by Lotta Smith
“Okay, listen up. This one’s extra juicy.” Rowling went on, “Miranda Wollf has no memory of the time during which she was taken over by her deceased sister.”
“Wow… that explains why she’s not fussing all over, touring TV stations, dissing the McCambridges for tabloids. I guess this part is my favorite—Miranda gets taken over, doesn’t remember anything. Hey, this makes a great headline for the Post, doesn’t it?”
“You think?” Rowling chuckled. “Speaking of getting taken over, what was it like during the dance?”
“Dance? What dance?” I pretended I couldn’t remember, but Rowling didn’t buy that.
“We danced together to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s L.O.V.E.,” he pointed out.
“I remember hearing the song,” I admitted, but I didn’t want to admit that I actually enjoyed dancing with him. So, I went on, “But after the music started, I kind of like blacked out.”
It was a lie.
“You’re lying,” he pointed out.
“No way! I’m telling the truth.”
“Then why did you blink?”
“I happen to be a human, and I need to blink once in a while.” I diverted to avoid admitting the truth. “Did I step on your toes?”
“No.” Shaking his head, Rowling frowned. “Your dance was flawless, like dancing with a pro.”
“Really? Jeez, we should have taken a video of us dance. I’ve never danced without terribly bruising my dance partner’s feet. Even if it wasn’t really me, it would be fabulous to have a video of me dancing elegantly. I wish I had proof to show off.”
“Yeah, we should have taken a video. It would have made solid evidence that you didn’t stop cuddling me even after the music had faded. You held on to me like you were never letting me go.”
“What…? No!” I felt my cheeks get hot, as in hotter than Hell.
“Gotcha! You were lying!” Grinning from ear to ear, Rowling snapped his fingers. “You remember every moment.”
“No, I’m not lying! Seriously, I don’t remember any part of it!” I denied my boss’s words like mad, feeling my cheeks burning. “You have no evidence to support your theory!”
“Yes, I do.” He flashed his perfect set of pearly whites. “Look in the mirror. You’re as red as a tomato gone too ripe.”
“No, it’s just a makeup malfunction, and…” Protesting, I was recollecting what happened after the dance.
When Frank finished the song and the music stopped, I heard Giselle saying, “Thank you, both of you! It was a pleasure meeting you two!” and I knew she departed for good. And for a moment, I lost strength in my legs. Wobbling, I almost collapsed onto the floor. Rowling caught me before I hit the hard marble floor.
I heard him asking if I was okay with concerns in his voice, but I didn’t say anything. Just to let him know I was still alive, I tightened my grasp on him a little.
Words could say many things, but clinging to him, feeling his heartbeat, and relishing every moment was too good to be muddled by conversation. And I wanted to cherish that special moment all to myself—at least, for a while.
EPILOGUE
There was a new moon, and the dark night rendered the power of magic and spells into nothing, which made Aurora Westwood unhappy.
“So, are you telling me you ran away from the McCambridge mansion just because this newbie amateur broke my spell and exposed you?” the most renowned psychic in America asked as she raised her hand, pointing her freshly-painted crimson fingernail accusingly.
“I didn’t run away. I took the positive, quitting option,” mumbled a huge black spider the size of a rat.
“Don’t talk back to me!” Contorting her lips, which were painted in the same color as her nails, Aurora swatted the palm-sized spider with one hand. “You little piece of worthless insect!”
“Technically, spiders are Araneae, rather than insects….” Muttering, the furry spider disappeared in the air.
“I told you not to talk back!” Blowing the tiny spider hairs away from her hand, Aurora fumed. Unlike those of real spiders, the hairs left no trace on her hand. The spider wasn’t real. It was a magic agent she had created using a fake rubber spider. She often created her magic agents just because she could. Most of them didn’t turn out to be useful. Still, they made a good pastime—indeed, considering the duration of time that the spider was able to take the shape of the rosary was record-breaking…
Recalling how the rosary caused Miranda to act even more obnoxiously, she couldn’t help chuckling. The person known as Aurora Westwood the psychic medium wasn’t just a psychic medium. She was a sorcerer. The reason she called herself a psychic medium was merely because it was more convincing for the Americans of the current generations who enjoy dumb TV shows.
