The Ghoul Next Door Read online

  “Come ’ere!” I heard a squeaky voice cry.

  “In a sec, baby,” I replied.

  “Come ’ere!” the voice insisted.

  I ignored the command and fished around the drawer, finally coming up with the scissors, and began to carefully cut through the package.

  “Come ’ere! Come ’ere! Come ’ere!”

  I share my office (and my condo, and my life) with a feathered, red-tailed African gray parrot named Doc—whom I’ve had since fifth grade. He’s adorably sweet, funny, and maybe a teensy bit demanding. “I’m busy, honey,” I told him.

  Doc climbed along the bars to exit the little door of his cage and make it up to the roof—which houses a nice play stand, and where he could perch and have a better view of what I was fiddling with. “What do you do?” he asked. Doc speaks better English than most toddlers.

  “Opening a package.” At this point I got the thing opened and managed to pull out a square black box with gold lettering on top, which indicated it’d come from one of the finer jewelry stores in Valdosta—my hometown. Lifting the lid, I sucked in a breath when I took notice of an absolutely beautiful gold charm bracelet with three charms—a golden parrot, a small happy ghost, and a heart. For a moment I just stared at the gift, completely taken by surprise. “What’re you up to?” Doc called, trying to get my attention again.

  I realized I had my back to him, so I turned and lifted the beautiful bracelet up for him to see. He cocked his head curiously.

  “What do you think?” I asked him.

  Doc blew me a really good raspberry.

  “Everyone’s a critic,” I laughed. But I went back to staring at the charm with a mixture of bewilderment and delight, while Doc added to the raspberry a long litany of clucks, whistles, and happy chirps.

  Doc’s been with me since right after Mama died. My paternal grandmother had given him to me after my mother’s passing to help bring me out of the terrible grief I was silently suffering.

  The baby parrot was like a beacon of light in a world filled only with heartbreak. My mother had been the kindest, most wonderful and loving person I’d ever known, and her loss devastated me right into muteness. I spoke not one word for many months after her funeral. Even when I fell and broke a finger, I cried silently, unable to free my vocal cords from the crushing weight of my grief. Doc changed all that. Like a phoenix he pulled me from the ashes, and slowly, with his help and love of mimicry, I healed and started talking again. But the chatty, charming bird seemed to have no effect on Daddy. And I’ll never understand why, but right from the start Daddy had seemed to resent my delightful pet. In fact, he’d tolerated Doc a lot like he’d tolerated my ability to talk to dead people . . . as in he’d barely tolerated him at all.

  So, opening Daddy’s gift to reveal something so lovely and thoughtful as a parrot charm and a ghost charm was a real surprise. And the heart was also an out-of-character choice from Daddy. He just wasn’t sentimental or outwardly emotive. He was more like a closed door that I’d long since given up knocking on.

  For a second I thought that it simply must have been his secretary’s choice, but she’d never shown one shred of sensitivity for me. Previous gifts were simplistic items, like a pair of candlesticks, or a paperweight, or a picture frame. I’d long thought of Daddy’s secretary of twenty years, Willamina, as a harsh, cold woman who preferred dressing all in black except for the bloodred lipstick she coated her thin lips with.

  Her style made her look as if she were perpetually in mourning, and given how my mother’s death had turned Daddy into such a terribly cold and bitter person, I found some irony in that.

  At last I tore my eyes away from the charm and fished around inside the envelope it’d come in, finding a card there too. I opened it to read a lovely handwritten note in beautiful cursive, wishing me the happiest of birthdays and hoping to catch up soon. The handwriting wasn’t anyone’s I recognized, but the signature was clearly Daddy’s. And not the forged signature of his secretary, but Daddy’s real scraggly scrawl, which added even more mystery to the gift.

  I moved to my desk and sat down, because I needed to sit down. Slipping the bracelet on, I stared at it and wondered first what was going on with Daddy, and second, how should I respond to such a lovely, thoughtful gift?

