Ghouls Just Haunt to Have Fun (34 page)

“Ten thousand dollars per episode!” Gilley yelled.

In the corner Doc squawked. “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!”

“Whoa!” I said, and held up my hand, wanting everyone in the room to slow the hell down. “Gilley,” I said sternly, “as usual, this is the first I’m hearing of this. Why haven’t you told me about this before?”

“M.J.,” Gil said patiently as he took a seat next to Steven, “I’m in charge of business development, and this whole thing fell under that category until we got the green light. And now that we have it, I can inform the talent!”

I nodded and pursed my lips. “I’m assuming I’m the talent?”

Gilley flashed me a big, toothy grin. “You are, indeedy!”

“So what’s this show about? Is it a camera crew following us on ghost hunts?”

There was a palpable silence that followed, and I was immediately concerned.

“Sort of,” Gil finally said, and his voice got that squeaky quality that told me there was much more to this, and that I wasn’t going to like it at all.

I looked at the phone, hoping for a straight answer. “Heath? Want to fill me in?”

“The show is called
Ghoul Getters
,” he said. “As I understand it, the production crew is researching reports of particularly nasty poltergeist activity where they think something much stronger and more dangerous than your average ghost haunting is taking place. You and I will visit these locations and do our thing.”

My eyes flashed over to the safe in the corner of my office, the interior of which was packed with magnets and one cigar box, which held a certain dagger and a portal to the lower realms. I didn’t immediately respond, so Gilley chimed in with, “Think of it, M.J.! If you do just twelve episodes, your condo could be
paid off
!”

“I won’t do it if M.J.’s not on board,” Heath said through the speaker, and I realized that I held not only my own financial future in my decision but his as well.

My eyes roved to Steven.

“I would rather you didn’t,” he said softly, “but only because I worry about you and don’t want anything bad to happen. But I must admit that having Heath on your back makes me feel better about this offer.”

I smiled as the picture of Heath on my back formed in my mind. I closed my eyes and thought for long seconds, weighing the pros and cons. Finally I said, “Okay.”

Gilley squealed loud enough for Doc to flutter nervously about his cage. “Really?” My partner giggled. “You’ll really do it?”

“On a trial basis,” I cautioned, and leaned in to look directly at Gilley so that he couldn’t misunderstand. “The
moment
this gets too dangerous or I feel our safety is being compromised for ratings, we’re done. I want an open-ended contract, Gil, with that as part of the escape clause, or no deal.”

Gilley didn’t look happy, but he nodded. “Got it,” he said.

“And I want fifteen thousand per episode,” I said, feeling rather ballsy.

Both Gilley’s and Steven’s eyebrows rose. “Really?” Gil said.

“Really. They’ll probably give us twelve-five—but if we don’t ask for more money, then we look weak.”

“Got it. Anything else?”

“Heath and I approve all locations beforehand. No dumping us in the middle of nowhere without any knowledge of what we’re up against—especially if the activity we’re fighting is that combative.”

“Done,” said Gil. “Anything else?”

I smiled and sat back in my chair. “I’m good. Heath? Anything on your end that you want?”

“I think you’ve covered it,” he said.

“Great. Gil, go make your call.”

We hung up with Heath, and Gilley rushed out of the room to telephone Gopher. When all was quiet again I got up, rounded the desk, locked the door, and took my place back on Steven’s lap. “Now,” I said softly, stroking his hair. “Where were we?”

Read on for a sneak peek at
Victoria Laurie’s next Ghost Hunter Mystery,

GHOULS GONE WILD

Coming soon from Obsidian.

I’m not really put off by the skeptics out there—people who believe that, for someone like me to call herself a psychic medium, I must be a fraud. They see me sitting across from a client, struggling to come up with the name of a deceased loved one or a relevant, specific detail related to that loved one, and it’s easy to believe I’m making the whole thing up.

But they don’t know what I know. They don’t feel what I feel. They don’t hear what I hear or see what I see. And they never will. Well, at least until
they
cross over, of course.

