“Yes, well, there are a lot of things going on at the minute which haven’t been seen on ‘this side of the Pond,’” Jennie replied, folding her arms. “Which is why we’ve come.”
Baxter took a step back in surprise. “She can talk?”
Worthington nodded. “The trick is getting her to shut up.”
“You better watch your tone,” she told the specter, pointing a finger at him. “Of course, I can talk. I’ve been able to talk since I was two years old. I think what you meant to say is, ‘She can talk to specters?’”
Baxter chuckled, a disbelieving look in his eyes. “Well, I’ll be damned. You guys are springing up everywhere at the moment, aren’t you?”
“What are you talking about?” Jennie asked. “‘You guys?’”
“Hey! Who’s back there?” The director shouted from the front row. “We can hear you! Lucy, run behind the curtains and tell whoever’s back there that they’re out of showbiz for good! No one interrupts Don Apatow’s rehearsals and gets away with it!”
“I think that’s our cue to leave,” Baxter told them hurriedly.
Jennie nodded. “Lead the way.”
Worthington followed. “Spiffing.”
Baxter led them through a door at the side of the stage and up several flights of stairs. They eventually came out at a small empty bar which later that night would be packed with avid theater enthusiasts ready to watch the latest Don Apatow spectacular.
Jennie locked the door. Worthington and Baxter took their seats, laughing as they exhaled and slumped into the plush comfort.
Jennie crossed the room and ducked behind the bar, emerging a moment later with a handful of bottles.
“I don’t think you’re meant to touch those,” Baxter warned her.
Worthington waved a hand. “She doesn’t care.”
“Hey, you know what’d be good?” Jennie examined the labels of the bottles. “A stiff Lapinsky.”
“What’s that?” Baxter asked, watching Jennie with interest.
Jennie worked her way around the bar, grabbing spirit measures and weighing fruits in her hand. “Something that went out of style a few decades ago. Vodka, lime, orange juice, rum, and a dash of Boku. It was named after Richard Lewis’ wife—y’know, the comedian with the squiffy hair? I told him it’d never catch on, and guess who was right?”
Worthington sat forward. “When did you meet Richard Lewis?”
“Remember the tour he did in the late nineties?”
“We’re talking the twentieth century now, right?” Baxter asked.
“That’s the one,” Jennie confirmed. “I went to watch the show and bumped into him backstage afterward. Nice guy. Think he was only after a quickie, but he underestimated how well I can hold my liquor.”
She rifled through the fridges, searching for something to finish off her concoction. “Ah, here we go.” She found a small peeler and scored a section of skin from a lime. The peel curled like a ribbon, and she poured her cocktail into a tall glass. Condensation beaded the outside and small bubbles filtered to the top.
She took a long sip. “My goodness, I forgot how great they were. Would either of you like one?” She laughed, knowing that specters had a different digestive system than mortals.
She drained half the glass through a straw, poured the rest from the shaker into the glass to top up, then sat down with the others. “Splendid. Now that we’re suitably refreshed, are you going to tell us what a specter such as yourself is doing getting all pervy on a speaker system at Radio City Music Hall?”
“I wasn’t perving,” Baxter denied. “Truth is that I’m an inventor. Well, I was an inventor back in 1908 until a little accident parted my soul from my body, and now—voila!—here I am. I like to check out modern gadgetry to see what kind of technological advances are happening with the world.”
Worthington’s lip curled. “So, you thought you’d start by staring at a speaker?”
“It’s not just a speaker,” Baxter replied, getting a little heated. “The Music Hall just updated their sound system. An entirely new spec of the latest audio engineering designed to give full, three-sixty-degree sound that distributes evenly around its theater. Do you know how difficult that is?”
Worthington shrugged.
“I’m guessing it’s difficult?” Jennie answered.
Baxter nodded enthusiastically. “So difficult! If we’d have had this technology when I was alive and well, maybe so many of my relatives wouldn’t have suffered from hearing problems throughout the years.” He shook his head, his eyes going glassy. “Maximum bass, and a rich sound with none of the damage.”
