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Excerpt for Demons Are A Ghoul's Best Friend
Chapter One
“He’s late,” snapped Gilley, my business partner and best friend, as he stared gloomily out the window. “I tip him generously every day, and this is the thanks I get?”
I looked away from the magazine article I was reading at my desk and glanced at my watch. It was two minutes past ten. “Wow,” I said sarcastically. “He’s two whole minutes late! My God, man! How do you hang on?”
Gil turned away from the window, his irritation with the delivery man now focused on me. “M.J.,” he growled. “I make one small request from this guy and that is to deliver me a Diet Coke and a bagel with cream cheese every morning by ten a.m. Not around ten. Not after ten. Not somewhere in the vicinity of ten. By ten, as in no later than…”
I rolled my eyes and went back to reading the article. There was no use in carrying on a civil conversation with Gil until he’d had a few sips of his Diet Coke. And there was equally no use in offering some suggestions about his going through withdrawal every time the delivery guy was late, like having a stockpile of Diet Coke in the closet, or picking one up on his way to work in the morning. Nope, Gil liked his morning routine just the way it was, and that included the hissy fit he’d throw when his breakfast wasn’t on time. It was my strong belief that Gilley hung on to this routine due to the fact that the delivery guy was a hottie. Didn’t matter that he clearly wasn’t gay, Gil liked to flirt with him anyway.
With another growl, Gil began to pace back and forth across my office, which was annoying but there was no way I was going to say anything.
“Doc’s a pretty boy!” squawked my African Grey parrot. “Doc’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!” I smiled as I read the article. Doc sure knew how to break the tension. “Dr. Delicious! Dr. Delicious!” he squawked excitedly.
I glanced up and looked at Doc. “He’s here?” I asked, and in answer the front door to our suite opened and we heard a “Good morning!” from the lobby.
Gil stopped his pacing and visibly tried to look more relaxed. “We’re in here,” he called.
I quickly put the magazine I’d been reading in a drawer and pulled my laptop closer, resting my fingers on the keyboard. After a moment, in walked six feet or so of tall, dark, and really delicious, or, Dr. Steven Sable, the third partner in our ghostbusting business. “Hello, team,” he said in a deep gravely baritone laced with an accent that is a blend of European and Latin.
“Morning,” Gil and I said in unison. “I didn’t expect you this morning,” I added. “I thought you had a lecture.” Steven had just begun working at the University of Massachusetts as the summer semester’s guest lecturer on cardiovascular thoracic surgery.
“It was cancelled. A pipe burst in the lecture hall. There was water everywhere and the administration called off classes until further notice.”
“It’s June,” Gil pointed out. “How does a pipe burst in June?”
“I am not knowing this,” said Steven, taking a seat across from me. Our eyes met and I felt a little zing of electricity pass between us.
“You got your bandage off,” I said, noticing his swollen and scarred hand now free of the thick bandage he’d been walking around with after he’d been shot in the hand on a ghost bust that had gone bad several weeks earlier.”
“Good and new,” Steven said, turning his hand this way and that.”
“Good for you,” I said to him. “And it’s nice to see you, but there’s not much going on today. No ghostbusting to be done, I’m afraid.”
“No new cases?”
“Not a one,” said Gil. “It looks like we’ve hit a dry spell.”
“What about the Hendersons?” Steven asked, referring to the last case we’d worked. “Have they had any more trouble?”
“Nope,” I said. “In fact, Mrs. Henderson sent over a fruit basket with her thanks. The house has been totally quiet for over two weeks now.”
“This is a major bumming,” said Steven. I should mention that English is his fifth language, and not one that he’s even remotely mastered yet.
I glanced at Gil and noticed that he’d started sweating. By the clock on the wall his Diet Coke was now officially ten minutes late. “Gil,” I said gently. “Why don’t you just drive to the deli and get your breakfast?”
Gilley gave me a curt nod and bolted out of the office suite. “What is his problem?” asked Steven.
“He’s gotta have his caffeine fix by ten a.m. or we all suffer for it,” I said.
“At least now we have some time alone,” Steven said with a bounce to his eyebrows.
I squirmed in my chair. “Now, now,” I said, wagging a finger at him as he got up out of his chair and came around the desk. “Steven,” I protested as he twirled my chair around to face him and leaned down to hover his lips over mine.
“What is the harm, M.J.?” he asked. “We are alone. Gilley is off getting fixed and there are no clients coming in….” And that’s when we heard the front door open.
Steven sighed as his lips brushed mine and then he straightened up and took a glance out into the lobby. “Hello?” I called.
“It is your friend,” Steven whispered. “The one who knocks out the men.”
I gave him a quizzical look but understood what he meant when my good friend Karen O’Neal came into the office. When Gilley first met Karen, he noted what a knockout she was, blond, blue eyed and boobs out to there. He nicknamed her T.K.O. for total knockout, and that evolved into Teeko. “Hey, M.J.,” she said when she saw me. “And hello Dr. Sable,” she added.
I noticed right away that Karen seemed upset about something, which was alarming because in all the time I’d known her, I’d never seen her look anything other than cool as a cucumber. “Hey, Teek,” I said as I stood up. “What’s happened?”
Karen smiled tightly. “It’s that obvious, huh?” Steven moved to pull a chair out for her and then he took a seat as well. “I need your help,” she said, getting straight to the point.
“Of course,” I said. “Anything. You name it and I’ll help.”
“It’s about my niece,” she said, wringing her hands and referring to her favorite niece, fourteen year old Evie O’Neil. “She’s been attacked.”
“Oh, my God!” I gasped. “Teeko, that’s horrible! I’m so sorry!”
Karen nodded, and I could tell she was struggling with her emotions. “It happened at her school,” she said raggedly, looking down at her lap. “She can barely talk about it.”
