“A dirty move from a dirty girl.” The first thug sneered. “Too bad you’ve lost the element of surprise.”
He ran at Jennie with his fists raised. He aimed a punch at her cheek, but she blocked it easily with her forearm. She waited for his next punch, then, when his guard was lowered, she raised her knee and sank it into his groin.
The thug doubled over and clutched his aching testicles.
Jennie took a step back as the second thug came back at her, his face twisted into lunacy.
“You bitch—”
Another kick to the stomach cut off his rant. He fell flat on his back, winded.
“Let me know when you boys have had enough,” Jennie told them. “I’ve been doing this for far longer than either of you could possibly imagine.”
The first thug clutched his crotch and looked at Jennie darkly, then drew the blade at his side and slashed at her midsection. Jennie took a step back, the blade missing her by an inch. He swiped again and Jennie took another step back, feeling the wall behind her.
“Nowhere left to go,” the thug growled, a glint of gold appearing as a chain unfurled from around his neck. “First, we’ll cripple you, then we’ll fuck you. How’s that sound?”
Worthington appeared behind the thug, looking ridiculous in his bright red jacket with gold buttons, his fluffy black hat sprouting from his head.
Jennie stifled a laugh. “It’s funny that you think you can take little old me down. You know, I’m old enough to be your grandma.”
The thug paused, confused.
“Actually, more than likely his great-great-grandma,” Worthington put in.
“Way to make a woman feel old,” Jennie replied.
The thug looked over his shoulder. “Who are you talking to?”
“Oh, no one,” Jennie told them. “Come on. You were going to stab me, weren’t you?”
The man’s face steeled. He drove the knife forward and gasped as the metal of the blade hit the brick wall behind her with such force that a spike of pain shot into his hand. He shook his wrist, feeling the early onset of the sprain as Jennie laughed at him.
He looked down with sudden amazement, not quite believing what he was seeing.
Jennie’s entire midsection had disappeared, having faded as though she were made of nothing more than mist. The upper half of her body was there, and so were her legs, but everything in between was gone.
“Wha…wha… Impossible,” he exclaimed.
The second thug was climbing back to his feet when he saw what his companion was looking at. “Ghost!” He spun on his heel and sprinted down the alley, disappearing around the corner in seconds.
Jennie laughed, staring at the first thug with a hardened look on her face. “What’s it going to be? Did you want to have another try, or are you going to admit defeat?”
Before the man could make a decision, glass exploded in a shower of fragments around the crown of his head. His eyes crossed and he collapsed to the floor, revealing the homeless man standing behind him with the neck of a bottle in his hand.
The homeless man’s face was bruised, and blood dribbled from his lips. He glanced down at Jennie’s midsection, wondering what the fuss was about. He could see nothing out of the ordinary—just flat abs like iron underneath her brown leather corset.
Jennie grinned. “See something you like?”
He coughed. “Thank you for your help. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I did.” Jennie placed a hand on his shoulder. “You deserve better than to be ambushed and attacked by two pieces of shit like that. Here.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out some cash. “Maybe this will make this night a little more memorable in a good way.” She thumbed through her notes and handed over $300 in $50 bills. “Book a hotel for the night and live in luxury for a little. Or invest in something you love. Whatever you do, it’s yours.”
The man’s eyes lit up. “You don’t have to, really.”
Jennie waved his words away. “It’s nothing. I can spare a few quid to make someone’s night better.”
The man’s eyebrow arched. “Quid?”
“Yeah, you know, ‘Spare a few bob?’ ‘Here’s a couple of quid?’”
The man looked at her blankly.
Jennie laughed. “It just means money.” She placed the bills in his hand and closed his fingers around them. “Consider it a gift from a stranger who just wants to see you happy.”
The man’s eyes filled with tears. With many thank yous, he grabbed his small plastic sack of belongings and left the alley in search of somewhere to stay the night that didn’t stink of piss and moldy leftovers.
Jennie smiled as she stood at the alley’s entrance and watched the homeless man almost skip down the street.
“You know that cash was meant for your mission,” Worthington told Jennie flatly as he appeared beside her once more.
Jennie rolled her eyes, wishing she could punch the specter in the face. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is doing good deeds against the queen’s creed now? I didn’t realize I couldn’t offer some dough to a man in need. Besides, it’s my money, okay? You think over a hundred years of investments haven’t made me any profits?”
Worthington wrinkled his nose. “I’m just saying, be careful what you spend your money on. We don’t all have unlimited cash.”
“Oh, behave, grandpa.”
“You’re older than me!” Worthington shouted.
Jennie grinned. “Maybe I should be giving you advice.”
“I highly doubt it. Not until you start acting your age.”
“I am acting the maturity of a woman of my temperament and looks.”
Worthington snorted indelicately. “Your temper is always set to high.”
“That’s my point.” Jennie threw her hands in the air. “Even with a see-through head, you can still put two brain cells together at times. Why you continue to push me on this maturity thing is beyond me.”
“Because I lack a body, not a will,” he replied.
Jennie began walking down the street. She shut up as they passed a young woman out on her own, clutching her jacket tight around her, legs sticking out of her miniskirt like pins.