“Wonderful,” Jennie remarked without much enthusiasm.
Baxter’s attention turned back to Jennie, his eyes trailing from her face to her hips.
“Hey, pervert, my eyes are up here.”
Worthington rolled his eyes. “She says, wearing a corset.”
“It’s not a corset,” Jennie corrected. “It’s a ‘focus strap.’”
“Oh, here we go.”
Baxter chuckled. “What’s a focus strap?”
“Pain helps me focus.” Jennie smirked, peeking over the top of her sunglasses. “And this is one way to keep me in a permanent state of pain.” She chewed her lip. “Plus, it makes my tits look great.”
“Why do you need to be in a permanent state of pain?” Baxter asked, narrowly dodging the hook.
“Oh, no.” Jennie wagged a finger. “You need to answer my questions first. You said ‘guys like me’ were springing up everywhere. What did that mean?”
Baxter scratched his chin. “People who can communicate with specters. People who can dabble with us ‘lifers.’”
“Lifers?” Worthington asked.
“A nickname we call each other on this side of the Pond,” he explained.
“It’s not a Pond,” Jennie interjected. “It’s an ocean. Unless you think you could fit that body of water in someone’s garden?”
“Anyway.” Baxter grinned. “In all my years of living in this form, I’ve met only one or two folks who were even half-close to being able to see and communicate with the dead, but in the last few months, there have been reports of people who can sense and summon the dead. I mean, none to the extent that you can, as far as I’m aware. But still. Something’s been happening. Something’s changed.”
He stared intensely at Jennie, holding her gaze with a small smile on his face. “I still can’t believe you can see me.”
“Yes, it’s a real miracle,” Jennie agreed, sounding bored. She turned to Worthington. “Do you think these people might have something to do with the rising number of specters in the city?”
Worthington shrugged. “I’d say it’s definitely a good place to start.”
Baxter sat up. “Hold on. Now that you’ve heard my part, maybe you can answer my questions. You know, it’s not often I get a chance to speak to a mortal. At least, not one who can reply to me.”
“You’re better off keeping her quiet,” Worthington told him dryly. “And ‘mortal’ might be too strong a word for Jennie.”
“Either way, what’s a couple of British folks doing on our side of the Po—” He wilted under Jennie’s glare. “Ocean, following a specter into the back of a nationally recognized theater?”
Jennie’s eyebrow raised. “You knew we were following you?”
“I had my suspicions, especially when old fur-head there was bobbing along with his hat poking out like a goddamn beacon.”
“Hey,” Worthington snapped. “This is the official uniform of the royal guard of the monarchs of England. At least, it was at the time I passed on. They’ve updated the current uniform somewhat; removed some of the fancier details, which I highly disagree with. But still! Do not mock what should be respected—must be respected—by the specters who fall under the rule of Her Majesty and the paranormal court.”
“The paranormal court?” Baxter’s eyes widened. “You two are from the paranormal court?”
&nbs
p; Jennie crossed one leg over the other, twirling her Lapinsky in one hand. “Not only that, but we’ve been sent here on a very important mission, and it sounds like you might be the perfect specter to help us.”
Chapter Three
Brooklyn, New York, Present Day
“What you’re about to see is a secret to anyone outside of the spectral circle,” Baxter told Jennie and Worthington as he took the pair down a narrow side street.
Night had fallen, which was Jennie’s preferred time of operation. When the streets were dark and the honest and true were tucked up tightly in their beds, it was much easier to sniff out the filth.
Bad guys operated in darkness, for the most part. That was the truth of it. It was no wonder that children’s stories of monsters and demons often portrayed the fabled creatures in the dark beneath their bed and inside their closets.
Carpe Noctem, Jennie thought, choosing not to let herself get distracted by the drug deal she could see clearly in a nearby alley. If they were stupid enough to ingest poisons into their system, they were dumb enough to risk the chances of dying from them.