For a while, Aurora enjoyed a quiet time in her dimly lit office alone. Then she closed her eyes and focused her willpower to the amateur who ruined her spell.
“Interesting… I wonder how she disabled my spell,” she muttered to herself, seeing a potential enemy in her vision.
Without opening the eyes, she smiled. She had a hunch she was going to meet her sometime in the future. And she was looking forward to it.
Books by Lotta Smith
Paranormal in Manhattan Mysteries:
Book 1: Wicked for Hire: http://amzn.to/25IHH6X
Sometimes, the opportunity of a lifetime busts your door instead of gently knocking at it...
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Medical student Amanda Meyer thought she had her life all planned out until people started dying the moment they touched her. Being cleared of any wrongdoing didn't stop the medical school from expelling her, and it didn't rid her of the unfortunate nickname Grim Reaper.
Luckily, having a rep as the harbinger of death isn't a total resume killer. Rick Rowling, Special Agent for the FBI's Paranormal Cases Division recruits her to work for the Bureau. But the sexy, brilliant, outrageous loose cannon proves to be just as untouchable as the mysterious creature or creatures that may be responsible for the seemingly unsolvable murder that becomes their first case together.
Instead of treating patients, Amanda's life becomes a test of her patience and a wild ride into the wicked paranormal world where her new boss runs the show. Together they face a ghoulish force that could destroy the entire city and a grueling family dinner that could leave Amanda contemplating harakiri.
It's a battle of life and debt [student debt, that is] and saving the world has never been so funny.
Prologue
966 Park Avenue Tower
11:48 AM, November 10…
With a weird moan, her whole body shivering, she collapses onto the sofa.
I think she’s lucky that she’s already sitting on the sofa as she crumples. If she was standing, she might have cracked her head on the marble floor like Humpty Dumpty—which won’t be pretty.
She’s lying there, totally motionless. One elbow’s stiffly bent at a right angle, as if she’s turned into stone as the result of looking Medusa in the eye.
I gasp—fearing she’s dead.
Rick Rowling, the head of the FBI’s New York Paranormal Division and my boss for the past two days, approaches and touches her neck. Looking totally blasé, he confirms that she’s still alive.
I let out a sigh of relief.
On the other hand, Rowling announces that we leave the place because “It’s boring.”
My eyes widen with a total disbelief.
Of course, I disagree with him, but he brushes off my objection, stating that he doesn’t care about all the crap of making arrests, prosecuting, and taking cases to trial. Again, he says that it’s just a minor issue and he’s way too busy for that. “You know what? I have better things to do,” Rowling declares, turning on his heels to leave the condo.
“Excuse me, Rick,” I call to his back.
“What?” he asks, without turning around.
“We can’t just leave,” I say. Then it suddenly occurs to me that offending my
boss isn’t in my best interest, so I add, “I’m afraid.”
“Why not?” He cocks his head. “Mandy, don’t be such a killjoy. The NYPD can work on the boring stuff, such as deciphering the social pathology of crimes and so on, because they have time to kill. On the other hand, I have no time to waste.”
“Okay, so we don’t need to decipher the social pathology of crimes, but we do need to figure out the whereabouts of the human-eating monster, don’t we?” I point out.
I’m not joking or exaggerating.
I’m talking about a practically imperishable ghoul which could eat up the entire population of New York State, if not the whole world.
* * *
At precisely 2:13 in the morning, John Sangenis was standing in front of a shabby five-story apartment in Washington Heights. Fortunately, he didn’t live there. He was just visiting Ivan Flynn, the insufferable asshole.