When they were alone again, she continued, “I should just exorcise you right out of my life.”
Worthington laughed. “With what, jazzercise? If you could exorcise me, I would be resting against a tree, eating an apple in the afterlife instead of dealing with you and your compulsive tendencies.”
“Keep it up, and you might push me far enough to do it.”
“As if, Rouge.”
Jennie looked around as if expecting someone to be watching her from afar. She saw that the street was empty. “It’s Rogue,” she told him softly,
“Well, my mistake.” Worthington smirked, clearly pleased to have put some color in Jennie’s cheeks. “Apparently, this afterlife is claiming my sensibilities and memories.”
They rounded a corner, and the famous Plaza Hotel came into view. Lights decorated the outside of the hotel like a Christmas tree, and the doorman waited patiently out front.
Jennie wove her way in and entered the elevator, glad to find it empty. She shook her head. “What did I do to deserve you again?”
Worthington chuckled. “Easy. Your last specter got herself excommunicated by the Church, and consequently exorcised.”
Jennie frowned. “Oh, yeah, damn. She and I had some great times.”
“I suggest that next time, you don’t write those good times down in a tell-all book about the Church fathers in Romania.”
“How was I supposed to know they could read English?” she argued.
“Also, R.O. Gue was not the smartest pen name.”
“I was drunk when we did that…”
“If you truly drank as often as you claim in your stories, you would have consumed more vodka than the amount of air you breathe.”
“That’s a lot of vodka.”
“Truly.”
Jennie crossed the thirteenth
-floor foyer and unlocked her apartment door, revealing the glitz and glamour the Plaza offered. She walked into the living area and immediately kicked off her shoes as she headed over to the minibar. She unscrewed the lid of a mini bottle of vodka and drained the contents.
Worthington sat in an armchair and kicked his booted feet onto an ottoman. “That only goes to prove my point.”
Jennie glared at him.
Worthington ignored the look. “And once you’re finished getting well and truly trollied, what do you propose then? This whole evening has been a waste from start to finish.”
“Not entirely,” Jennie slurred, wiping her mouth with the back of her arm.
Worthington cocked an eyebrow and waited expectantly.
“In case you didn’t notice, those two thugs were wearing chains around their neck.”
“Oh, wonderful. I wonder who they stole those from.”
“They both had the symbol of Mjölnir on them,” Jennie continued as if Worthington hadn’t uttered a word. “Thor’s hammer? The sign of the Spectral Plane? You know what that means, right?”
Worthington’s smile fell away.
“It means we’re in the right neighborhood. If the grunts of the Spectral Plane are nearby, their bosses will be, too.”
Worthington shook his head, letting out a small laugh. “You son-of-a—”
“Stop,” Jennie interrupted, beaming. “You know it’s not proper to abuse a lady.”
She opened another vodka and drained it in one.
Chapter Two
Jennie’s hangover shifted a little after midday.
“You’d think after over a century, you’d have found a cure by now,” Worthington complained, giving her a derisive look.
“Don’t get me started,” Jennie retorted. She sidestepped around an old woman using a walker and adjusted her sunglasses, just one measure she adopted to help her cope with bright lights and woozy mornings. The streets were packed with people as the sun beat down on the pair of them.
Worthington floated through the people, leaving all of them with the slightest of chills down their spines.
“You know, I thought we were really making a breakthrough when Coke was invented. Liquid sugar in a drink. That had to be it, right?”
Worthington frowned. “When Coke was… I thought you said you were born in ’81? Wouldn’t that have made you a little girl? Coke came around in the late 1800s, after all.”
Jennie waited for the green light to appear, then crossed the street with the others. She looked at Worthington, impressed. “Wow, someone’s been studying their history.”
A balding man with multiple chins standing directly behind Worthington gave Jennie a strange look. She stifled a laugh and abruptly sped up.
“Well, you get a lot of time to read when you’re living as a specter in the eternal afterlife. Read and think. Read and think. Then read and think some more.” He sighed. “So, your first hangover was when you were, what? Five? Six?”
Jennie took a left. This street was lined with expensive-looking shops, cafes, and restaurants, all flooded with people in the throes of the lunchtime rush.
“No, nothing like that. I was actually thirteen. Turns out, it’s pretty easy to steal liquor when your friends in the afterlife lend you a helping hand.” She spotted what she was looking for up ahead. “Aha! Speaking of which.”
She jogged through the crowd and fell in line a few feet back from a muscular black man with dark suspenders holding his trousers up and a short-sleeved brown shirt. He was taller than the rest of the crowd, with a bowler hat sitting slightly askew on the top of his head.
But that wasn’t what had drawn Jennie’s attention. It wasn’t even the revolver in the holster on his hip, or the large, ancient socket wrench he held over his shoulder like the handle of a bindle.
The man glowed with the faint ethereal indication of a specter.
They trailed him down Sixth Avenue for a few blocks, always remaining far enough away to not draw attention to themselves.
He took another left onto Fifty-First, where the streets were quieter. Now it was them, the man, and just a smattering of people on the streets. When he approached an alley on his right, he took the turn and ducked inside.