They arrived at a small wooden door. “Here we are.”
“What is this place?” Jennie asked, staring up at redbrick walls covered in graffiti.
“A place for communion.” Baxter grinned, disappearing through the door. “Come on.”
Jennie connected with Worthington and took a step through the door, feeling herself become immaterial. She passed through the wood and followed Baxter down a set of stone steps leading deep into the underground.
More and more murmuring voices greeted them, the farther down they went. The bare stone walls were chilly, and a slight funk hung in the air, offending Jennie’s nostrils.
“What’s that smell?” she asked.
Baxter laughed. “Cheese. This place is used as a cheese-maturing facility in the daytime. Fortunately for us specters, that’s something that we don’t have to worry much about. Our sense of smell is—”
“Less accurate than a human’s,” Jennie finished.
Baxter nodded and smiled.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they went through a doorway and into a room that looked like it might once have been a part of the city’s catacomb system. Wooden shelves labeled with various names of cheeses lined the walls. Some were in bags, some out in the open in wheels, and some hung from strings.
Weaving lazily between the catacombs was one of the largest gatherings of specters Jennie had ever seen.
They came from all time periods. There were some dressed in the plain, shabby garb of peasants from the 1700s. Many wore the uniform of the soldiers of the American Revolution, complete with muskets. Some had the powdered faces and wigs of the aristocracy.
Then there were the men, women, and children from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Some wore flat black caps, and others wore flares and open-collared shirts. There were even a few gangsters milling around with cigars in their mouths and guns holstered at their sides.
“Quite the collection,” Jennie remarked. “Who are all these people?”
“I call them the ‘neutrals,’” Baxter replied quietly. “The specters from the city who just want to socialize and tell their tales. The ghosts who are happy living in the middle and want a safe space to drink, be merry, and shoot the shit.”
“Bax!” A woman in a power suit with blonde hair cropped at her shoulders approached Baxter and greeted him with a kiss to each cheek. She was slender, with the gaunt look of someone who had failed to get the right nutrition into her body when she’d been alive.
“Eva,” Baxter replied. Eva’s enthusiasm was clearly one-sided. “I’d like you to meet some new friends of mine. This is Worthington.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Worthington offered, taken aback as Eva leaned forward and kissed both cheeks.
Jennie introduced herself before Worthington could drop her full name. “Please, call me Jennie.”
Eva moved to kiss her cheeks but paused to study Jennie. She leaned conspiratorially toward Baxter. “Is she…”
“A human, yeah.”
“But she…”
“Spoke to you, yeah. She can see us all.” He turned to Jennie to check. “Can’t you?”
Jennie nodded, a smug grin on her face. “Crystal clear.”
“There! See?”
“How come I haven’t met these two before?” Eve sounded hurt, as though Jennie and Worthington were competition for her affections. “Where did you meet them?”
“We’re new to the city,” Jennie explained. “We’ve come by orders of the que—”
“Er, the questing crew of yore.” Baxter laughed, cutting Jennie off. “That’s right, they’re here to do some research in the city and take back what they learn about the spectral community to their homeland. Isn’t that right?”
“Riiight,” Jennie replied.
“Well, you couldn’t have come at a better time,” Eva told her, puffing on her eternal cigarette. “With shit going down how it is in the city, you’ll be able to fill reams of paper with notes.” She leaned closer. “I’m telling you, it’s a full-blown turf war. I saw it myself back in my mortal days. It’s East Side versus West Side all over again. Listen to hip-hop from the nineties. You’ll get what I mean.”
“Turf wars?” Worthington asked.
“That’s actually why we’ve come,” Baxter told Eve. “Have you seen Tobias around anywhere? We’ve got some questions to ask him.”
“Tobias?” Eve repeated blankly.
Baxter sighed. “You know, the big guy with the gold chain around his neck. Tattoos on his face?”
