Ghost of a Chance
Authors: Katie MacAlister
Tags: #humor, #paranormal, #funny, #katie macalister, #paranormal adventure and mystery
“Smart, sexy, and laugh-out-loud funny!”
—
Christine Feehan
“A nonstop thrill ride.”
—
A Romance Review
“Crazy paranormal high jinks, delightful characters,
and simmering romance.”
—
Booklist
“Who knows where she will take us next?… [A]
fascinating and fun writer.”
—
The Best Reviews
“You get mystery and great chemistry from the
characters.”
—
Romance Junkies
“A fun and witty paranormal romance… an entertaining
and engrossing read… engaging and memorable.”
—
BookLoons
“Witty banter that sparkles with humor and a plot
that zips along make even the most outlandish situation seem
perfectly reasonable. MacAlister is a rare talent.”
—
Romantic Times (4 1/2 stars)
A Karma Marx Mystery
Originally published by New American Library in
2008
Copyright © Katie MacAlister, 2008, 2016
All rights reserved
Distributed by Smashwords
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved
above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or
by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright
owner of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is
entirely coincidental.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this
book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission
of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase
only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or
encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support
of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Ebook formatting by
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This book is dedicated
to my mother, Shirley, with much gratitude for all the years of
hauling me to the library, letting me confiscate her blue tweed
Nancy Drews, and instilling in me a lifelong love of
mysteries.
Table of Contents
Other books by Katie Macalister
“Hi there! You’ve reached Spider and Karma’s
house, but we’re busy showing some lovely homes at affordable
prices to charming and attractive people, so we can’t come to the
phone right now. Ha-ha, just kidding. We’re really having wild
monkey sex on the bathroom floor. Since that’ll keep us busy for a
while, go ahead and leave us a message, and we’ll get to you when
we can.”
“Um… hi. I’m looking for Karma? I heard
Marcy at the Quick Stop Java Shop talking about you, and I thought
I’d see if you were available to help me. I’m looking for someone
to take care of a problem in my house—”
The answering machine clicked off in the
middle of the message as I grabbed the phone. “Hi. Sorry about that
message; it’s my husband’s idea of a joke. I’m Karma. What did you
need?” The groceries made an unpleasant clunking sound as I set the
bag down to adjust the phone. A splash of latte hit my knuckles
from one of the two cups I held in a cardboard drink carrier.
“Oh, hi. That’s OK. My partner has a
horrible sense of humor, too. You wouldn’t believe the sort of
things she says in front of other people. I was told that you… um…
clean houses?”
“Not in the usual sense,” I said cautiously,
setting down the lattes to wrestle a can of soup from the small
yellow creature that had grabbed it as it had rolled out of the
bag. “I don’t actually do cleaning, per se. My work is a little
more specialized than that.”
“Specialized?”
There was a puzzled pause. I used it to
snatch a pint of melting Ben & Jerry’s from two yellow imps
that charged out from behind the toaster, and I stuffed the ice
cream into the freezer before shooing the imps back into their
home. They
eek-eek
ed at me. I ignored them and used a
magazine to push them back into the stainless steel flour drawer,
then closed the door firmly and secured it with a bungee cord to
keep them from opening it.
“Um… does that mean you don’t do
windows?”
I sighed to myself as I gathered up a carton
of juice, a couple of containers of yogurt, and a bag of
grapefruits and ferried them to the refrigerator while clamping the
phone between my ear and shoulder. Obviously this caller didn’t
know the nature of my cleaning services, which was fine with me.
“Sorry, no windows. And no floors, and no dishes, and no dusting,
for that matter.”
A domovoi shimmered into view. “Did you
remember the Quaker Oats?”
I covered the mouthpiece of the phone so the
woman on the other end wouldn’t hear me. “On the counter. Did you
let the imps out again?”
The domovoi wrinkled his nose. “They got out
while I was cleaning their cupboard, but I put them all back.”
“I see,” the woman said slowly. I doubted
she did, but I wasn’t in the mood to clue her in.
“Next time, put the bungee on the door, or
they’ll just push it open again. Have you done the bathroom?”
“On my way.” The domovoi, a Russian house
spirit named Sergei, who spent his time being helpful, took the
carton of oats, which were his main source of food, and
disappeared.
“What exactly
do
you clean, then?”
the woman on the phone asked.
“I’m more of an exterminator than a
housekeeping service,” I answered, grabbing an armful of canned
goods as I headed to the pantry.
“Good morning, Karma.” Cardea sat
cross-legged in the pantry reading a
Cosmo
, glancing up at
me as I put the cans on the shelf.
“Morning,” I said, putting my hand over the
phone again. “I don’t suppose you’d like to go for a walk or
something? It’s a nice day out.”
“And leave the pantry?” she asked, looking a
bit wild about the eyes. “Oh, no, I don’t think I’m ready for
that.”
“Ah. Well, I don’t have any bugs in my
house,” the woman on the phone said.
