There are a dozen ghosts in my kitchen, and none of them are talking. They turned up three days ago—seven women, five men, all aged in their seventies or older, and despite my attempts to engage, not one of them has spoken a word. Nada. Zip. Zilch. This is unusual because normally, when a ghost finds me, they’ve unexpectedly departed the mortal realm and are a tad confused about what in the ever-living-heck is going on.
Not these guys. Nope, they’re just hovering around my kitchen. If only they’d make themselves useful while they were here, but no, my dishes aren’t done, nor is my coffee freshly made and waiting for me each morning. A bit of an ask considering they’re incorporeal and can’t touch anything, but the sentiment remains.
Padding across the floor, I shooed a gray-haired woman out of the way to reach the coffee machine. She obligingly moved.
“Are any of you Cecilia?” I asked, grabbing a cup from the overhead cupboard. Glancing over my shoulder, my eyes darted from one ghost to the next, checking for any signs of recognition. Nothing. Not even the tiniest of sparks. “Can you even hear me?” It was rhetorical. They hadn’t responded since they arrived, yet they were aware of me; otherwise, they wouldn’t move out of my way when I shooed them. Not that it was entirely necessary. I could just walk through them, but ewww. Plus, touching a ghost was a chilly business, and I did my best to avoid it.
“Morning, Audrey.” Ben, my best friend and resident ghost who I could see, hear, and communicate with, appeared. “Visitors still here, I see.” He slid onto a bar stool, watching me wait for my brew.
“Hey, Ben. How goes it?” Since Ben was a ghost and therefore didn’t need sleep, he’d taken to visiting with insomniac neighbors, hanging out as they watched Netflix or, preferably, some late-night shopping channel while I slept. That’s what Ben missed the most since his death… his secret addiction to shopping.
“Hey, I saw something you might like.” He grinned, leaning forward to rest his elbow on the breakfast bar, only his elbow disappeared beneath the surface. “It was this yellow—”
“Nuh-uh!” I held my hand up in a stop gesture, cutting him off. “Too early. Need coffee.”
“Did this lot keep you up?”
I shook my head. They weren’t much of a bother, provided you didn’t mind them following you around. While I’d slept, they’d spent the night hovering in my bedroom. Even my cat, Thor, and my raccoon, Bandit, had become accustomed to their presence.
“God, I hope they’re not here to stay,” I muttered to myself. The coffee machine had done its job, and I picked up my steaming brew, cupping it between my palms and lifting it, inhaling the decadent scent as the steam wafted up into my face. Closing my eyes, I took a sip, schooling my features as I burned my lips and tongue, hoping the rapid watering of my eyes didn’t spill over and run down my cheeks.
“Hot?” Ben asked drolly. I ignored him. We’d done this many times before, and honestly, you’d think I’d learn by now to give my coffee a minute or two to cool down, but when it came to caffeine, all bets were off. As was common sense, apparently.
“Are you sure you can’t communicate with them?” I cocked my head toward the senior citizens, now standing motionless behind Ben.
“I’ve tried. I can try again, I guess.” He rubbed his chin and eyeballed the ghosts.
“And you don’t recognize any of them from the home?” Ben’s dad, Bill Delaney, was currently residing in Firefly Bay’s Aged Care Facility, suffering from Alzheimer’s. When the ghosts had first appeared, I’d panicked and thought something had happened to Bill, but Ben had checked, and his father was fine.
Ben shook his head. “Nope. All I can tell you is that their most recent death is Cecilia Fairweather, seventy-two. Died in her sleep last week.”
I scratched my head. “None of this makes sense.”
“Mom, Mom, Mom!” Bandit burst through the cat door, skidding across the floor as she attempted to evade the ghosts. Thor, my overweight British shorthair cat, followed, his belly barely making it through the cat door, his back legs wiggling in the air as he eventually squeezed through. Under the vet’s instructions, Thor was now on a diet and none too happy about it.
