The Ghost Exterminator (9 page)

Chapter Twelve: Viral Insanity

Apparently, insanity was contagious and Wyatt had been exposed to a virulent strain. That was the only explanation for why he had lost his mind so completely in Jo’s office and attempted to devour her from the mouth down.

He couldn’t deny their chemistry was electric and Jo herself was surprisingly likable, for a crazy person, but Wyatt never acted on impulse. The spontaneous kiss had been impulsive and idiotic. And fan-fucking-tastic. He was still half hard as he paced in the waiting area outside Karma’s office.

The kiss may have been electric, but it wouldn’t happen again. He wouldn’t allow it. Wyatt Haines was scrupulously aware of how each woman he was seen with impacted his professional image. He would not allow his image, and by extension his business, to be negatively impacted by an association with a nutcase—no matter how enjoyable he found her company, or her body.

A relationship was ridiculously out of the question. Jo had to know that. They were oil and water, though judging by what had happened in her office, nitro and glycerin might be a better analogy.

Thank God Karma had walked in. Wyatt hadn’t been stopping and neither had Jo. Without that timely intervention, Wyatt would probably have bent Jo over her desk and fucked her right there. What if Karma had come in five minutes later? Wyatt flinched. God, what if she had sent her secretary instead? It would be all over the papers. His reputation would be ruined. His business destroyed. His life over.

It wouldn’t happen again. He wouldn’t be around Jo much longer anyway. Wyatt ruthlessly silenced the little voice that protested that he
liked
being around Jo. No matter how likable she was, she was toxic to his life.

There was a scientific explanation for his loss of control, just as there was a rational, scientific explanation for what was happening in the house and in his body.

The Episodes in the house were likely the work of some extremely creative, disgruntled employee. Or just a kid playing pranks. A living kid.

The SyFy Channel and Groucho Marx mask could be the result of post-hypnotic suggestion. Wyatt didn’t remember being hypnotized, but wasn’t that part of hypnosis? That you couldn’t remember it?

That was probably what Jo did, hypnotized people into believing she had solved their problems, which she had probably caused herself with wind-machines and holograms.

Wyatt frowned. No. That wasn’t Jo. She wasn’t malicious or dishonest. Nutty, yes. Dishonorable, no.

She believed her delusions wholeheartedly. So much so that the longer Wyatt was around her, the more plausible they seemed. There was a scientific explanation—he
knew
there was—but he was willing to say he believed in ghosts if she would fix things.

There was belief and then there was
belief
. Wyatt believed in Santa Claus, insofar as the Jolly Old Elf existed in the minds of children around the world and there was a perfectly rational explanation for the things he supposedly did on Christmas Eve. Jo believed in ghosts the way children believed in Santa Claus and, for a few seconds there back at the house, Wyatt had felt the belief of childlike wonder for himself. He’d actually thought he heard a ghost.

Which just went to show that she was infecting him with her insanity.

He must be channeling his attraction to her—apparently, the shortest route from his balls to his brain ran straight through a web of delusions. Once he got away from Jo, his world would go back to normal.

Karmic Consultants could give him another ghost exterminator to pretend to believe, or he could just pay their bill and walk away—though neither of those options solved the problem of the house or his post-hypnotic suggestion issues.

As soon as Jo stepped out of Karma’s office, Wyatt knew he wasn’t going to like the next words out of her mouth.

“Looks like you’re stuck with me, buddy.”

Of course, he’d been wrong before.

Wyatt knew he needed to get some distance from Jo, but relief poured through him at her words. She was sticking by him. Thank God. Although, God had been a real dick lately, letting him get into this situation, so maybe he should be thanking someone else.

“We’ve got a lot of questions about the house and until we get some answers, I’m going to be your shadow. No more drawing on your face. No more weird ghostly occurrences of any kind. I’m gonna be guarding your ass twenty-four/seven.”

“Good.”

Jo blinked, as if stunned by his response. He was a little stunned by it himself. “Good?”

Wyatt cleared his throat, all of his rationalizations of the last few minutes flying out the window at his relief that he wouldn’t have to deal with this crazy, mumbo-jumbo shit without her. “Yes, good. You were in there so long, I started thinking you were reading through my contract to see if there was a pain-in-the-ass clause you could use as an excuse to drop me on my ass and leave me to deal with all this weird crap on my own.” Or a sexual-harassment clause that he violated a dozen different ways during their little interlude in Jo’s office.

“Nah, you lucked out. No pain-in-the-ass clause.” She didn’t mention the kiss, but her color was high and she hadn’t looked straight at him since coming out of Karma’s office.

“So what’s next?” Wyatt asked the question with no small amount of dread. He wasn’t sure he could take much more hocus-pocus today.

