A Viking Ghost for Valentine's Day (Gambling Ghosts Series Book 2)

by Jo-Ann Carson

  People didn’t bother Rufus period. Once the ruthless leader of the Black Angels biker gang, he now held court with a number of badass spirits. Seriously badass.

  But his poker games rocked. Ghosts from all over the world came and the skill level kept Eric on his toes. Being dead had never been so lively.

  Just as he was about to enter the room through the window, he caught the sound of a man singing, “I found love in the back”— Eric stopped mid-flight—“of my blue truck.” What the …?

  They never had music on when they played cards. Eric diverted his route to the front of the house and peered in through the window. Seeing nobody, he entered and followed the music.

  In the kitchen he found a woman. Not just any woman. A real woman, full-figured with curves a man could grab hold of. Long, honey colored hair fell in thick waves to her shoulders. Perfection. Fine wisdom lines radiated from her cat-shaped eyes, which were the soft green of sage in the morning sun and her full mouth made him yearn to be alive. He liked his women strong and mature and she was all that and more. He sighed. Too bad her taste in music sucked.

  Lilith rubbed against his leg, purring. He reached down and scratched her ears, which made her purr more, so he lifted a finger to his mouth. Not impressed, the cat lifted her tail into the air and strutted off.

  Abby’s cell phone rang. She turned off the music and answered. “What’s wrong?”

  “The baby. Her temperature isn’t coming down.”

  Tears welled in the woman’s eyes. “I have another hour to work.”

  “But the baby.”

  “What’s her temperature?”

  “It came down a half degree, but that’s still pretty high.”

  “Bathe her with a cold washcloth. If it doesn’t help, put her in a cold bath. I’ll be home as soon as I can. I need this job to pay for her meds.”

  No answer.

  “Can you do that for me? Please. I beg you. One more hour.” Tears trickled down her alabaster-white cheeks. He checked her hands. No rings.

  “All right.”

  “You’re the best cousin ever. Love you.” She put the phone down.

  Eric lifted the boiling kettle and poured the water into Abby’s tea pot, which already contained a tea ball. The aroma of high mountain oolong tea lifted into the air.

  ***

  ABBY WIPED AT HER TEARS and sniffed. Oolong tea and wood smoke? The aromas became stronger. Was that a man-scent mixed with the wood smoke? She shook her head. Not having slept for a week was rattling her nerves.

  Laughter erupted in the third room.

  Abby growled. Ignoring the noise, she reached for the kettle. But … it had moved. She could have sworn she put it on the right front burner and now it was on the left. She looked at her tea pot. Steam rose through its snout. That explained the tea smell. Had she already poured it? And forgotten? What the heck?

  A cold chill danced at the base of her skull. The room seemed cooler too. Could it be a ghost? She couldn’t hold that thought in her head. No way. No how. She didn’t have time for a ghost. If there was a ghost, she might scream. But no. There could be no ghost. Being so worn out, she must have forgotten she had poured the water. That’s all.

  She shrugged. Reality really doesn’t matter. Only my perception of it does. Or so she mumbled to herself. Her choice was simple: believe a ghost had poured her tea and scream or drink the tea. Gosh darn … Her life had never been easy, so why should it start being so now.

  If there were a spirit or two here, so be it. As long as they didn’t hurt her, she wouldn’t hurt them. The knot in her stomach tightened. Obviously her body didn’t get the message.

  Focus, Abigail. Focus. She poured a cup of tea and reached into the garbage. After a couple minutes of searching, she pulled out the remnants of a sandwich. Ham and cheese. For the next ten minutes she sipped tea and feasted on her scavenged dinner, determined to make the best of her life.

  ***

  KNOWING THE HOUSE WELL, Eric flew behind her back to the far side of the room, opened up a cupboard and pulled out a package of cookies. He flew back and slid them on top of the counter, beside her.