Usually, he had better things to do than visiting his worst enemy before the crack of dawn, such as sleeping like a log. Or making love with Ruth, which was even better than sleeping on his own. Ruth MacMahon was his girlfriend, who was unbelievably beautiful, dazzling, and had a truly big heart. Also, it didn’t hurt that she was rich. What was more wonderful about her was she appreciated John’s talent as an actor. It was a rare trait to come across in society, and it was why she happily provided him both moral and financial support.
If there were any shortcomings about her, it was that she was two-timing him with Ivan.
He thought about her taste in men, or lack thereof, and shrugged.
John wasn’t the sharpest knife in the kitchen, so he didn’t realize describing Ruth’s taste in men as horrible was the same as admitting that he was a total loser.
A cold, wet late-autumn breeze was blowing from the East River. A sprinkle of rain hit him in the face. The metal stairs were slippery, occasionally letting out squeaks and squawks, as if the steel structure itself were threatening to fall into pieces any minute, which made John nervous. The building’s elevator hadn’t functioned since God knows when, so he had no choice but to climb up the damned stairs. Getting smashed with the lousy staircase like a piece of garbage wasn’t high on his to-do list, so he ran up the stairs.
As an actor, he went to the gym to do occasional workouts and training, but that didn’t mean he was a big fan of vigorous exercise. On normal days, he would have shied away from walking up the rusty metal stairs of a sad-looking apartment. Actually, he wouldn’t have set a foot in this neighborhood unless he was starring in a gangster movie or TV show, hopefully as the lead role. After all, it wasn’t the area where any of the characters of Sex and the City lived. It almost felt comical that this neighborhood was still included in Manhattan.
While he mentally dissed Washington Heights, he completely forgot about his own social status as one of the least important actors in off-Broadway theater scenes. He also conveniently forgot the fact that, if it weren’t for the tiny apartment in Brooklyn, which he inherited from a late great-aunt, and financial assistance provided by Ruth, he couldn’t even keep a roof over his head.
He jumped and let out a girly yelp when a rat the size of an obese Chihuahua ran up the stairs from behind and went ahead of him.
“What kind of miserable excuse of an unknown artist lives here?” he muttered to himself after some cussing—again, completely forgetting the fact he happened to be one of those miserable excuses himself.
As he approached the third floor where Ivan lived, John remembered his last exchange of words over the phone with his enemy, and being annoyed so greatly that he almost felt like his blood flowed backward.
About thirty minutes ago, he received a strange phone call from Ivan.
Getting a phone call from him was a rare event, mostly because the feeling of hate between the two of them was mutual. Both were Ruth’s kept men, and both were trying their best to convince her that the other guy wasn’t worth her time—or money.
“Hey, John the loser, I’ve got bad news for you,” Ivan declared as soon as John picked up the call. He sounded like he was drunk, but there was something in his voice that made John nervous.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m calling to deliver a piece of special news to you. Now that I’ve acquired something to make me the El Greco of the twenty-first century, you’re so out of sight to Ruth and out of the picture. She is going to choose me, and she’ll dump you like a piece of garbage. Ha! Why don’t you curl up in the corner of your tiny apartment and cry like a little girl?” Then the line went dead.
Immediately, John rushed from his apartment and took a cab to Washington Heights. He was determined to confront the SOB and beat him till he cried like a baby.
As soon as he reached apartment 312, he banged on the door.
“Who’s there?” Ivan’s voice demanded from inside.
“It’s John. Open up.”
“No way.”
“I have something to say to you. Open up!” John banged on the door even louder.
“Stop bothering me. Just leave!”
“No, I won’t. I won’t ‘just leave’ until I get to talk to you face-to-face.”
“I have nothing to say to you. You have to leave, or else I’ll call the cops and have you—”
It seemed Ivan was about to say “arrested,” but his words stopped short.
Instead of menacing words, he let out an agonizing moan. It became louder and escalated to a high-pitched shriek.
Then came silence.
“Hey, Ivan, what’s going on?” John asked as he switched from banging to knocking on the door.
No reply.