Jo fidgeted, which never failed to make him nervous, and avoided his eyes. “Well, you see, Karma, she, ah, she agrees with me about removing the ghosts being a bad idea. Dangerous. Sucking your soul out and all that. So, we’re going to do some, ah, research and see if we can’t figure out some alternate way. To get them out. Of you.”

Jo wasn’t a good liar, but he could never figure out which part she was lying about so the effect was the same as if she had been double-oh-seven busting lie-detectors for a living. He frowned. “So what am I supposed to do while you’re doing your research? Just keep drawing on myself whenever I nod off?”

“Nah, that’s why I’m here. To keep you from being taken over. Just go about your life as you normally would and try to avoid falling asleep or doing anything else that would relinquish control of your body over to the ghosts.”

“I’m just supposed to stay awake for the indefinite future? That isn’t a viable plan, Jo. I have a business to run. I can’t do that without sleeping at least once every few days.”

“Don’t worry,” she said in a way that did nothing to reassure him, nodding toward the wall clock. “It’s a weekend.”

Four o’clock on a Friday afternoon hardly counted as a weekend in Wyatt’s book. He didn’t bother mentioning that he usually worked through the weekends. No rest for the successful.

“I’m working on Plan B as we speak,” Jo continued.

“I thought Plan B was the house. Why don’t we go back there and see if the thing in the house pulls the, er, ghosts out of me? I sort of felt something tugging on me when we were there earlier.” While he was having a delusional episode. “What if we just left before it could get them out of me? What if all we have to do is go back—”

“No,” Jo interrupted sharply, then took a breath and softened her tone as she continued, “We can’t go back to the house right now. Not until we know more.”

Wyatt frowned. “I don’t like this.”

For some reason, that comment seemed to make Jo more uncomfortable than anything he had said up to that point. “Is it really so important that you get back into the house?” she asked tentatively.

“It’s important that I get my life back!” Wyatt fought for control. He never raised his voice. “The house is just a means to an end.”

She eyed him warily. “What does that mean?”

“What do you think it means?” he asked, exasperated by her mumbo-jumbo vagueness. Not to mention the fact that she was looking at him as if she was sure he was nuts, like she was just waiting for him to prove that he was both nuts
and
dangerous before having him fitted for a straightjacket.

Wyatt sighed. As impatient as he was to see the whole fiasco end, more than anything, what he needed tonight was a respite from the insanity of the last twenty hours. He needed a chance to get his bearings and get back on rational footing.

“I have a very important question for you, Jo.”

She tensed, as if bracing herself for a blow. “What’s that?” she asked, her voice strained.

“New York or Chicago?”

She blinked in confusion. “Excuse me?”

“Thin crust or deep dish? How do you like your pizza? ’Cause I’m starving.”

Chapter Thirteen: Remote Combat

At first, Jo felt awkward and uncomfortable.

It never fazed James Bond in the slightest if he discovered someone he’d been making out with that very afternoon was really his arch-nemesis, bent on using him to achieve world domination. Unfortunately, Jo wasn’t James Bond. She was a ghost exterminator. What did she know about going undercover to discover the possible villain’s possibly ulterior motives? Especially when she’d been riding the potential villain like a mechanical bull only hours before.

She didn’t like listening for double meanings in everything he said, waiting for him to incriminate himself. She hated the idea that he was using her for his own ends, but even with Karma’s warnings ringing in her ears, she still couldn’t reconcile the uptight businessman who didn’t believe in ghosts with a crafty medium bent on using her for his own gain.

Jo didn’t know what to do with herself. Her hands seemed suddenly enormous and awkward. How had she never noticed before how useless hands were? What was she supposed to
do
with them?

She was confused, irritated…and relieved beyond belief that he didn’t mention the interlude in her office as he drove them back to his apartment for what he called a Night of Normalcy.

He never said a word about the kiss, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She couldn’t look at him without flashing back to his hands on her. And she had to look at him because she was supposed to be watching him. Jo was a mess.

Wyatt’s condo only made her feel more awkward and out of her element. It was all posh and polished. Chrome and glass and luxury everything.

Two pizzas and a few too many beers later, Jo’s mood improved substantially.

After Wyatt got over his initial disappointment that Jo’s appreciation for beer and pizza did not extend to a passion for all things sports and finance and Jo resigned herself to the fact that a total culture-void like Wyatt was bound to a be a useless ignoramus when it came to all things
Star Trek
,
X-Files
, and
Battlestar Gallactica
, they found that they actually got along rather well together, thoroughly lubricated by ice-cold microbrews as they were.