  When Abby reached for her cup, she saw the biscuits. She looked around with wide eyes, and then opened the box and ate three. The moaning sound that came from her lips made him shudder. The rest of the cookies, she poured into her purse. After scanning the room, she picked up her broom and began sweeping the floor, humming that crappy song he had heard earlier.

  The woman fascinated him. And it certainly wasn’t her singing. He spent the next hour watching her finish her chores and followed her home to make sure she was safe.

  And see where she lived.

  3

  To Serve and Protect

  DRESSED IN HIS POLICE UNIFORM Zane Carrington slammed his front door behind him. Nothing had been going his way, not this day, this week, this year … effin’-hell … this life. He cursed as he stowed his gun in the lock box in the drawer of his entrance table. Being a cop was a hard job, but being a bad cop was proving to be even harder.

  The air of the small bungalow cooled as a current of mist swirled around him. The dust particles within it shimmered like black crystals in sunlight.

  “I’m trying,” he said. “I’m trying.”

  The dark air stilled and manifested into a ghostly specter. “Not hard enough.” The poltergeist’s voice echoed cold and deadly through the main room as if he were the devil himself.

  “I have my eye on a family new to town. There are three children under the age of five and the mother is a widow. Her cousin comes and goes, but the woman is alone most of the time and she goes out at night.”

  “Where does she go?”

  “She’s the new cleaner at the teahouse.”

  “Rufus’s teahouse? How interesting.”

  “Does that make a difference?”

  “No. Yes. I’m not sure. But …” The air turned cooler as the grumbling sound of the evil spirit rumbled through his wooden, craftsman style home, as if it were an aftershock from a major earthquake. “It would be even sweeter to take a child from under the noses of those self-righteous ghosts.”

  Zane shrugged. How the hell did he get himself into this? He trembled as sweat poured off his body.

  His face must have given away his terror. “Don’t go getting second thoughts,” said the dark spirit as it moved closer to him and stopped within an inch of his nose. A swirling mini-tornado of damp, dark energy it smelled like putrid flesh. With a black flash, it manifested into a twelve-year old bully of a boy with faded freckles on a round, pudgy face. He had big ears and a cowlick. Black, beady eyes drenched Zane with a wave of coldness that pulled him, as if it were a rip-tide, into a vat of endless, mirthless evil, a glimpse of hell itself.

  Shuddering, Zane swallowed hard, and took a step back, hoping it wouldn’t go inside him again. “No. No. We have a deal. I’ll do my part.”

  “Yes, you will.” The ghost chuckled. “Or else I will re-enter your daughter Rebecca and this time I won’t leave.”

  4

  I Don't Believe in Ghosts

  AT THREE IN THE MORNING, Jane’s fever broke and Abby did her victory dance, an arms-in- the-air-wiggle everything kind of jig. They had won another battle. That was what her life seemed these days, one battle after another in a long and arduous war for survival. If she were on her own, she would have given up long ago, but she had three kids and she would do whatever it took to give them a good life. Not that she was a perfect mom, or a perfect person for that matter; just that she knew what she had to do.

  Starting with food. She put half the cookies from the teahouse on the pillow of five-year old, Jonathan, and the other half on the pillow of his three-year old sister, Jinx. They had a JJ theme going on in the family. She smiled as she looked at them. No matter how crazy wild they could be during the day, at night they looked so angelic when they slept. It brought tears to her eyes. The universe may have dealt her a hard hand, but she had been given th
e sweetest children in the world and she was truly blessed.

  After she tucked them in, she went to the kitchen table and turned on her lap top. She wanted to work a few hours on her manuscript. Was she being selfish taking this time for herself? Maybe, but she couldn’t help it. She loved to write and if she didn’t, she felt incomplete. At five in the morning she dragged herself to bed. It felt as if she had just closed her eyes when she awoke to the kids bouncing on her bed. They had found the cookies.

  “Mommy, mommy.” Jinx nudged her shoulder.

  “I’m glad you like them honey, but I need a little bit more—”

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Who would be at her front door this early in the morning?