“It’s always alleys, isn’t it?” Worthington muttered.
Jennie sped up, afraid to lose him, but when she turned around the corner, the specter was nowhere to be seen.
Jennie threw her hands in the air. “Damn specters.”
“Actually, the damned aren’t specters. They’re poltergeists.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Jennie retorted.
A passing woman glanced down the alley, curious as to who Jennie was shouting at.
Jennie fell silent and took a breath. She strolled deeper into the alley and narrowed her eyes, allowing her body to try to sense the direction of the specter.
Worthington stood beside her, wincing as she drew power from him.
It came to her, like true north on a compass. She stared at the wall of the large building before her and placed a hand on the brickwork. “Worthington, if you wouldn’t mind?”
“When have you ever asked my permission before?”
Worthington dutifully marched beside Jennie as her power reached out and connected with the specter. She felt a slight chill at the connection. She closed her eyes, took a step forward, and felt herself become immaterial. The sensation was not unpleasant. When she opened her eyes again, she was in a small, dark room.
People chattered somewhere nearby. A piano was playing. A group of women warmed up their vocal cords with a variety of exercises designed to test their range.
Jennie exited the room, allowing light to spill into the small storage cupboard. She followed the long corridor beyond, keeping her body attuned to the trail of the specter. She passed doors with names decorated in strings of lights but saw none she recognized. It was from these that the voices rang.
As she neared the end of the corridor, a door opened on her left and a woman stepped out backward, still speaking to whoever was in the room. “She’ll understand when she realizes what it takes to be a star. You can’t work with amateurs until—”
She bumped into Jennie.
“Oh, sorry.” She eyed Jennie as she spoke between chews of her gum. “Nice.” She nodded approvingly. “Did they up the budget for costumes this year?”
Jennie stifled a laugh. “Something like that.”
The woman poked her head back inside the room. “See, Diane? This is what a professional looks like.” Back to Jennie. “Break a leg out there, honey.”
The woman marched down the hallway and knocked loudly on a door farther down.
“She’s a strange sort,” Worthington remarked.
Jennie saw the small logo on the corner of the names on the doors and felt herself swell with excitement. “Worthington, do you realize where we are?”
“Somewhere actors come to die?”
Jennie shot him a look. “We’re at Radio City Music Hall. I’ve always wanted to visit here.”
“Well, you’ve picked a lovely time,” Worthington replied dryly. “Maybe you should get some tickets for a show, put your feet up, take your time, and just dilly-dally until Christmas rolls around. I’m sure the queen would be more than happy to finance your excursion.”
But Jennie wasn’t listening. As she opened the door from the theater dressing rooms, the sounds of classical music filled the air. Wooden boards beneath her feet indicated she was at the back of the stage, and several props cloaked in the shadows confirmed it.
There was a crease in the enormous maroon curtain. Jennie peered through it and saw a handsome man in a tuxedo playing the piano. His eyes were shut as he fell into the music, and he played as though his heart was full.
Sitting in the row of seats in front of the stage was a man with his hands steepled in front of his face. Two women sat beside him, furiously scribbling notes on the clipboards in their laps.
Jennie was
instantly thrown back to her own days as a child, growing up in London around the boom of the modern theater scene. Her parents had worked at the Savoy Theater. It was one of London’s largest and finest underground theaters, the one which had led the way on the installation of electric lights to improve safety in the productions.
That was a blessing that had been long overdue, given the number of accidents caused by enthusiastic flames in candles as they ate up and destroyed their wooden homes in seconds.
Back then, Jennie had been nothing more than a little girl, wandering around the stage while impatient directors tapped their feet and adoring actors swooned and laughed. The Savoy had become a second home to her, a place that filled her with warmth, delight, and song.
It had also been the place she’d first discovered her gift. A theater as old as the Savoy had been the target of rumors of ghosts and ghouls for as long as people could remember. And, while others thought they were mere superstition, it turned out that they made pretty decent playmates.
Even after all these years, Jennie wondered what might have happened if instead of ghosts, she’d had the chance to play with scripts and test her talents on stage. Of course, being the paranormal queen’s number-one killing machine was fun, but would she ever get the chance to play Juliet? Lady Macbeth? To read from Beckett, Chekov, or Andrew Lloyd Webber?
“It sure is beautiful, isn’t it?”
Jennie spun around and saw the man they had been following studying a speaker the height of a double fridge.
The man stared admiringly at it, craning behind to get to the control panel. “An HR-2190. Man, these things make the HR-2170 look like a TCX-16. Imagine if we’d had these back in my day. We could’ve boomed some folks’ skeletons right out of their skin.”
Worthington arched an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, are you talking in some kind of code? I have literally no idea what you’re talking about.”
The man laughed, his face kind and warm. “Don’t worry about it, chimney sweep.” He pulled an ethereal cloth from his pocket and wiped his hands, a habit carried over from his time. “Name’s Baxter. Baxter Scampton. We don’t often see people of your…” He paused as he studied Worthington’s attire. “Um, origin, on this side of the Pond.”
Rogue, Renegade And Rebel (In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service Book 1) Page 3