What's a Ghoul to Do? (7 page)

I snapped my mouth shut, realizing that it had been hanging open slightly as I soaked in that Steven was associating me with petty thieves. "First of all," I began, my voice dangerously low, "I am no Gypsy. I am a
legitimate
businesswoman with a unique talent that very few people possess. Second, and most important, what you're not getting," I said, stabbing a finger at him, "is that you don't make the rules, Doc. I do."

With that I got to my feet and threw my napkin on the table. I was about to turn on my heel when the insult of being referred to as a possible charlatan got the better of me. Hesitating a moment to turn my internal intuitive switch to the on position, I snapped, "You want proof? Fine, here's your damn proof. Someone named Miguel says to tell you he was stupid to have gone swimming in that river when the current was too strong. He says it's not your fault that you didn't jump in after him. He says you did the right thing running for help instead, because if you had tried to save him on your own, you would have drowned too.

"And someone named Rita is laughing about something to do with an object that had religious value, and she's pointing to you and what you did with it. It's something she would have been very upset about when she was here, but now she sees the humor and thinks it was very funny."

I finished my little demo with a flourish as I reached down and grabbed my purse. Glancing back up as I turned to leave I got a huge measure of satisfaction from the look of complete and utter shock on Steven's face. "Still want to see my diploma?" I demanded. When he didn't answer, I said, "Didn't think so," and stormed out of the restaurant.

It was chilly outside, and the wind had picked up. The air was thick with moisture, and the clouds overhead were an ominous gray. I struggled quickly into my coat, pulling the belt tight around my waist and turning up the collar. I could only hope I'd make it home before the first raindrops. Taking a step forward, my very spiky heel caught in a crack in the sidewalk, and as I tried to twist it loose the heel came off. "Son of a … !" I hissed as I stopped to pick up the heel. "Why me?" I asked plaintively as I shoved it into my coat pocket and looked around for a cab. There were none to be found. "Rassa-frassa-rassa… !" I groused, and began limping quickly down the street up three inches, down three inches, up three inches, down three inches. To make matters worse, the up and down of my walk was making my dress ride up even more than it had before. I must've looked like a freak bobbing up and down, pulling at my dress.

I got about a hundred yards when out of the corner of my eye I saw a car keeping pace with me. I stole a quick glance and noticed a shiny black Aston Martin crawling along beside me. I snapped my head back to the sidewalk and concentrated on my up-down walk, discreetly pulling on my dress and feeling my cheeks grow hot at the spectacle I had created.

"M.J.!" I heard Steven call from inside his car.

"Go away!" I said, and kept walking.

"Can I offer you a ride?" he asked.

"Go. Away," I repeated, my jaw clenched and my brows lowered.

To my horror I heard Steven chuckle. "It's about to start raining, you know."

The very moment he finished this sentence, the sky above us lit up with a bright light, and the crack of thunder caused me to jump a foot. I looked from him to the sky and snarled, but kept limping.

"You're going to get wet in a moment," he coaxed, still following along beside me. "Why don't you let me take you home?"

I gave him one of the dirtiest looks I could muster. "If you care about seeing tomorrow, Sable, I would suggest you put that car in gear and move along." And then the sky opened up and water came pouring down. I shrieked and pulled the collar of my coat up as high as it would go, while looking for an awning that I could duck under.

Just as I spotted one a block away, the rain stopped hitting me in the face and I noticed someone standing to my right. I looked up to see Steven holding an umbrella overhead and wearing a wide grin on his face. "Come, let me take you home."

I looked from him to his car parked right next to us, then to the awning
way
down the street. I was cold, wet, and three blocks from home, not to mention that there was a blister on my foot the size of Texas.

"Fine," I said, giving in. Steven opened the passenger-side door for me and waited until I was settled in before he shut the door and went around to the driver's side. I noticed with a teensy bit of relief that the seats in the Aston were heated.

When Steven was seated, I said, "I live a few blocks from here. Just keep heading in this direction and make a left at that brick building by the fire station."