“Maybe another day,” I told Cardea, and made
a mental note to find someone,
anyone
, who was willing to
work with an ancient Roman goddess of door hinges and thresholds
with agoraphobia so intense it kept her locked inside my house.
“But my brother has a rodent problem. What
sort of exterminator are you? Do you do rats and mice, or just
bugs?”
I dumped a couple of packages of pasta on
the shelf and made a face as one of them moved back toward me. An
imp leaped out from behind it and tried to fling itself upon me. I
grabbed it by the scruff of its neck and took it back to the flour
drawer, where its brethren lived. “The technical name is
transmortis anomaly exterminator.”
The silence that followed that announcement
wasn’t unusual or unexpected. “OK. That went right over my
head.”
“Don’t worry. It went over mine the first
time I heard it, too,” I said, laughing. “It’s just a fancy name,
nothing more. I’m sorry I can’t help clean your house, but I
appreciate the call.”
A couple of bags of salad greens were all
that remained from the morning’s trip to the store. I stuffed them
into the vegetable bin, smiling at the dada (vegetable spirit) as
it exclaimed happily, “Oh, good, you got the kind with arugula. I
love arugula!”
“Is there something else I can help you
with?” I asked when the woman on the phone didn’t make the polite
good-bye noises I expected.
“ ‘Mortis’ means death, doesn’t it?” Her
voice was soft and somewhat rushed, as if she was trying to speak
without being overheard.
“Yes, it does.” The fine hairs on my arm
stood on end as Sergei drifted through me.
“I thought so. Transmortis anomaly—that’s
across-death deviation from the norm, isn’t it?”
Damn. She was getting close to the truth.
“That’s one interpretation, yes.”
“And you’re an exterminator, so that means
you get rid of something that deviates from what’s normal, and
whatever that is, it’s already dead?”
I folded the cloth carrier bag and crammed
it into a nearby drawer, swearing under my breath at the pair of
imps that ran through the kitchen, chasing a tennis ball.
“Something like that.”
“Oh!” The woman sucked in a startled gasp.
“You’re a ghost buster?”
“No, I am not,” I answered, allowing myself
a moment of teeth grinding over the much-hated term before deciding
it was useless to keep mum about something the woman was so clearly
determined to ferret out. “I don’t
bust
anything. I simply
clean houses of any unwanted Otherworld spirits, beings, or
entities. So unless you have an imp infestation, or are bothered by
a troublesome ancestral spirit, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“Good lord. People really buy into that
hogwash?” the woman asked, her voice rife with dismissal.
I held my tongue. There were two kinds of
people in the world—those who knew about the Otherworld and those
who lived in blissful ignorance of it. I found it was better to
leave the latter group alone.
“What happens to the ghosts you clean? Do
you kill them?” asked the woman, a slight mocking note evident.
A small herd of imps thundered in from the
dining room, running right over the top of my foot. I caught three
by their tails, and another two by a couple of their arms, and
hurriedly dropped them into the flour drawer. Annoyed, tired, and
with a suspicious notion that another migraine was about to hit, I
spoke without thinking. “You can’t kill something that’s already
dead. When spirits are exorcised from a house, they are sent to the
Akasha.”
“The what?”
“Akasha. The Akashic Plain is the proper
name, but around here we just call it Akasha. Basically, it’s
limbo. The beings there dwell in perpetual torment until they’re
released.”
“And you send them there?” the woman
asked.
A lone rogue imp scampered toward me from
the dining room, raised all four of its arms to me, then swooned in
the best dramatic fashion.
“Er… not always. Sometimes I relocate
them.”
“Busy, honey?” My father walked into the
room, carefully stepping over the fallen imp. “What’s wrong with
him?”
I covered the phone again. “He’s having a
moment. I’m really going to have to limit their soap opera
consumption. They’re starting to get out of hand.”
“Ah, yes. Ooh, two lattes? Is one for
me?”
I nodded. He took the cardboard latte cup in
both hands, reaching for the cookie jar, where I kept his favorite
ginger cookies.
“People like you ought to be ashamed of
yourselves. I’ve heard all about your type—you prey on people
who’ve lost someone, and give them false hope. I do
not
want
you cleaning my house.”
A beep on the phone gave me the perfect
excuse to end the conversation. “I’m sure it’s better if I don’t. I
have another call, so thanks for venting your spleen on me.
Bye-bye.”
“Not a client?” my dad asked as I pressed
the call-waiting button.
“No, thank god. Hello?”
“Karma Marx, please.”
“Speaking.” I accepted the latte my father
handed me.
“This is Carol Beckett, director at the Home
for Innocents. I just wanted to let you know that Pixie O’Hara will
be arriving this morning at ten. Please be sure to adhere to the
schedule that Pixie will have with her; she’s notoriously bad about
keeping her counseling sessions, and Dr. Wellbottom feels strongly
that Pixie needs a firm hand in her life.”
“Pixie O’Hara? I’m sorry, Ms. Beckett, but I
don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.” My father
flitted over to the window and began rearranging my collection of
ceramic parrots.