The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo & the Poltergeist Accountant (3 page)

Chapter Five: The Accountant Nightlight

At two-twenty in the morning, Lucy lay in her bed trying to think of the Buddha. Or other Zen thoughts that did not involve stripping out of her navy silk pajamas and running naked into the living room, where Jake had crashed out on her couch. Attacking the poor, unsuspecting PI in a lustful frenzy probably wouldn’t go over well. Even if it would be a great—
sweaty, orgasmic
—way to pass the time until he could interrogate her sex-crazed ghost.

The Buddha was not helping.

Lucy twisted around in her bed, silk rasping sensuously against her skin and
definitely not helping
with her persistent hormonal urges. She should have slept in jeans. Or cargo pants. Anything that was not slippery and oh-so-easy to slip out of.

Lucy rolled over and punched her pillow, burrowing down under the covers and wondering exactly how long she was going to have to suffer before Eliot Mellman arrived to put her out of her misery.

She didn’t have to wait long.

A thump sounded in the darkness of her room. Lucy sat up and spun toward the sound, half expecting—hoping—to see Jake. Ghosts couldn’t thump. At least, most ghosts couldn’t. Moving physical objects was beyond most of them.

Eliot Mellman, it turned out, could thump things.

He hadn’t been very big in life; his image was rail thin and not quite five and a half feet tall. His posture was apologetic, as if he couldn’t be more aware of the unwelcome intrusion his presence would always be. In death, he still wore thick glasses and his hair was parted down the middle and flattened down with gel in what was possibly the least-flattering style ever invented.

Eliot stood at the foot of her bed, looking sheepishly at the ottoman he had tripped over.

And glowing.

Lucy blinked in surprise.

Only the strongest of ghosts gave off any sort of illumination. Eliot was better than a nightlight. He was glowing brightly enough to cast eerie greenish shadows on the wall.

As a man, Eliot Mellman had been stepped on so many times Lucy was amazed she couldn’t see footprints. As a ghost, he was Godzilla.

Lucy wondered idly if all murder victims had firefly tendencies, which reminded her of Jake Cox sleeping on her couch. Time to get to work.

Lucy smiled soothingly at the newly dead man at her feet. “Eliot?”

Even if Cox hadn’t told her in advance, she would have known Eliot’s name. The name and circumstances of death just sort of came with the ghost, like a tag on a Christmas gift. In Eliot’s case, the image she got of the death was a little off—like a photo of frantic movement that only showed blurry lines of activity, red-tinted and vague. Lucy usually got a nice crisp snapshot of those last moments, but for all she knew, all murders were red and unfocused.

Eliot twitched and looked up at his name, clearly surprised to be noticed at all, let alone known. “Yes?”

When he didn’t immediately segue into a pick-up line, Lucy realized there was something different about Eliot Mellman. For one thing, he wasn’t trying to mount her.

“Do you know what has happened to you, Eliot?” she asked cautiously. Some ghosts knew they were dead. Some didn’t. She was betting Eliot was one of the latter, judging by his unchanged hangdog posture.

“I died?”

Okay, so he was in category number one. “You remember what happened to you?” Jake hadn’t told her what he needed to ask Eliot, but she figured that question had to be on the list and she wanted Eliot to be comfortable with his new phase of existence before Jake started interrogating him.

“I was murdered.” Eliot slumped a little more, pathetic and dejected. “I knew something was up,” he mumbled. “She’d never been interested in me before, but I wanted to believe she was on the level. I just wanted to believe that someone could want me, you know?”

Lucy suddenly realized why Eliot’s death had been a blur of frenzied activity. She felt her face heating in a blush, but managed to keep any trace of her shock and embarrassment out of her voice. “So, she, uh, she…” Lucy coughed and cleared her throat. “She…that is…ah…”

“Fucked me to death like a praying mantis. Murder mid-coitus. Bitch didn’t even let me come first.”

Lucy choked. This was a whole new level of sexual frustration. “So, you, uh, you know who did it?”

“Who murdered me? Big Joe Morrissey, probably.”

He said it so matter-of-factly that Lucy was momentarily taken aback. Like he was talking about the results of a ballgame that was of no personal interest to him. It was only his murder, after all. Then she realized what he had said.

“Joe?” Something wasn’t adding up here.