  The average normal person would’ve immediately picked up the phone to call and thank her father for the kindness, but as you may have guessed, I’m not exactly normal. There were too many years of missed opportunities, broken promises, harsh words, and judgmental attitudes to be swept aside by a bit of precious metal.

  Still, after taking off the bracelet to set it gently back inside the box, I did reach for the phone. “Sweet baby Jesus, gurl! Why’re you calling me so early?” Gilley answered by way of greeting.

  “I got a birthday package from Daddy,” I said, getting right to the point.

  Gilley yawned, and I could imagine him bleary-eyed and mop-headed, tangled in his bedcovers. “Let me guess: This year’s check is for two hundred, right?”

  “No. It’s not a check.”

  “His secretary just sent a card? Jeez, M.J., why does that man even bother anymore? I’ll call Ma. She’ll make sure you get a nice present on your birthday.”

  I smiled. Mrs. Gillespie had been making sure I received lovely gifts on my birthday for twenty-two years now, and she never needed prompting from her son, either. “No, Gil, you don’t understand. Daddy sent me a really nice gift.”

  That won me another yawn. “Black leather gloves?”

  “A solid gold charm bracelet with three charms: a parrot, a heart, and a little Casper ghost.”

  Gilley was silent for about five seconds. “Is your dad sick?”

  I leaned back in my chair and threw an arm over my eyes. “I have no idea. We haven’t spoken in almost a year and a half.”

  “Leave it to me,” Gil said. “I’ll call Ma and get the scoop.” Mrs. Gillespie was tied to all the gossip in our hometown.

  I hung up with Gilley but kept my arm over my eyes. What if Daddy was sick? What if he was really sick? I knew that with my abilities I could probably find out the answer, but I was too chicken. There was a part of me that didn’t want to know, because I’d already lived through one parent’s terminal illness, and it’d nearly been my undoing.

  Doc began singing a Village People song and I knew he was trying to coax me out of the distressed state I was in, but my mind was going in circles and I couldn’t pay attention to him at the moment. Instead I turned my chair around, propped my feet up on the windowsill, and went back to laying my arm over my eyes. After working for much of the last year in the middle of the night, I find that I think better in the dark.

  “M.J.? Are you all right?” a voice asked several minutes later.

  With Doc’s singing and my whirling mind I hadn’t heard the front door open. What’s more, as I stiffened and sat up in the chair, I realized I recognized that voice. The day suddenly went from disconcerting to crazy weird. Turning slowly to the front, I took in the tall, dark, and incredibly handsome man standing in my doorway and had to work hard to appear calm and nonchalant. “Hello, Steven,” I said. “What brings you by?”

  My ex-boyfriend smiled in that way that’d always made my heart quicken . . . okay . . . still makes my heart quicken. Also, the bastard had the gall to smell really good too. “How’ve you been?” he asked, his voice deep and rich, like a great cup of coffee.

  I felt my head bobbing. “Good . . . good. You?”

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  There was a bit of an awkward pause and then the door opened again and in walked my current boyfriend, Heath—who also happens to be rather tall, dark, and seriously hunky.

  Things went from awkward and weird to Are you kidding me, universe?

  Heath said nothing; he simply came in wearing a smile, took one look at Steven
, darted his eyes to me, back to Steven, then back to me as if to say, “Seriously?”

  I pretended not to notice. Oh, and I also held in the urge to run out of there as fast as my feet could carry me. “Steven, you remember Heath. Heath—Steven. Steven—Heath.”

  The two surveyed each other with narrowed eyes and forced smiles. I had a moment to compare the two of them side by side and it occurred to me that as similar as they are in the basics of black hair, dark eyes, and tall stature, they’re still strikingly different. Steven’s shoulders are broad and his chest is very defined, while his legs are very long. His face is also distinctly European in structure with a wide brow and square features, while Heath’s face is very angled with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. His frame is also more proportional and corded with lean muscle. In other words, neither was the kind of guy you’d kick out of bed for eating crackers . . . at least not until after you’d had your way with him.