Eva shook her head.
“Massive bullet wounds to the chest and arms,” he continued in a beleaguered tone.
“Oh!” She slapped her forehead. “I think I saw him over with the Teller Twins, trying to work out the best way to haunt his ex-wife. Just two weeks after his death, and she’s already shacking up with his best friend. Talk about moving on fast.”
Baxter thanked Eva and said his goodbyes before leading Jennie and Worthington through the crowd.
It was strange watching the specters. Somehow it was like being at a cocktail party, except the people could only bring what they had with them when they’d died. Jennie had seen specters able to solidify enough to pick up objects and move them around, but none who could drink the concoctions of mortals.
What sad lives they must lead. I’d be devastated if I couldn’t at least shake a shaker and make something fresh and new for my tongue to enjoy.
New. That was getting harder and harder to find the more years that she lived. There were only so many tastes in the world.
Jennie did her best to avoid the gazes of the specters around her as they crossed the room. She knew she stuck out like a sore thumb, but that didn’t mean she had to draw attention to herself.
Not that walking behind a Beefeater with a bearskin hat which scraped the fucking ceiling draws any attention away from me. Why did the queen have to give me him of all people?
They found Tobias standing in a corner of a room in a heated discussion with two men who were identical to look at. Tobias wore an expensive-looking suit with a white rose on the lapel, his midsection sunken in toward the place where his chest had caved from the bullets that killed him. His arm had several chunks missing, as though someone had taken bites from him.
The twin men wore red and green cardigans, respectively, and beige corduroys. Their hair was combed neatly to the side, the pair easily looking as though they could have been the stars of a TV commercial from the 1950s.
“I’m telling you, I tried that. The bitch just doesn’t believe in ghosts.”
The twins stared at him. “Not even when objects are floating above her head in the middle of the night?”
“No, she just thinks it’s a goddamn dream.”
“Well,” the twin in the red cardigan complained, “there go my plans for teaching Spectral Haunting 101.”
&
nbsp; “I thought you guys scared your wives so badly, they ended up killing themselves. How did you do it?”
“Oh, that was easy.” The one in green chuckled. “We just appeared in the mirror every time they looked. Couple that with passing through them every few minutes to freak out their adrenaline system, and you’re golden.”
The twin in red nodded. “Plus, it helped when we found out they were both going on a weekend away to help heal themselves from their mourning and we cut the brake lines to their car.”
“Oh, yeah,” Green Cardigan replied, staring into the distance as if remembering it all with fondness. “They wrapped around that tree so many times, the ambulance had to peel them off with tongs.”
“Why would you murder your wives after you died?” Jennie asked before she could stop herself.
The twins gave her a strange look. “Because they murdered us,” they replied at the same time. They lifted their tops to reveal wounds on their chests where the knives had plunged into them. “The bitches had it coming.”
A woman floated past them, her face and body warped and out of shape. “You could’ve chosen a nicer way to do it,” she put in before disappearing back into the crowd.
Red Cardigan looked at Green Cardigan. "See what I mean? Bee-yotch.”
“Have you tried swapping their sugar for salt?” Baxter offered.
Tobias pinched the bridge of his nose. “You realize I’m not after schoolyard pranks or murder here. I want to piss the bitch off.” He shook his head and sighed. “Just forget it. What do you want, Bax?”
“Nice way to greet an old friend.” Baxter smirked. “I’d like to introduce you to two friends of mine, Worthington and Jennie.”
Tobias looked at the pair for the first time. “You want to be careful, lad, walking around here dressed like that. Some might take offense to your costume. Get the wrong idea.”
Worthington huffed. “It’s not a costume.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Tobias waved a hand. “Just know that there are many here that aren’t exactly proponents of the queen’s rule. This is a safe space for the neutrals to talk and be free.” He turned to Baxter. “And bringing mortals into this place? Is that a smart move?”
Rogue, Renegade And Rebel (In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service Book 1) Page 4