“Yep,” Eliot said mournfully. “Candy never opens her legs without Big Joe’s say so. I thought he was rewarding me, but I guess that was just wishful thinking. Poisoned pussy.”

Lucy felt her eyes bulging out. “Poisoned?”

“Figure of speech,” Eliot assured her. “She stabbed me with this needle thing she pulled out of her hair.” He continued before she could formulate a coherent sentence. “It sucks, I guess. Being dead.”

Lucy pulled herself together, blocking out the
Fatal Attraction
film reel running in her mind. “Right. You’re right. It sucks. And I’d like to talk to you about that. Um, in a minute. Right now, there’s someone else who needs to talk to you. About Big Joe Morrissey.”

Eliot heaved a dramatic sigh. “I figured you were only talking to me because of Big Joe. Just like her.”

Lucy hadn’t ever been compared to a murdering fuck-puppet before, but she tried not to take it personally. Death could be very trying, so she gave Eliot the benefit of the doubt. She smiled sincerely and swore, “Eliot, it isn’t like that at all.
You
are my primary concern. It’s just there is someone else who needs your help. With Big Joe.”

“Uh-huh.” Eliot muttered, clearly not believing a word of it. He eyed her forlornly. “I should have known a super-hot girl like you would never be interested in me for me.”

Lucy knew that she should not have been flattered by that comment. She should have been immune to ghostly flattery, laughed it off and called Jake in.

That’s what she should have done.

Instead, she blushed and smiled and toyed with the sheet that had fallen across her lap. There was something inexplicably appealing about Eliot’s compliment—rooted as it was in his own depression and insecurity. She wasn’t usually moved by her ghosts’ attempts to woo her, but then she didn’t usually spend her days lusting after ridiculously masculine men who were not, in fact, gigolos sent to pleasure her senseless. She was horny. She was frustrated. And her self-esteem needed the boost.

So instead of calling in Jake and getting down to business, Lucy preened and said, “What a silly thing to say, Eliot. You seem like a wonderful man, er, ghost. I’m sure if we had time to get to know one another then I would find you
far
more interesting than Big Joe Morrissey.”

Eliot wandered over to stand at the side of her bed, running ghostly fingers along the lampshade in an endearingly timid way. “Really?”

“Really.” It wasn’t even a lie. The murderer-pimp didn’t really sound like her type.

The change in Eliot was immediate. The melancholy accountant pulled back his shoulders and shot her an oily smile. “So, what’s your name, baby?” he asked in the same too-slick tone she had heard coating a dozen pick-up lines from countless dead businessmen.

But instead of rolling her eyes, Lucy smiled at the clueless accountant. “I’m Lucy. I’m a medium. I’m here for you, Eliot.”

“You don’t care about Big Joe?”

She knew she was using this sweet, pathetic ghost to feel better about herself, but she couldn’t make herself stop. What would a little harmless flirtation hurt, anyway? She was making Eliot feel better. That was her job. Sort of. And it wasn’t as if she were
lying
.

“I don’t care about Big Joe, at all,” she vowed. “If it were up to me, we’d just forget all about that nasty murder business and get straight to talking about you. Unfortunately, there are some other people who are real sticklers about murder and they’d like to have a few words with you.”

“I just want you,” he whispered wetly into her ear.

Lucy had been fidgeting with the sheet, feeling a little guilty about using poor Eliot, and hadn’t noticed him leaning in to close the deal. At the sound of his voice directly beside her, she looked up and found him looming over her in full Casanova mode—his neck stretched out like a turtle peeking out from his shell and his lips puckered out in a fish face.

She gave a startled little yelp to find him so close to impact. Eliot yelped at her yelp, his confidence evaporating. His eyes flew open and his body flew backward—right into her lamp.

Lucy watched, stunned and not a little impressed, as Eliot
accidentally
knocked over a physical object, sending it flying to the ground with a resounding crash.

For a moment, the only sound was of Lucy’s breathing as they both gaped at the shattered lamp.

“Wow. You knocked over my lamp.”

“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,” Eliot dithered, kneeling on the floor and sweeping the shards into a little pile with his hands. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know,” Lucy said—but she wasn’t trying to comfort him, she was too busy being in awe of what he had done. “You weren’t even paying attention to it and you sent it
flying
. Most ghosts have to concentrate to make people feel a cool breeze, but
you
can move physical objects without even meaning to.” She blinked at him, openly amazed. “Eliot, you’re incredible.”