  While the men stared each other down, I cleared my throat and shuffled a few things around on my desk, and that’s when Heath must’ve noticed the charm bracelet I’d set back in the box. “What’s that?” he demanded, pointing to the box on my desk. “You giving her presents now, Sable?”

  Steven’s brow furrowed. “Pardon?”

  Hastily I put the top of the box back on to cover the gift. “It’s from my father, Heath,” I explained quickly.

  “For your birthday,” Steven said with a knowing nod. “That was nice of him.”

  I noticed Heath paled a little. “Today’s your birthday?” he blurted out; then his face flushed red. “I mean, yeah, totally. Happy birthday, honey! I came to take you to a birthday breakfast!” Glancing back at Steven, he said, “My gift’s in the car.”

  Steven smiled (a bit evilly, I thought). “Her birthday is next week, Whitefeather. The eleventh. Might want to mark that down on your calendar.”

  “What brings you by, Steven?” I nearly screeched, desperate to change the topic before this came to blows, and judging by the furious expression on Heath’s face—we weren’t far from that.

  Steven and Heath glared at each other for a few more seconds before my ex turned back to me and said, “I need your help.”

  “With what?”

  “A haunting.”

  That took me by surprise . . . much like the entire morning. I waved at a chair and he came forward and took the seat directly across from me. Heath grabbed the other chair and brought it around the desk to park it right next to mine. I held in a sigh, hoping there’d be no suggestion from either of them of lowered zippers and a measuring tape before the conversation was at an end. “Where?” I asked, pulling a pad forward to write on.

  “It’s not a where,” Steven said, and for the first time I could see that his eyes were lined with worry. “It’s a who.”

  I blinked. “Who what?” (I may have been a little off my game from all the testosterone fumes.)

  Steven shifted in his seat, and I suddenly noticed how nervous he was. Coming to me hadn’t been something he’d done on a whim. He’d had to talk himself into it. “It’s not a place that’s haunted. It’s a person. My fiancée’s brother. We think he’s possessed.”

  “Your fiancée?” I gasped at the same time that Heath said, “He’s possessed?”

  Heath turned narrowed eyes on me while the corners of Steven’s mouth quirked, and that rather big ego that’d been a part of the reason I’d left him came shining to life again. “Yes. To both of you,” he said. (But I thought he looked a bit smugly at me.)

  “Well . . . er . . . ,” I sputtered, doodling large circles on the notepad while I tried to collect myself. (He was getting married? We’d only been broken up for a few months! What the hell?) “Congratulations!” I said. Perhaps a bit too enthusiastically.

  “Why do you think this guy’s possessed?” Heath asked.

  Steven sighed and rubbed the stubble on his chin. “You have to see it to believe it,” he said. “But I’m telling you, there is a ghost haunting this young man. My fiancée, Courtney, can tell you about it better than me. I’d like to introduce you if you’re interested in taking on the case.”

  “Possession isn’t exactly our area of expertise,” I said. No way was I getting involved in this. (Okay, so really, no way was I meeting his fiancée!)

  “It wouldn’t hurt to meet her and talk about it,” Heath said, never once turning his face away from Steven. “Is Courtney nearby?”

  I felt my posture stiffen. Again the corners of Steven’s mouth quirked. “She’s at work at the hospital.”

  Now my smile was forced. “Oh? Is she a candy striper or something?” (Please, oh, please let her job be unimpressive!)

  “Surgeon,” Steven said.

  (Dammit!)

  “General surgeon?” I asked. Before a devastating injury to his hand, Steven had once been one of the best heart surgeons in the world. Maybe he’d met another heart surgeon he was attracted to but secretly competitive with. Maybe their competitive nature would eventually escalate to the point that they’d hate each other. . . .

  “Neurosurgeon,” he said.

  (Double-dammit!)

  “Ah,” Heath said smugly. “A brain surgeon. That’s cool.”

  I was sincerely regretting not having dashed out of the room ten minutes earlier. “Well, I’m sure she’s lovely,” I said. No one in the room believed me. “And while I’d really like to meet her, we’re just coming off a crazy intense shooting schedule and I’m not sure we’ll have time on this hiatus to take on any new cases.”