“What is it, Bandit?” The raccoon was on her hind legs, front paws scratching at my thigh, leaving welts beneath my pajama pants. I scratched behind her ears, then gently removed her from my leg before she drew blood.
“We have new neighbors!”
“Someone is moving in next door,” Thor added, his British accent adorable. “Maybe they have treats?” He about-faced, heading back toward the cat door.
“Thor!”
He stopped, and his orange eyes shot me a look of utter disdain.
“Do not go over there begging for food,” I said, pointing a finger at him.
If cats could raise their eyebrows, that is what I imagined him to be doing, for his whiskers moved, and then his eyes narrowed and his tail flicked. I could practically see the cogs turning.
I turned to Ben. “You talk to him.” I sighed. “Maybe he’ll listen to you.” Thor had been Ben’s cat before Ben had been murdered. And ever since that fateful day, I’d not only been able to see ghosts, but it turned out I could talk to animals too. Well, Thor and Bandit, at any rate.
“Thor, buddy, come on,” Ben obliged. “You know Audrey only wants to keep you healthy. The vet says it’s not good for you to carry too much weight.”
“It’s called emotional eating.” Thor sniffed. “I’m distressed that you’re dead.”
Oh, Thor was good. Ben crumbled like a house of cards. He bent down and attempted to fuss over his cat, but of course, couldn’t. He was incorporeal. He couldn’t physically touch anything. I looked on, wondering if there was a sliver of truth in Thor’s words or if he was just manipulating us to get what he wanted. Food. Ben had been dead for over a year now, and while Thor had always been fond of food, the weight gain had been more recent, leading me to believe it wasn’t grief-related but glutton-related.
The theme song to Ghostbusters rang out, startling me, and I glared at my phone before picking it up. “Did you change the ringtone again?”
Ben grinned, straightening. “Maybe.” It was the one thing he could do as a ghost. Manipulate the metadata of electronic devices. It came in handy on PI cases where he could access suspects’ phones and tell me who they’d called or texted.
A quick glance at the screen told me it was my super-hot boyfriend and Firefly Bay Police Department’s best ever detective, Captain Cowboy Hot Pants, aka Kade Galloway.
“Hey, babe, what’s up?” I answered.
“Has a new ghost turned up at your place?” he asked furtively.
I did a quick headcount. “No. I have my usual dozen, plus Ben. Why’s that?”
Galloway sighed. “There’s been an accident.”
“You suspect foul play?” I didn’t need to ask if someone had died. Clearly, there’d been a death, or he wouldn’t have asked about a new ghost. “Is the victim elderly?”
“No. She’s twenty-one.”
“Oh, how awful. That’s young. But sorry, she hasn’t turned up here.”
“Could you meet me at the scene? See if she’s, you know, hanging around?”
“Sure. Just let me get dressed, and I’ll be there in a few.” I jotted down the address and had just hung up when the twelve silent ghosts suddenly found their vocal cords. They all looked at me and said in unison, “Angel.”
I couldn’t contain the scream that involuntarily slipped out, along with a little pee. Lord almighty, but I hadn’t been expecting that!
“Angel?” I repeated, hand to my heart, trying to soothe the frantic beating from the fright they’d just given me.
“Angel,” they said again. Then again. And again. I clapped my hands over my ears and raced upstairs, cursing my ghost-hearing abilities. They’d better not keep this up. Silent hovering ghosts I could handle, but not if they were going to chant angel every minute.
I got dressed in record time, jeans and T-shirt, and had just shoved my foot into my canvas sneaker when something cold and wet and utterly gross squelched between my toes. Trying not to gag and failing, I pulled my foot out, cat vomit dripping from my toes.
“Thor!” I bellowed. Of course, the furry critter wasn’t going to respond. No doubt he’d gone next door to ingrate himself with our new neighbors. I made a mental note to drop in myself and say hi and ask them ever so politely not to fall for his tricks. After rinsing my foot off in the bath, I found a clean pair of shoes, checked for cat barf, then hurried downstairs, wondering if lap band surgery was a thing for felines.