“Is she all right?”
Karen looked up at me, her eyes haunted by the trauma that her niece had been through. “God, I hope so, M.J.” she said.
“Did they catch the guy who attacked her?”
Karen shook her head no. “That’s why I need your help. All Evie could tell us was that a man wielding an ax chased her through the hallway at school. He cornered her in one of the old classrooms and as he came at her she closed her eyes and screamed. And then she felt something strike the chalkboard right next to her, but when she opened her eyes, no one was there.”
I cocked my head to the side. “How long was the time between the strike she heard and when she opened her eyes?” I asked.
“Instantaneous,” Karen said. “She said the sound made her snap her eyes open.”
“Was there a mark in the chalkboard?”
“I don’t know. My brother was called to the school to collect her. She’s hysterical. She insists she saw what she saw, but…” Karen’s voice drifted off.
“But what, sweetie?” I asked softly.
Karen sighed. “At the beginning of the school year the school had security cameras installed in every hallway and in the classrooms, just in case an intruder ever entered the school. They played the tapes back to see who this guy was. My brother says that you can clearly see Evie running down the hall as if she’s being chased and into a classroom where she appears to see someone who terrifies her. But there’s no man with an axe on the tape. There is no man at all. She’s completely alone.”
“Have you seen this tape?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“No. Not yet. Evie called me this morning after Kevin brought her home, and she was crying so hard I could barely make sense of what she was saying. When I couldn’t calm her down I asked to speak to Kevin. He’s lost all patience with her,” Karen said with a sigh. “Of course, he never really had any of that in abundance anyway.”
I kept my opinion about Karen’s brother to myself, even though I was itching to add a similar sentiment. “What is he going to do about Evie?” I asked, feeling a sense of dread in my stomach.
“Bah,” she said with an impatient flip of her hand. “My brother is an idiot! He’s convinced Evie has some sort of psychosis that is causing her to hallucinate and he’s considering taking her to a psychiatrist.”
I frowned. I knew how close Karen was to her niece, and I also knew how skeptical her brother was of anything that science couldn’t precisely quantify. He didn’t believe in ghosts, mediums, psychics, or anything spiritual. I’d met him only once, and I’d instantly disliked him. “I’ll help you any way I can,” I said to her. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”
“I want to hire you,” she said, reaching inside her purse for her checkbook. “And I want you to hunt down whatever evil demon attacked my niece, and then I want you to send him to hell, if that’s possible.”
Steven and I glanced at each other. He gave me a slight shrug of his shoulders as if to say, Why not? “You don’t have to hire me,” I said. “I’ll do it for free.”
Steven coughed loudly and widened his eyes at me. Karen smiled. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You need the income and I need your professional ghostbusting services. I pay you, or it’s no deal.”
“Okay,” I said, throwing up my hands. “If you say so.”
Karen removed the cap from her pen, hovering it over her checkbook and said, “Good, I’m glad you’re being reasonable. How much to retain your services?”
“It’s a hundred dollars a day, Teek,” I said. Again Steven sputtered a cough. I gave him a warning glare. There was no way I was charging the full price for my dear friend.
“Really?” Karen said skeptically. “Because your website says it’s two-fifty a day.”
“Must be a typo,” I replied easily.
“You must think I’m gullible,” Karen said as her hand scribbled out a number on the check. With flourish she tore it off and handed it to me as she got up. “That should hold you for a week or so,” she said. “And don’t even think about not cashing it.”
I looked at the check on my desk. There were far too many zeros there for my comfort level. I opened my mouth to protest but Karen held up her hand in a stop motion. “I don’t want to hear about it, M.J. This is business.”
“But Teek -”
“No,” she said firmly. “It’s settled. I’ll call you in an hour to confirm the time of our departure. The school is in upstate New York just outside Lake Placid. If we leave tonight we can make it halfway there and stop for the night at this really nice hotel I know along the way. Would you mind sharing a room with me?”
“Not at all,” I said, then glanced at Steven. “As long as you don’t mind sharing a room with Gilley?”
“This is not a problem,” he said agreeably.
Karen gave him a smile. “Perfect. I’ll book two rooms with double beds. If we leave around five we can be there by eleven. I hope traveling that far isn’t going to be a problem?”
“It’s no problem,” said Steven. “We can break into the new van.”
“Break in the new van,” I corrected gently.
“What is this difference?” he asked.
“If we did it your way, we’d get arrested.” Turning to Karen I said, “We’ll need clearance from the school, Teek.”
“Leave it to me,” she said confidently.
“I’ll also need to talk to Evie,” I added.
“Consider it done. My brother and his wife live about an hour away from the school. And my family has a ski lodge only twenty minutes from there. It’s large enough to accommodate all of us, and we can use it as a home base.”
“Are you sure Kevin will let me near Evie?” I asked.
“He will if I have anything to say about it,” said Karen.
Just then Gilley came back in from his trek to the deli. He was with the delivery guy and laughing and giggling like the girly man he was. “Oh, it’s really okay, Jay,” he said to the delivery man. “Sleeping through your alarm happens to everyone.” When he saw Karen, standing near my door he said, “Teeko! Great to see you, dahling. And the ladies look extra sumptuous today. I love the sweater,” he added with a hand flourish. “Shows off the mounds something fierce.”
I cleared my throat loudly, knowing Karen was not in the mood for Gilley’s usual banter. Karen smiled at Gilley anyway. “Hey, Gil. M.J. will catch you up. Talk to you all in an hour,” she said and she hurried out the door.
Gil gave me a curious look as the delivery guy stood there patiently, waiting for Gilley to pay him for his bagel and Diet Coke. “Gas up the van, Gil,” I said, standing up. “We’ve got a job!”