One of the best readings I have ever done was for a woman who had just lost her father—and by “just,” I mean earlier that very morning. When she came to me, desperate to know that her dad was okay, I took pity on her and fit her into my schedule right away. When I sat down, her father came through immediately, and all he kept saying was, “Holy cow! This stuff is real!”

Turns out that for seventy years he’d been the biggest, loudest atheist you’d ever want to meet and was convinced that people like me were charlatans. So imagine how surprised he was when he died and discovered a whole new world—
literally
.

And really, because of that experience, I no longer worry about the snarky little side comments I get from folks who think what I do is a big charade. They just don’t get it, and maybe they’re not supposed to until they too drift off into that great night.

But none of that is going to slow me down or even give me pause. There’s
way
too much work to do for me to linger on what other people think.

I’ve got my regular work as a medium—connecting the living with their deceased loved ones—and my other job as a ghostbuster for a brand-new cable TV show.

It seems that there’s a growing fascination among television audiences to understand things that go bump in the night. And, truthfully, our world is chock-full of those poor souls who haven’t made it across yet. I’m talking about grounded spirits, better known to most as ghosts. There are millions and millions of them out there, wandering aimlessly about, and some places are more heavily populated than others.

Take Europe, for example. You can’t walk a mile anywhere on that continent without bumping into a ghosty or two—they’re
everywhere.
Which is why our production company wanted my two partners and me to trek some three thousand miles across the pond to do a little ghostbusting for must-see TV.

Gilley and Heath—said partners—were really geeked about the idea. But I wasn’t so keen, mostly because of who I’d be leaving behind.

My sweetheart, Steven, would have to stay in Boston and work, plus my beloved bird, Doc, would have to be looked after by a trusted friend. Doc and I have been together for more than twenty years, and in all that time we’ve never spent longer than a week apart. The show’s filming schedule had us out of town for the next six to eight weeks. Which is what had me so glum about the prospect of leaving. And it must have been obvious, because as I sat in my office waiting for a client, Gilley came bounding in, took one look at me, and said, “Don’t pout, M.J. You’ll develop frown lines.”

I sighed and said, “Way to cheer me up, Gil.”

“Are you still moping about the trip?” he asked.

“Doc’s going to think I’ve abandoned him,” I said moodily.

Hearing his name, my bird gave a loud wolf whistle from his play stand in the corner and said, “Nice bum! Where you from?”

“He’ll be fine,” Gilley insisted. “Plus, look what came from FedEx!” I noticed then that Gil was holding a CD in his hand.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Location footage,” Gil said. “Remember when you insisted on approving each location before we committed?”

“Yes, and I thought I already approved all of them,” I said, distinctly remembering the three hours Gil, Heath, and I had spent viewing each location that’d been chosen by the production company to film episodes of
Ghoul Getters
.

Gilley nodded enthusiastically as he came around my desk, propped open my laptop, and slid in the CD. “Gopher called me yesterday,” he explained, referring to our producer/director. “He found a new spot that he thinks we should film at first. He said the location team that scouted it is still freaked out about what they saw, and he says we can’t pass it up. It’s the scariest place on earth!”

“Great sales pitch,” I grumbled, still pouting about having to leave home for so long.

Gilley ignored me and hit Play. My computer screen filled with the image of a drizzly gray landscape. Old-looking brick buildings lined a narrow cobbled street as rain dripped off thatched roofs and collected in puddles.

Someone off camera began speaking in a lovely Scottish brogue. “Before us is the infamous Blair Street, the most haunted lane in all of Europe and maybe even the world. And below our feet are the world-renowned caverns where countless thousands lost their lives to the Black Death, starvation, fire, and murder. Pain lines this street and seeps up from deep underground. Here, the earth is so thick with it that nary a beast will tread these cobbled stones. No bird, stray cat, or dog will venture here. Only humans are fool enough to walk these cobbled stones.”

I wanted to roll my eyes at the theatrics, but before I even had a chance, a man appeared on screen holding a cute, cuddly black puppy that was shivering in the rain. The man, dressed in a long black raincoat with a black bowler, wore something of a wicked grin that I immediately didn’t like. “What’s he doing?” I whispered as the guy came forward and held up the puppy to the camera so that we could get a better view of the adorable face.