Steven clicked his seat belt and said, "Buckle up." He then waited until I groaned and fastened my seat belt. A moment later we were zipping down the street at a good clip, and I almost relaxed until we passed my condo.

"Hey!" I yelled, pointing behind me as we flew past. "That was my stop!"

"Yes, you said that earlier."

"You were supposed to stop!" I yelled at him.

"I decided to do something better."

"Better?
What could be
better
than taking me home?"

"Taking you to my place."

"What?!"

"Taking you to my house to cook you dinner and apologize for my behavior in the restaurant."

I was speechless. I just looked at him for a long moment with my eyes wide and my mouth open, thinking about the several different responses that I could lob at him, but nothing felt really appropriate. I settled for, "Oh."

Fifteen minutes later we entered a part of Boston with the kind of real estate that came with price tags so high that if you had to ask, "How much?" you most definitely couldn't afford to live there. We stopped in front of an elegant brownstone lit up like a Christmas tree. Every single light in the house seemed to be on, and a few of the windows had the curtains pulled back to reveal snapshots of the lovely interior.

"Here we are," he said easily, then looked at my feet. "Hey, one of your heels came off," Steven said.

"Nothing gets by you, does it?" I deadpanned as I got out of the car. While I held the umbrella, Steven unlocked the front door and held it open for me while I did the up-down thing into his house.

As I entered the foyer, my breath caught. The front entry was gorgeous. It became apparent that Steven had marvelous taste as I glanced around at the white marble floor, golden yellow walls, and elaborate molding. A beautiful vase was artfully displayed on a podium, and a carpeted stairway with an iron railing led to the second floor. "Like what you see?" Steven asked me, a confident smirk turning up the corners of his mouth.

"It'll do," I said, putting what I hoped was a breezy look on my face. "But I'd watch your electric bill. Looks like you have every light in the place switched on."

Steven took my coat, hanging it in the closet before shrugging out of his. "My home was broken into recently, and the police said that extra lighting was a good detriment."

I smiled. "You mean
deterrent."

"Yes, yes," Steven said with another wave of his hand. "My English is not so good as it once was. Now, how about dinner?"

"Ah, yes, you promised me some eats," I said. "I only hope you can cook as well as you can decorate."

Steven smiled wolfishly at me. "Oh, I can cook, all right," he said, and took my hand as he led me out of the front foyer.

I hobbled through a corridor and around a corner to the kitchen that would put most restaurants to shame. There were walnut-colored cabinets, stainless-steel appliances, a huge gas-powered stove and warming oven, and countertops covered in brown-and-black marbled granite. "Sit," Steven said, pointing to an island where I noticed two stools artfully situated at one end. "I can apologize and cook at the same time."

Taking my seat and removing my shoes I asked, "What's your specialty? Grilled cheese on white bread?"

"I am cooking you shrimp scampi over angel hair pasta with a white wine sauce."

"Ah," I said, raising an eyebrow. "Well, if you're out of white bread and cheese, I suppose that's an okay alternative."

"As I said, I must apologize for my rude behavior at the restaurant," he said as he pulled down a bottle of wine from a built-in wine rack above the sink. "All my life I've been a man of science. My mother tried to give me a sense of faith as well, but I've always thought that if you can't… ehm … like with a ruler?"

"Measure," I supplied.

"Yes, if you can't measure this thing then it could not exist. All of my education and training says that what you do cannot be done. And yet, you can do it."

"It's a gift," I said smugly as Steven placed a glass of wine in front of me.

He looked at me for a long moment, and I could tell the man of science was battling hard with the man of faith. “Tell me about what you said at Tango's. How did you do that?"

"It's just something I was born with," I said. "It's my firm belief that life continues after we die, but what becomes difficult is communication. So there are people like me who have a heightened sense of awareness, not unlike someone with a musical ear in a world full of people who are tone-deaf."

"You can hear these dead people?"

"Absolutely. But the communication isn't always crystal-clear. It's sometimes very muffled, and even on a good day I'm lucky to catch about every third or fourth word."