He looked up at her, a slow, shy smile starting to spread across his face. As the smile grew, his glowing presence dimmed and flickered. Lucy would never know what would have happened next—that single moment of validation might have been enough for him to transcend—but before he could move on, her bedroom door flew open and Jake came charging through, gun drawn.

“Lucy! Are you all right? I heard a—What the hell?”

Lucy had told Jake a little bit about ghosts that afternoon. Based on her description of wispy white wraiths, he had no reason to expect a green-glowing nightlight of an accountant. And Eliot
was
his first ghost. That, at least in part, explained his reaction.

Jake stumbled back a couple steps until his back slammed up against the wall, his gun trained on the glowing specter kneeling beside her bed.

“What the fuck is that?” he shouted, never taking his eyes off of Eliot Mellman’s ghost.

Eliot’s head snapped up when Jake burst into the room. Confusion dimmed his expression. Lucy scrambled for words to explain Eliot to Jake and vice versa, but she never got the chance.

She knew the exact moment Eliot saw the gun. Fear flashed across his face, followed quickly by an eerie resolve.

“
I’ll protect you, Lucy!
” he roared, surging up from his knees.

Eliot swelled in size until he towered over Cox, his glowing, greased-down hair brushing the ceiling fan. Light shot from his fingertips, and his glow grew brighter and brighter until Lucy had to shield her eyes to look at him.

The windows were all closed, but a howling wind suddenly tore through the room, whipping the drapes around like flags flapping in a hurricane. The doors to the closet, bathroom, and hall all began slamming, only to fly open and slam again.

Jake Cox braced himself against the wind, sighted on the blinding nimbus of light that was the Eliot poltergeist, and began firing, the sound almost entirely drowned out by the wail of the wind and the thunder of the slamming doors.

Lucy leapt to her feet on her bed and shouted to be heard over the keening howl. “Eliot!
Eliot!
Bad ghost! Bad! Jake, stop shooting him! Eliot, stop it this instant!
Put down my nightstand!
If I wanted it on the ceiling, I would have put it there myself. Put it back right now!
Eliot!
”

Neither of the beings in her bedroom listened to her.

Jake systematically emptied his clip—the bullets passing right through Eliot and lodging in her floral wallpaper—then smoothly reloaded and raised his arms in preparation for putting a dozen more holes in her wall.

The mountain of pillows piled on her bed took flight, whipping around the room and bursting in a series of feathery explosions until her perfectly neat bedroom looked like the site of a bloodless chicken massacre.

“No, no,
no!
” Lucy yelled. She jumped off of her bed and directly into the line of fire between the two combatants.

Jake immediately pointed the muzzle of his gun toward the ceiling. “Lucy! What the hell are you doing? Get out of the way!”

“No!” Lucy shouted back. “No more shooting!” She spun around to squint up into the strobe-light brilliance where she suspected Eliot’s eyes must be. “No more slamming doors and howling winds and
absolutely no more floating furniture
! I have had
enough
. Do you understand me?”

The storm inside her bedroom died down suddenly. Eliot shrank down to his normal size, his blinding radiance dimming back to his usual friendly green nightlight levels—though he continued to glare militantly at Jake, who returned the favor.

“He was shooting at you, Lucy,” Eliot whined peevishly. “I had to protect you.”

“He was shooting at
you
,” she corrected, then turned to glare at Jake. “But he shouldn’t have been shooting at anyone. He’s
supposed
to be on our side.”

Jake held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, don’t look at me. I didn’t start firing until the furniture started flying.”

Lucy turned her glare back on the peevish ghost. “That was a childish and completely unnecessary display, Eliot.”

Eliot shoved out his lower lip in a pout, somehow managing to sulk and glower at Jake at the same time. “He started it,” he insisted petulantly. “Bursting in here, waving a gun and screaming.”

“I heard a crash,” Jake snapped. “I had to make sure Lucy was all right.”

Eliot started to puff up again, just a little. “That’s
my
job. Lucy is none of your concern.”

Jake snorted. “I hate to break it to you, buddy, but you’re dead. How can you protect her if you don’t even have a body?”