“I hate to interrupt again,” the man in her head apologized, “but I just have to know. What’s a medium, and why would I want to stalk it?”
Delaney scrunched her eyes shut. This was so not the time to come across a wayward spirit, looking for guidance. Especially when today, of all days, she really needed some moolah. I’m a medium, and you’re interrupting my very carefully planned séance. Now go away. I have rent to pay.
“That still doesn’t explain what a medium is. Do you mean that’s your size? Because you don’t look like a medium to me. I’d have gone with small.”
Delaney suppressed a giggle. At least he was a complimentary spirit. And far too put together for her liking. He didn’t seem disoriented on this plane at all . . . Look, didn’t I just say I was busy? You ain’t the only freakin’ spirit out there, and right now, I’m being paid by a very nice family to contact their dead aunt. You, on the other hand, are what I’d call a freeloader—one of those spirits who think the whole spirit world revolves around just them and they can infiltrate a séance whenever they feel like it. I have some pretty strict rules about that—especially when cash is involved. And seeing as you’re one of the rare ghosts who has his wits about him, you get it when I say knock it the fuck off. Go back to wherever you came from and visit me during my normal business hours. Capisce?
“But you still haven’t explained the medium thing to me,” whoever pushy was reiterated in a soft but steadily increasing, insistent tone.
Again, you’re not listening, and to top things off, you’re being exceptionally rude. Now shut up and go away before I, like, send out the spirit world’s version of a SWAT team and have your ass dragged off to some alternate dimension.
“You can do that?”
Okay, so no, she couldn’t do that. Color her caught. That would be way overstating her importance in the spirit world. Delaney sighed. Look, do me a solid, okay?
“A solid . . .”
Yeah, you know, like, a favor?
“Oh. Sure. Whaddya need?”
Wow, again, she couldn’t help thinking, he wasn’t at all like the typical spirits who darkened her doorstep. He didn’t seem even a little confused about where he was, nor did he seem terribly agitated. In fact, his tone was almost too friendly. Which, again, made her suspicious. You. To. Shut. Up. Now, for the love of all that’s holy. Please, before the dogs start to bark and I lose my shot at making some cash.
“You have dogs?”
Six—all as supernaturally sensitive as I am. If they sense an uninvited presence, one that’s hacking me off much like you are, not only am I doomed, but so are your eardrums. Now please, let me finish this up, and then we can connect.
“You have six dogs? Six? Doesn’t that break some kind of law or at least an ordinance?”
I’m sure it does, but it probably won’t be the first law I’ve broken, or the last. And tell me something?
“What’s that?” he rumbled, sort of husky and almost too easygoing for her well-honed, ghostie antenna.
Maybe he was a plant. A shiver raced up her spine. She didn’t need this—not when the rent was due. Or maybe he was a dead actor. Dead celebrities loved a captive audience; they had one in her and contacted her often because of it. But he didn’t sound at all familiar. Stirring from around the table refocused her on getting rid of this new entity. Is there a little old lady with you? Dripping diamonds and sapphires and wearing a red sweatsuit with white racing stripes down the arms?
“Yeah, yeah, there is.”
Then tell her front and center. Her family has some questions for her, and I need—
“The money. You said that. Um, she says, and I’m only repeating her words, ‘No fucking way.’ ” He cleared his throat, the sound reverberating in her head. “Sorry, but that’s what she said. Word for word. Honest.”
His words made Delaney pause because they sounded so sincere. Maybe he’d been a Boy Scout in life. Or a priest. Shit. Priests were always a messy, messy affair when it came to crossing them over to the great beyond. If their deaths involved any kind of religious overtones, or a stall in their faith, they were the hardest to convince they should go into what the living called the light. The light was sort of a sham as far as she was concerned. It wasn’t always a light, if what some of the comments she’d heard just before the crossing were accurate.
She well remembered the college football player who’d blown his knee out just before draft picks and had lost his chance to play pro ball. His version of what some would call Heaven was Soldier Field and an endless stretch of green. Then there’d been the rich socialite—her idea of utopia was an upscale mall with row after row of stores like Cartier, Cole Haan, and Tiffany. Apparently, sometimes the light was what you made of it—your love for shopping or your dream of playing football in the NFL come true.