  Steven cocked his head. “That’s not what your Facebook page says. Forgive me for keeping tabs on you,” he said with a sheepish grin, “but I needed your help and looked online to see where in the world you were. I was surprised to find you back here in Boston, and your status this morning said that you couldn’t wait to get back to work on some regular cases.”

  (A dammit three-peat!)

  “We can at least meet her, Em,” Heath said agreeably. I wanted to choke him. “How about dinner tonight?”

  “That’d be great,” Steven said, already standing up. “Say around seven?”

  “Seven thirty would be better,” Heath said (just to be a pain in the butt, I thought).

  Steven smiled tightly. “Of course. Courtney will be coming off a twenty-four-hour shift, but if it’s better for you . . .”

  Heath wavered and I was still looking for a way out of this. “We can probably make seven,” he said.

  “Good,” Steven said, and with that, he turned and headed to the door. Before exiting, he paused and turned back to look at me. “We can meet at the place I took you to on our first date. Do you remember?”

  I felt my posture stiffen again. At this rate I’d need the Jaws of Life to ever get myself to relax again. “I do.”

  “Excellent,” Steven said. “See you.” And with that, he was gone.

  It took me much of the next hour to get my head around the fact that my ex-boyfriend was engaged. I felt a mix of emotions, all of them small and petty.

  I did my best to hide them from Heath, but he was on to me. “Wanna talk about it?” he asked after my eleventieth sigh.

  I forced a smile. “Nope.”

  “Wanna go for a run?” he asked next.

  I sat up in my chair. A run was exactly what I needed. “Yes,” I said. “I think I would.”

  Heath and I closed up the office and headed to my condo, which was practically next door, to change. I live in a city just outside of Boston called Arlington. I like it because it still has the feel of living in the city but carries a little more greenery. My condo sits in a fairly nondescript building on Mass Avenue, with my unit tucked nicely in the back away from the sounds of traffic. Gilley owns the condo one floor below mine, and often cooks me breakfast. When Heath and I entered my condo, I didn’t hear any noises coming from downstairs—no music
or the loud clomping of footsteps—and I wondered if he’d gone out. Heath and I changed and hit the trail about a half mile from my home.

  My boyfriend is an incredible athlete. He can run for days and barely look winded. He’s lean and strong and pushes me to run faster and farther. As we were training for a half marathon in the next few weeks, I appreciated his presence. I also appreciated that he doesn’t talk a lot on the trail.

  The run was just what I needed. I was able to sort out a lot of my feelings about Steven during the hour run, and put many of those feelings that were hurtful into perspective. I wondered if Steven had felt all of what I was going through when he learned that I was falling for Heath. I hadn’t cheated on Steven with Heath—but I’d come close. Steven had been incredibly mature and understanding about it too. I remember seeing the surprise in his eyes when I told him that I didn’t think it was working out between us, but I could tell that he wasn’t as shocked by the fact that I was breaking up with him as much as he was surprised that my heart had already moved on to someone else.

  It made me feel even worse about the way I’d handled the situation, and I knew I couldn’t fault Steven for moving on so quickly either.

  Still, the truth was that it hurt a little to learn that he hadn’t just moved on—he’d committed. A subtle difference maybe, but one that stung.

  As Heath and I finished the seven-mile loop, he fiddled with his watch and held his hand high. “Eight-minute mile, girl! Way to go!”

  I blinked. The fastest we’d ever done that loop was an eight-fifteen average pace. And although I was winded and sweaty, I hadn’t felt the pain of pushing myself to a faster time. “Are you for real?” I asked him.

  He showed me the watch. “You did good, babe. You’ll be running times in the sevens before you know it.” He added a hug and I realized right then that I’d been wasting a lot of time feeling upset about Steven when I’d already landed the best guy ever. Heath was always there for me, in every way. He understood me like Steven never had, and he watched over me without hovering, or being needy. He was also a fellow medium, and that was a whole other side of me that needed no explanation for Heath.