. He certainly hadn’t entered the apartment through the front door. Tilda was adamant about that. And neither had any of the windows been tampered with. He’d even had the walls checked, giving a modicum of credence to Harry’s words that he’d simply entered the room through a hole in the wall, but there was nothing to indicate that he had. The walls were as solid as ever.

  It was a mystery, pure and simple. Like Buckley’s and Lakesha Fenton’s murders, the man had come and gone like smoke in a chimney. And yet he refused to believe his mother’s and Harry’s stories that the man was a ghost.

  There was a logical explanation. His people simply hadn’t found it yet.

  He strode into the living room and caught a glimpse of Harry talking to herself. And as he drew closer, he heard snatches of her conversation. Something about Jingoist, and ghosts not being able to do certain stuff.

  Christ, not that crap again. Here was a perfectly intelligent young woman, and she had this obsession with ghosts he simply found baffling.

  He took a seat next to her and saw that her eyes were slightly hooded and a little wary, which wasn’t surprising after the night she’d had.

  “And? What have you found?” she asked, after shifting in her seat.

  He shook his head. “Not a thing. Just a bunch of broken figurines.”

  “Your mother must be upset we broke her precious artwork.”

  “No, she’s not,” he assured her. “In fact she’s probably grateful. That horrible stuff was a present from my great-aunt Mildred, who was something of a wild child in the sixties. Mother never liked them in the first place.”

  Harry smiled. “Yes, she did seem quite happy to throw them around herself, actually.”

  Darian gave her a serious look. “We’ve taken a closer look at that wall Jingoist supposedly came through and haven’t found any trace of a hole.”

  “You won’t find it,” she immediately came back. “I told you. He can walk through walls. What we saw wasn’t his physical body. It was his astral form. His physical b
ody was safe and sound in some other part of London, while his astral body was here to murder us. It must be the way he killed Buckley as well, and that poor woman who used to turn the pages at his church.”

  His lips tightened. “You know how I feel about that kind of stuff.”

  She smiled. “Yes, I do know how you feel, Darian.”

  They stared at each other for a beat, and he found his lips irrevocably quirking up into a smile to match hers. Then he did the most outrageous thing: he reached out a hand and placed it on her cheek.

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” he said a little huskily.

  She nodded shyly. “Thanks for showing up when you did.”

  Their look intensified, and if suddenly his mother hadn’t burst onto the scene, carrying a tray with cups of hot cocoa, there was no telling what might have happened next. As it was, the cup of hot chocolate was a poor substitute for the look in Harry’s eyes. But then he remembered his solemn oath not to get involved with her, and he tamped down the powerful stirrings of his heart and soul. And when Harry’s phone chimed and she exclaimed, “Jarrett’s just gone and found Jingoist!” he muttered, “Great. That’s just great.”

  Not only were ghosts saving Harry from other ghosts, but the rich kid was now finding criminals where the greatest police force in the world couldn’t. Things were definitely a little nuts these days…

  Chapter 39

  After pondering his options for the space of a few minutes, Jarrett finally exited the car and strode up to the Chinese restaurant he was starting to know so well. The woman greeting him at the counter appeared to remember him too, for she grinned widely, her eyes instantly flitting to his pockets, fully expecting more pound notes to fly from them and into her possession. This time, however, he hadn’t come to extract information but rather to demand entrance into the secret lair of the dangerous man she willingly housed.

  He could have waited for the police to show up, of course, but he’d opted against it. As his misfortune would have it, when he called Harry with the good news, inviting her to join him on this quest, Darian Watley had been within earshot, and he knew that it was only a matter of time before the cavalry arrived in full force: dozens of armed police officers in their armored vehicles, most probably dressed in full combat gear, hurling stun grenades into the restaurant and rappelling down from the rafters, assault rifles poised.

  He wanted to lay his hands on the Clavicule Necroire personally, however. For he knew what would happen if the police took possession of the book: it would forever disappear into Scotland Yard’s dungeons, never to be seen or heard from again. He’d seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. He knew what happened when the government laid its grubby hands on mystical artifacts of incredible power. They got transferred to small wooden crates and were stored forever.

  And since that left him with only a small window of opportunity to get the book, he’d finally screwed his courage up to the sticking point and told Deshawn he was going to do or die. He was, after all, invincible now. He’d survived Jingoist’s lethal blows not once but twice and could do it again.

  “My dear lady,” he now spoke in honeyed tones, “I have it on good authority that you have a lodger here answering to the name of Jingoist. Would you be so kind as to direct me to his quarters? I want to have a word.”

  Her eyes instantly became shifty and anxious. “No Jingoist! No lodger!”

  “There’s no need to pull the wool over my eyes, my dear Madame Wu,” he continued pleasantly. “Old friends like us have no secrets from one another. I know the distinguished gentleman is here, and I just need a minute of his time. You see, my mother is quite ill at this time, and I understand Mr. Jingoist is in the business of healing people in exchange for money, am I right?”

  She stared at him, still on high alert. “Possible,” she allowed.

  “Well, then he’s in luck. I’m by way of being one of the richest men in the country and as such the sky is the limit as far as his recompense goes. So would you be so kind as to tell him a paying customer has shown up on his doorstep and he’s quite eager to fill his pockets with pure gold?”

  Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds, or rather, a smile broke through the weary front Madame Wu had put up. “I tell him, Mr…”

  “Zephyr. Jarrett Zephyr-Thornton the Third, in fact.”

  She seemed particularly impressed with the name, for she made a slight curtsy as if faced with royalty. “Wait here!” she announced and turned on her heel with such swiftness he suspected she was operated on a spring.

  Moments later she returned. “Jingoist busy. You wait!” she announced.

  Then she took him into the hidden bowels of the restaurant, past a kitchen where the chef whose dubious talents he’d admired the last time was cooking up a storm in between long drags from a cigarette, past a minuscule living room where a toddler sat gleefully watching the Teletubbies on a big screen, and then into a small waiting room, with only a potted plant and a picture of what he assumed was a smiling Chinese politician to keep him company. She pointed to a closed door, four pairs of shoes indicating it was inhabited. “You wait!” she repeated fiercely, and he nodded his acquiescence. Wait, he would. At least until Madame Wu had disappeared from view.

  The moment he was alone he tiptoed to the door and opened it to a crack. And as he peered inside, he saw that he’d struck gold: a small altar had been set up inside, now carrying Master Edwards, covered with a blanket with bird-and-flower motif, and Jingoist, splendidly dressed in gold-embroidered robes, was chanting some kind of mesmerizing incantation, while the woman in black did what she did best: stoically turning the pages of the Clavicule Necroire.

  When he let his eyes wander further, he noticed two burly men seated near the wall, looking on intently, and he suspected these were the old man’s bodyguards. So Master Edwards was being healed, huh? Well, not for long!

  And with death-defying intrepidity, he deftly dashed into the room, and yelled out, “Halt these proceedings, ye dastardly… dastards!”

  It was, he later had to admit, not one of his most sensible moves.

  Even though once upon a time he’d practiced Taekwondo, that was hardly sufficient to take on two musclemen, one woman in black, and one rogue priest whose astral body liked to smash people with a club and twist shotguns into knots. Ultimately, though, it was the prospect of Edwards being brought back to life that prompted this suicide mission.

  But as Jingoist and the others looked up in surprise at this unwelcome intrusion, he knew he was too late. For the man placed on the table wasn’t an old fossil any longer. The moment he opened his eyes and raised himself up, like Lazarus from the grave, then jumped to the floor with litheness, power, and grace, he saw that Master Edwards was back to his old form, looking the picture of health and fitness once more. His once gaunt face had filled up again as if powered by some kind of magical botox, his skin had lost its wrinkles and was as smooth as a baby’s bottom, and even his hair had regained its former luster and now fell in lush golden curls around his ears.

  “Hello, Zephyr,” Edwards said with a cocky grin, displaying perfectly healthy gnashers. “Come to celebrate my return to form, have you?”

  He swallowed with some difficulty, mesmerized by the sight of the powerful man before him. “Something along those lines,” he muttered feebly.

  Edwards turned to Jingoist, checking his hands, dotted with liver spots no more. “You did a great job, Jingoist. Well worth the money. Now if you could extend my friend here the same favor? He could use some work.”

  Jarrett should have been insulted, for in his mind he was the picture of youth, but here, he saw, was his chance to come out on top. Or at least not dead. “Actually it’s my mum who needs your help, Mr. Jingoist. And I’m willing to pay top pound for the privilege of your unique brand of service.”

  “Is that so?” the priest asked, giving him a dark look. “Then why do I consistently find you in the camp of my enemies, Mr. Zephyr-Thornton?”

  “Jus
t a misunderstanding,” he assured him. “All I’ve ever wanted is a minute of your time.” He gestured to Edwards. “To extend to my mother the same miracle you’ve performed for my dear old friend Master Edwards.”

  Jingoist’s frown deepened. “Is this man a friend of yours, Edwards?”

  Master Edwards was studying himself in a small pocket mirror one of his goons had handed him. He seemed to like what he saw. “Yeah, yeah, he’s an old chum. We’re both in the polo business, though my ponies are a lot better than yours, isn’t that right, Zephyr?”

  “I beg to differ, Edwards,” Jarrett intoned lightly, trying hard to keep his nervousness under control.

  Edwards smirked. “Hey, I look even better than before! Great job!”

  “And you will continue to look better if you take a greater interest in your health, Mr. Edwards,” Jingoist said censoriously. “Smoking, drinking, drugs, womanizing… These are the things that will kill you.”

  “Not now that I’ve got you!” Edwards caroled happily. “How much for a tune-up, huh? Let’s say once a year or so? Little touch-up? Nip and tuck?”

  Jingoist shook his head. “You are incorrigible, Master Edwards.” But a small smile now played about his lips. Return customers, he must have just realized, were going to be a big part of his business.

  “So how much for my mother?” Jarrett asked, keeping a keen eye on the woman in black. She’d been watching him intently all the while, obviously eager to resume their last tussle and this time finish the job she’d started.

  Edwards laughed a raucous laugh, raking his fingers through his lush mane. “How much for your mother? You’re a funny guy, Zephyr!”

  “One million,” Jingoist interjected. “For one million pounds I will heal your mother.”

  “Done,” said Jarrett.