“Aw, it’s a pug,” Gil said. “M.J., you love pugs!”

Gil was right. I did love puggies, but something told me that this guy was up to something, so I didn’t reply with more than a nod. And sure enough, in the next instant the man set the little pup down on the ground, securing a leash to his collar before he announced, “I’ve selected this adorable puppy from the local shelter to demonstrate what happens when any animal finds itself on Blair Street.”

And with that the man turned and began to trot on the cobbled stones, leading the puppy behind him. At first the pug was all too willing to follow, but then, about ten yards into their walk, the puppy stopped abruptly and tried to sit down. The man looked behind him, smiled, then stared into the camera. “They all attempt to resist in exactly the same spot every time,” he said.

I hoped it would end there, but it didn’t. The man pulled cruelly on the leash, dragging the puppy along as it began to squirm in earnest, and the farther the man tugged it down the street, the more terrified the puppy became. Its eyes bulged wide and it began to bite at the leash and growl and whimper and snarl. Five more feet had it resembling some sort of rabid animal—it was so terrified that it was nearly unrecognizable as the same dog who’d been held up to the camera only moments before.

“That son of a bitch!” I roared as I stared in horror at the computer screen. I could feel my hands curl into fists, and I wanted nothing more than to reach into that image and punch the guy in the nose. But he managed to anger me even further when he picked up the wriggling, squirming, snarling puppy and held it suspended for a moment while the camera moved in for a close-up.

Gilley and I sat there in stunned silence; I couldn’t believe the cameraman was cooperating with this clear-cut case of animal cruelty! A moment later the man began to walk slowly back toward the camera, and the second he got to within about five feet of the cameraman, the puppy suddenly calmed down and settled for just dangling in the mans hands, shivering pitifully from nose to tail.

I closed the computer screen and rounded on my partner. “Get Gopher on the phone,” I roared.
“Now!”

Gilley was already dialing, and after three rings we were rewarded with Gopher’s enthusiastic, “Hi, Gilley! Did you get the CD?”

“What the
hell
was that?” I yelled, not even bothering to announce that I was in the room with Gilley.

There was a pause, then, “Hi, M.J.”

“Don’t you ‘hi’ me, Gopher! How could you let them do that to an innocent puppy?”

“It wasn’t my idea,” he began, but I wasn’t interested in his excuses.

“Of all the stunts you’ve pulled, Gopher, this has to be the lowest, most underhanded, most ridiculous . . .” My voice trailed off and I got up from my desk to pace the room. “You’re lucky I don’t quit over this. Do you hear me?”

For a long moment Gopher said nothing, which was probably wise, and I knew that he was likely waiting for me to calm down long enough to hear him out. Finally Gilley said, “You didn’t have to use the dog to get us to agree to the location shoot, Gopher.”

We heard Gopher sigh; then he said, “You’re right. But I swear to you, it wasn’t our idea. I sent Kim and John over there to do some more scouting because I wasn’t really excited about our first pick. They found a few spots that were just okay, but when they got to Edinburgh, Scotland, they called to tell me they’d hit the jackpot.

“I guess the guy you saw on the footage is some local who does these ghost tours, and he picks up a new dog or cat every week from the pound to demonstrate what happens when you try and walk an animal down Blair Street. From there he took John and Kim down into the tunnels and caverns right below the street, and the footage gets even freakier. Did you guys happen to see that footage?”

“No,” I snapped, still angry about the pug. “And I’m not planning on watching it, Gopher. That was just sick. Do you hear me?
Sick!
”

There was another long pause, and another sigh from Gopher before he said, “Okay. I understand, M.J. We’ll stick to the original plan and fly you guys into Yorkshire.”

That got my attention. “No,” I said firmly. “Now that I know what’s happening there, we’re absolutely doing Edinburgh first.”

“We are?” said Gil and Gopher together.

I nodded. “Definitely.”