  Abby grabbed her terry-cloth robe as she went to the front door. When she opened it, a cool February breeze off the strait nipped her face. But no one was there. She tasted the salt in the air as she looked around. The other houses on the street looked quiet. The low winter light gave everything around her a warm glow. It had to be near freezing. She looked down at her bare feet, which were particularly cold, and saw a brown-paper, shopping bag sitting on her doorstep.

  Of all the crazy things!

  After looking around one more time, she bent over and inspected the bag. It was loaded with food: bread, and bottles of jam and peanut butter stuck out the top. She picked it up and went back inside the house. Inside the bag she found: bread, butter, jam, peanut butter, cheese, bananas, strawberries, ground beef and a dozen eggs. Abby swallowed. The kids would eat a real meal today. There was enough food here to last until she got her first paycheck. She wouldn’t have to visit the food bank.

  A tingling sensation crawled across her scalp. It wasn’t the generosity of the gift, or the strange way it had suddenly appeared, that made her feel uneasy. It was the visceral feeling that someone was near, watching them. Was that wood smoke she smelled? Again. She shook her head, hoping it might help her think.

  Jonathan with cookie crumbs all over his PJs jumped up and down beside her. “We have breakfast.”

  Jinx stood on her other side beaming. “I’m hungry Mommy.”

  So Abby carefully put the food away and put a frying pan on the burner. They would have scrambled eggs, with toast and jam. It had been three days since she’d a full meal; one since the kids had.

  ***

  ERIC STOOD IN THE KITCHEN, watching in silence. Having died young, he had never had the opportunity to raise a family of his own, and watching these kids go at the food gave him a warm feeling, the kind he imagined fathers felt. The best part was seeing color return to their cheeks. These people had been hungry for awhile.

  He followed them to the park later, where the kids played for a couple hours. They returned to have a big lunch. Abby listened to every story they told her, cared for their every need. She was an amazing mother, so full of love.

  In the afternoon the kids played in the living room, while the baby slept and Abby typed on a beat-up laptop. The thought that he was basically stalking them flashed through his mind, but he shrugged it off. He wasn’t hurting anyone.

  Wondering what she was doing on the computer, Eric moved closer to Abby. Her earthy scent held him. Not pretentious, or too sweet, just earthy. Peering over her shoulder he read the words on the screen. The top line read: “Who Killed the Butler?” The words made little sense to him, but how her body, her luscious body, relaxed when she typed, did. She loved writing as much as she loved her kids. Her phone rang.

  “Hi Jillian. Good to hear from you,” she said. Her cell phone wasn’t on speaker, so he couldn’t hear the reply, but he was glad it wasn’t a man. Glad? Why should he care?

  “No … yes … no … maybe … Listen, you wouldn’t believe what happened to me today.” Abby told the other woman about the groceries.

  “What? … Are you kidding? … No, I won’t quit my job … Seriously? … I don’t care what stories you’ve heard about the teahouse. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  5

  Just Another Night in a Haunted Teahouse

  WITH THE CLEAR SKY, the night turned cool and crisp. Abby arrived at the teahouse at ten o’clock. Jillian was taking care of the kids. It wasn’t a permanent solution to her child-minding needs, but it worked for now.

  Jillian wanted Abby to quit the job, but that wasn’t going to happen. She needed it too badly. The stories about the place were undoubtedly exaggerated, and Abby refused to believe them, no matter how many there were.

  Ten o’clock seemed like a good time to start. The mysterious activity in the third room happened the last night around midnight. By that time, she would have most of her work done. Not that she believed in ghosts, but she would rather avoid whatever was going on in that room.

  The nightly visitors had to be regular, flesh-and-blood people who snuck in to the teahouse to party. If she could get most of her work done before they arrived, she would be less inclined to open the forbidden door. It seemed like a practical solution.