Jo had discovered Wyatt was actually pretty damn entertaining company, when he was at home in his element and had removed the stick up his ass for the night. It also didn’t hurt that he had the largest HD TV she’d ever seen in her life mounted on one wall and was woefully inexperienced when it came to remote control combat techniques. Jo, having grown up the youngest of three children, had a lifetime of guerilla remote techniques at her disposal and had managed to keep that big, beautiful television safely on
Star Trek
for the last two hours.

As long as she didn’t dwell too long on the idea that Wyatt was quite likely a nefarious, ghost-stealing liar intent on using her attraction to him to manipulate her into performing some unthinkable crime against the spirit world, well, as long as she didn’t think about that, everything was just hunky-dory.

The beer helped.

Wyatt frowned at the television, but with the help of a few brewskies Jo now found that expression remarkably endearing. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he announced for what had to be the thirtieth time in the last two hours.

Jo studied the
Star Trek: The Next Generation
episode now being displayed in big screen, HD glory across his wall. “You’re watching it wrong,” she declared.

Wyatt snorted. “How can you watch something
wrong
? Hell, Jo, even your defense of the show is irrational.”

Jo shook her head, then paused to let the swinging, blurry world settle back into place around her. “You’re focusing on the science part. You need to be focusing on the fiction part.”

“I don’t like fiction.”

“That’s ’cuz you don’t understand it.”

“What’s to understand? It’s all made up.”

Jo shook her head again then braced it with her hands to remind herself that shaking, as well as nodding, had been temporarily disqualified from her range of movement options. Stillness was key. “Fiction is about facts. The facts are just bigger.” She waved her hands broadly to indicate the massive scope of fiction facts and Wyatt ducked.

“I wasn’t aware facts came in different sizes.”

“I could fill a…a…something really big with all of the things you aren’t aware of, buddy.”

Wyatt snorted, then took another long pull on his beer. “And I could fill a thimble with all the facts in this show.”

“Hey. Stephen Hawking did a cameo, did he not? Would Stephen Hawking associate himself with something that wasn’t sciencey?”

“Sciencey isn’t a word.”

“Yeah, well, he wouldn’t. Stephen Hawking understands the cosmos and the greater truths of fiction.”

“The greater truth being don’t have an android on your crew because he will turn you over to the Borg?”

Jo experienced a thrill of triumph that he was no longer referring to the Borg as the
weird, machine-headed guys
. “You’re ignoring the big picture,” she said. “The whole Borg thing is not about whether or not it is possible for there to be a machiney-humanoid hive culture with a collective brain, but rather about what it is to be human. What is it about us, beyond just cells and nerves and stuff, that makes us
alive
. That is the greater truth.”

“Are you always this passionate about
Star Trek
, or is it just when you’re drunk?”

“Drunk? Are you trying to imply that I am inbreediate-ineebredat, ahem, in-e-bri-a-ted?”

Wyatt grinned. “Yes.”

Jo heard giggling and wondered where the hell the sound was coming from.
She
certainly never giggled. But it didn’t seem like the sort of thing Wyatt would do. Unless he was being taken over by ghosts. She squinted at him. “Are you being taken over by ghosts?”

Wyatt snorted. “Not that I know of, but I’ll keep you posted.

Jo nodded like a bobble-head doll and her head continued the motion without her permission until she stopped it with a hand to her forehead. She closed her eyes, which did nothing to stop the world’s slow rotation, then let her head flop back to rest on the back of his couch.

“I might be a touch tipsy,” she admitted. James Bond never got drunk. He must have the alcohol tolerance of a grizzly bear to be able to swill vodka martinis by the gallon without ever getting the teensiest bit sloshed.

“Just a touch,” Wyatt agreed, a smile in his voice.

Jo found herself smiling dreamily in response to that smile. Which was wrong. Definitely wrong. And his fault. He was too easy to be with. She shouldn’t like him. He was the enemy. So what if he could kiss like Casanova and Don Juan rolled into one? The kiss had been a blip. She was not attracted to the enemy. Except when he smiled.

Jo sighed. “You really ought to smile more often, Wyatt. You have such a lovely smile.”

“Well, since there is nothing I aspire to more than being lovely, I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

Jo sniffed indignantly. “Why do men have to be macho all the time? If I’d said you look like a sex god when you smile, then you wouldn’t have your knickers in a twist about it, now would you?”

“You may call me a sex god any time you like.”

“Yes, well, I don’t like. I want to call you lovely, so lovely is what you get.”

She felt him reaching across her and opened her eyes, but her reflexes were too slow to keep him from coming up with remote. “Hey. That’s mine.”

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Besides, you had your eyes closed. Eye closure automatically forfeits control of the remote.” He punched the buttons and Jean-Luc Picard suddenly became a heavily padded football player being slammed into the turf by a man the size of Samoa.