“Come on, Ivan. Open up. You can’t fool me!” John yelled at the door, but again, no reply.
“Guess what, Ivan? You’re all words and no action. You’re just running away from me because I’m stronger than you. Ha!” John yelled at the door and turned on his heels to leave. After taking a couple of steps, he went back to his love opponent’s door.
“Loser!” Yelling, he jumped and kicked at the door. He was just trying to make his point, but the worn-out door made of a thin veneer wood panel broke easily.
John lost his balance and fell onto the cold concrete corridor.
“Crap,” he groaned.
Lying on the hard, cold floor, John was half expecting Ivan to come out of hiding, yelling at him, but no one came from inside. Instead, a twentyish Asian guy stormed out from next door.
“What is the matter with you?” he demanded.
John mumbled an apology and the guy went back to his room.
Something wasn’t right.
He got up and reached for the now-broken door. It was locked, but he could put his hand inside to unlock the door.
Getting inside was a piece of cake.
“Hello?” John said. “Ivan? Um… Sorry about the door.”
As he opened it, dim light came into his eyes.
“Ivan…?”
There was no one in the room.
“What the hell…?” he muttered.
It was a tiny, one-bedroom, matchbox-sized apartment. In the living room / dining room / workroom was a 30” x 40” painting sitting on an easel. It was nothing fancy. The whole background was painted in an assortment of dark, boring, and depressing colors. The only part that caught his attention was the large blank area in the canvas. It looked as if whatever was portrayed had run out of the canvas and vanished.
He advanced closer to the painting.
On the side of the canvas, the title G.H.O.U.L. was written in pencil.
Glancing down, John gasped as he spotted an assortment of men’s clothes, including underwear, heaped on the floor, as if someone stripped off those garments and left.
Or whoever had those garments on had disappeared like smoke.
“Hey, Ivan?” Not grasping the situation, John searched the apartment for his rival, but he couldn’t find any signs of him.
John glared at the heap of clothes in front of the canva
s for a while. Then, out of the blue, he kicked the garments. As the shirt, pants, and underwear scattered, something like pebbles of stone rolled over the floor.
“What the…?” John picked up a piece. It looked like a tooth—small, white, and hard, with a metal bolt on the base.
As an actor, he liked to play the role of a tough guy, but in reality, he wasn’t. Startled, he dropped the tooth on the floor. When it hit, he caught a glimpse of several other pieces. Each was about the size of a chick pea, yellowish white with dark brown stains.
The moment he realized the stains might be blood, John passed out and dropped on the hard floor.
CHAPTER 1
Green and purple… Seriously? Who had the deciding vote in determining the color schemes of this hideous building? USCIS? Or FBI? I wondered as I stood in front of 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, my new workplace.
It was my first day of work at the FBI’s New York Field Office, and I wasn’t sure if I was happy or unhappy about my new career as an FBI special assistant.
If this were a book, movie, or TV show, I would be a budding FBI special agent or something really badass.
In that case, I would be ready to protect and defend the United States as I fought menacing terrorists or a group of evil aliens trying to invade Earth. In addition, if it were fiction, I would look like Jennifer Lawrence and have a really flashy educational background under my belt, such as having graduated from an Ivy League school at the top of my class. Not to mention I would be driving a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, or a Mercedes at least.
Unfortunately, none of the above characteristics applied. After all, I was talking about my life, and lately, it kind of sucked.
My name is Amanda Meyer. I’m a twenty-five-year-old American with Italian, English, and a little bit of Romanian heritage.
I’m an American woman in my mid-twenties, but that’s all I have in common with The Hunger Games star. I stand at 5’4”, and I’m a size or two—or maybe three—larger than her dress size.
I don’t have an Ivy League education under my belt, mostly because Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and all other such schools rejected my application. As for the car, I don’t even own one. I used to drive a relatively new Toyota Camry, but I sold it. I was trying my best to convince myself I didn’t need to have a car anymore now that I moved back to my parents’ home in Queens, New York.