  Abby heard noise in the back of the house and headed for the kitchen. Wait …What the hell was she thinking? There was no way anyone could have snuck into that room without her seeing them. Unless there was a trap door to the basement, or maybe a root cellar, or they used the window, or … She shook her head. I don’t believe in ghosts. End of story.

  Azalea emerged from the basement with a large cardboard box marked with an enormous red heart on the outside. “Here you are Abby: decorations for Valentine’s Day.”

  Abby took one end of the box, and helped her place it on the counter.

  “I was hoping you would have time to start putting them up tonight.” She took off the top of the box and they both peered in. I like to hang red hearts with satin ribbon from the ceiling, and place Valentine-themed centerpieces on each of the tables.”

  “Sure, no problem.” Except, of course it was. What single woman with no date, or hope of a date for Valentine’s wants to put up hearts? That is unless they’re broken. But the paper hearts would help her get a paycheck. She smiled at the decorations.

  “Good. I’ll let you figure out where to hang them.”

  “Just not in the third room. Right?”

  Azalea gave her the stink eye. She was darn good at it too. “Not the third room.”

  Abby grinned as if it were a joke between them.

  But Azalea did not smile back. “I’m off then.”

  After her boss left, the teahouse fell silent. Funny how some places can feel quieter than others. This place had its own personality, and maybe it was just her over-active imagination, but it seemed to inhale the quiet, to feed on it, as if it were preparing for something more. Something perhaps on the slippery side of normal. Creepy didn’t begin to explain the feeling that nibbled on the edges of her senses.

  Get a grip.

  The house enveloped her with a stone-cold silence, a graveyard quiet and Abby shivered in its embrace.

  She pulled a decoration out of the box. It was a red, paper heart the size of her hand, attached to a long ribbon. It would look pretty hanging from the ceiling. It reminded her of Valentine’s Days in her past. A smell caught her attention and she put the heart back into the box.

  The same peculiar odor she had noticed the night before hung in the air, but it seemed more distinct this time, stronger, perhaps because she wasn’t as nervous, or perhaps because she wasn’t twisted with worry, or perhaps because she had a full belly. Who knows why we perceive what we do, when we do?

  At least the smell didn’t include the foul stench of a cigar. Maybe that came later. She took a long breath in. Mold, mildew . . . mothballs … and wood smoke.

  As she hung up her jacket an icy breeze drifted across her shoulders. I don’t believe in ghosts, she told herself as if that would stop the fear building inside her.

  She took out her cell phone and hit her radio app, set for 105.3, Rockin’ Wild Country. Singing as loudly as she could, she set about her cleaning.

  Lilith eyed her suspiciously when she
entered her room and then stood up, stretched her back in an arch and went back to sleep.

  Nothing else jarred her as she cleaned and polished every surface in sight. A nasty, sticky stain on the floor kept her attention for ten minutes. She had to use straight dish detergent to loosen its grip. Maybe it was orange juice. Her nerves remained on edge, but she could live with that. Just before midnight she decided to take her break.

  As she passed the third door she heard a man call out, “Cheater. There can’t be five aces in a deck.” A chorus of laughter broke out. More yelling. A card game? Her unwanted guests had arrived.

  “Go ahead and take my chips if you want.” Silence fell. “I’ll have your head.”

  A tingling sensation, as if a dozen spiders raced across her scalp, made her throat go dry. Her stomach dropped. It couldn’t be ghosts. Even if they did exist, they wouldn’t play cards. Would they? And ghosts wouldn’t joke about taking heads, because they had none, or at least she didn’t think they did. If ghosts existed, they would be out haunting something.

  Not her.

  She shook her head. Okay, so they’re not ghosts. Then they must be human, live ones, that is. Whether Azalea knew it or not, a secret poker game was being played in her house. That was the answer. She stood outside the door wanting to open it, wanting to make sure that indeed the gamblers were made of flesh and blood. But she had made a promise and she always kept her promises. Gritting her teeth, she walked past the door.