Jo sighed. “I will never understand the appeal of watching a bunch of men in pads and tights slap each other on the ass after they try to tackle and mount one another in front of dozens of cameras and millions of viewers.”

“You are not seriously arguing that football is more homoerotic than
Star Trek
.”

“Excuse me? Do you see people on the Enterprise slapping each other on the ass? I don’t think so. It’s a family show, folks. Not that I have anything against a good ass-slapping. For all I know the Captain and Mr. Spock had a special relationship that we, the viewers, will never know about.
Star Trek
isn’t about the sex. Except when it is.”

Wyatt gave a bark of laughter. “Damn, I wish I had a tape recorder. You’re never going to believe some of the things coming out of your mouth masquerading as logic when you sober up.”

Jo made a face. “I’ll show you masquerading as logic.” She took a slow motion swing toward the remote, which he easily moved out of her reach. Her momentum carried her forward until she landed against him. He was big and strong and warm. And still. Wyatt seemed to be the one object in the entire room that wasn’t in motion. She burrowed closer against his side, sighing with contentment as his arm came around her to tuck her snugly against him. There wasn’t anything wrong with a little cuddling with the enemy. She was just resting on him because the rest of the world wouldn’t stop moving. Nothing to it.

“Who’s winning?” she asked lazily.

“The game’s over. These are the highlights.”

“Oh. Who won then?”

“Would you recognize the name of a team if I told you?”

“Nope.”

“Then the Ghosts won by seventy-nine points.”

She twisted around against him to peer up at his face. “Is there really a team called the Ghosts?”

“No.”

“Oh. Darn. For a second there was someone I could root for.”

He chuckled and she hummed happily as the vibration traveled through her ear where it was pressed against his chest. “I thought you would be anti-ghost, being an exterminator.”

“Hey, I don’t pass judgment. I just perform a service.”

“Just another day at the office, huh?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“How do you end up with a job like that, anyway?”

Jo shrugged, closing her eyes and cuddling closer. “Sorta runs in the family. My Gramma Regina talked to spirits. Well-kept family secret.” She mimed locking her lips and tossing away the key. “It wasn’t nearly as profitable to be our kind of crazy back in her day.” Jo snuggled down into Wyatt’s side. “My mom and my sisters are totally normal, but my cousin Lucy and I got hit with the crazy stick pretty hard. I started seeing ghosts when I was six. Lemme tell you, first graders and ghosts do not mix. I learned to block ’em out pretty quick. Forcefully transtend, trassden, trans
cen
ding them was a defense mechanism to keep from being smothered by ’em. Hit Lucy later. She was a teenager before they started popping in on her. She’s more of a talker.” Jo held up one hand like a puppet and flapped her fingers. “Gab, gab, gab. She just blabs ’em into transcending. But her dad’s a therapist,” she carefully enunciated each syllable, “so it makes sense that she’d go the talk-about-your-feelings route.”

“What do your parents do?”

“My mom’s a homemaker, typical suburban housewife, and Dad was a banker. He’s retired now. Not a whole lot of help when it comes to dealing with the dead. I saw a bunch of specialists when I was a kid. My folks paid a lot of people a lot of money to fix me. Gram was the only one who thought I was normal, but she was a few bricks short herself. Then Karma recruited Luce and me and we started getting paid the big bucks for it, though, my parents got a lot more understanding all-of-a-sudden-like.”

“Money does tend to have that effect.”

“Was that how it was for you? Are your parents proud of you because you’re rich?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what exactly?”

He didn’t respond and as curious as Jo was about what had turned Wyatt from a little boy into a corporate machine, she was distracted by the feel of his fingers threading through her hair.

“Why would you do this to your hair?” he asked softly.

“Do what? Dye it? It’s Goth.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“You just don’t understand fashion.”

He chuckled. “Have you realized that every time I disagree with you, you tell me that I don’t understand? Fiction, fashion, ghosts. Has it occurred to you the problem might not be with me?”

“Are you implying that
I
do not understand fashion?”

“Yes.” She could hear the smug grin in his voice.

“Well, that just shows how little you understand about my understanding of fashion.”

He burst out laughing and Jo couldn’t help but smile at the sound. She felt fabulous. Safe and dizzy and light all at the same time. As if she were a bubble that could never be popped. Then she remembered that he might be using her—how could he be using her?—and the bubble burst, just like that.

“Wyatt,” she said hesitantly, “you wouldn’t…” She couldn’t finish. If she was wrong about him, and Karma was right, then the last thing she wanted to do was clue him in that they were onto him. But she just couldn’t believe the first man she had wanted in ages, who seemed to want her back at least a little and lit her up like Christmas every time he touched her, was really only after her supernatural juju. She would so much prefer that he only wanted her for her body. She definitely wanted him for his.