"What do they tell you?"

"Their names, how they died, who they're related to, stuff like that. It's pretty basic."

"How does this help you bust the ghost?" Steven asked as he tossed some shrimp into a frying pan.

I smiled. "Ghostbusting is a little different. For years I dealt only with connecting living people with their deceased relatives, or people who
knew
they were dead. But most ghosts don't realize that their physical bodies have died, and they float between our world and a place that's misty and confusing. Gil and I help these … what we call earthbound spirits face the fact that their physical bodies have stopped, and once they've accepted that they're no longer living, they move on to where they belong quite nicely."

"And where do they belong?"

"You might think of it as heaven, but I like the term the other side better."

Steven was silent for many minutes as he finished cooking our meal. Finally he slid a healthy portion of aromatic shrimp and pasta onto a plate and handed this to me. "Eat," he said, and came around to join me at the counter.

I tried the dish; it was delicious. "So you can cook," I said.

"I can do other things, too," Steven said. "Maybe one day I will show you."

I felt my face flush, and I took a large sip of wine, then got back to the topic at hand. "As I was saying, Gil and I help these confused spirits cross over to the next plane, but sometimes we encounter an energy that is deviant in nature, and that makes the ghostbusting a little trickier."

"How?"

"These are people who were really bad in life, and for obvious reasons they don't want to head upstairs to face the Big Guy. Instead, they create a doorway to a lower plane, and travel back and forth between our plane and this lower one. When I come across them I offer them two choices: Head upstairs and meet your maker, or get locked into your portal forever."

"This is sounding dangerous," Steven said.

"It can be a little dicey at times," I admitted, thinking back to yesterday morning. "But as long as you keep a level head, you can usually come out on top." Twirling the pasta on my fork I asked him, "Tell me about Miguel and Rita."

Steven took a long sip of wine before he answered me. "We were ten years old when Miguel drowned in the river near my home in Argentina. We had been playing what you Americans call soccer on the banks of the river when the ball went into the water. It had rained the day before and we didn't realize the … what is the word for fast water?"

"I think you mean current."

"Yes, that's the word. We didn't realize the current was so strong. Miguel went in after the ball and disappeared under the water. I ran for help, but when we got back to the bank he was gone. His body was found later that night about a mile down the river. I always felt… er… with guilt?"

"Responsible," I said.

"Yes, that. Responsible," he finished quietly.

In my head I felt something like a vigorous head-shake no. "He says you're not to blame, Steven. He is insisting that it wasn't your fault, and there was nothing you could have done differently. You would have drowned too."

He nodded and gave a small shrug, then swirled the wine in his glass, taking a moment before he spoke again. "Rita was my mother's aunt. She was a nice enough woman but very … strong with the rules?"

"Strict."

"Yes, strict and religious. She lived with us and looked after me while my mother worked, which I hated because Rita insisted we spend long hours praying in front of a large statue of the Madonna."

"How old were you?"

"Five," he said. "One day Rita was called to a neighbor's house and I was left alone to pray in front of the statue. In my little-boy mind I thought that if I could hide the Madonna then I would not have to pray so much, so I got a rope and made a … er… like with a loop?"

"Noose?" I said.

"Yes, noose, and I tied it around the statue's neck and tried to pull it up to the floor above." My eyes widened. Oh, God, had he really
hanged
the Virgin Mary?

"I pulled and I pulled, but my arms grew very tired, so I tied the rope around a …" He paused and pointed to a column in the living room adjacent to the kitchen.

"You tied it around a column," I said, and felt a giggle in the back of my throat as I visualized Steven as a five-year-old thinking he could hoist a statue of the Virgin Mary out of view.

"Well," Steven said, "that was when Rita returned. All she saw was the Blessed Virgin swinging by her neck back and forth. She ran screaming from the house."

I began to laugh. "What did your mother say?" I asked.

"She told Rita to stop with all the praying. It didn't seem to be working."