“Is he dead or alive?”
Azalea’s smile widened. “The chemistry between you will be stronger than any you have ever experienced; stronger than you ever imagined.”
Joy entered the room. Wearing a fresh layer of black lipstick she stood beside their table. “Aunty, there’s a crazy lady in the next room. She says the house is making her see things.”
Azalea looked up at her niece. “Are the ghosts behaving?”
“Fuck a zombie, yeah!” Joy put her hands on her skinny hips and rolled her eyes. “I told her to take her epiphany elsewhere.”
Azalea wrinkled her nose as if raw sewage had found its way into the room, and Harley wondered if it were Joy’s language or the crazy lady that had offended her.
Joy grimaced. “Okay, I’ll tell her to chill.”
Azalea sighed. “If the woman continues to rant, come get me in five minutes.”
Joy gave her aunt a curtsy, saluted Harley and exited.
The interchange between Azalea and Joy gave Harley time to digest her tea-leaf reading. It was a lot to take in, and a flurry of emotions—excitement, fear, anticipation, incredulity—seeped into her bones. Her toes stopped tapping. Could Azalea really tap the future? A rush of warmth flowed through her body. Why not? The universe held many mysteries, so why couldn’t she have one that was all her own.
As soon as the door closed behind Joy, Harley said, “Is tall, dark and dangerous my soul mate?”
Azalea tossed her head back for a second as if a stiff wind had socked her in the chin. Then she made an odd humming sound from deep in her throat that wasn’t an “uh-huh,” or a “hm-hm.” She gave Harley a hard, school-mistress look. “You must keep your head when you meet this man. You will want to abandon all rational thought. You will want to follow your heart no matter the cost.”
“Sounds like a bad case of love.”
Compassion filled Azalea’s eyes. “Harley, you need to be careful.” Azalea adjusted her glasses. “There’s more to him, much more to him, than you can see with your eyes.”
“That’s the complicated part.”
She nodded. “If you work together you will accomplish great things. Perhaps you could become true soul mates, the likes of which are rare, but it will not be easy. You are both strong willed and independent. There will be many challenges to your union.”
Harley’s cheeks burned. She had never been in love for more than five minutes. This sounded intriguing. The black cat rubbed against her legs and she shivered.
“I’m sorry to say this, but I have to.” Azalea stopped and looked at the cup for a moment.
Harley could barely breathe.
“The two of you may be too strong for each other.” Azalea put the cup down.
Harley’s face collapsed.
“At least in this incarnation.”
“So I have to die and be reborn to be with him?” This sucks.
“Hopefully you will help each other, before you part ways.”
Great. “So you’re telling me I will meet my Mister Tall, Dark and Dangerous—but our hotter-than-hades affair won’t last.” People pay for this kind of news?
“If you were a regular customer I would only say that you will meet someone special and I would tell you that your first kiss will melt your heart and sear your soul, but you are not regular, my dear. You have become part of the teahouse family and your safety matters to me. We’ll do what we can to help you.”
Azalea rose quickly. “I must go.” Without further explanation she left the room.
We? We will help you? Who is we?
7
Secrets
“The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem.”
~ Jack Sparrow
That night Harley and Three Sheets chatted in the reception room. Harley had learned her lesson about playing poker with him and suggested they just talk.
“I don’t lead men on. For that matter, I don’t lead anyone on. I am who I am. I have no interest in pretending to be otherwise,” said Harley, who had stretched out on the chesterfield with her head on a comfortable pillow.
“You’re a forger, dearie.” Three Sheets sat in the chair across from her.
“Well, yes, there is that. But I’m different.” Despite his deadness, his bad boy aura heated the room.
“How so?”
“I sell art, my art, and I see nothing wrong with that.”
He crossed one leg over the other and leaned back. A handsome man with awesome boots.
If-only thoughts trickled through Harley’s mind. She cleared her throat. “I’m a talented artist, but when I sign my own name to a painting, people aren’t interested in buying it. So I borrow other people’s names, and my work sells well and for a good price.”
“Like Vincent Van Gogh.”
“Yeah. So what. I borrow a name. I’m still me. My point is I don’t hide behind pretensions.”
“Just borrowed names.”
“I do like the money they bring in. I convert it all to diamonds.” She smiled. “They travel easily.”
“And they give you power.”
“There is that. But back to my point. I don’t want you to think that I’m—” she hesitated “—luring you with my feminine wiles, or however a pirate in ancient times would put it. I’m not interested in you romantically and I never will be.”
“You don’t find me attractive, lass?”
She laughed. “I didn’t say that. You’re hot and you know it.”
“Hot?” His brow rose as if he didn’t understand, but he had to know what she meant.
“Really hot.”
His bad-boy smile widened.
“But you’re also dead.”
He grimaced.
“Dead as a doornail and cold as an iceberg. Not my type.”
“But if I wasn’t dead?”
She laughed. Yeah, like that was going to happen.
“Seriously, if I wasn’t dead?”
“But you are. Three Sheets, I’m a practical person. You’re dead. You’ve been dead as long as I’ve known you. You’ve been dead longer than I’ve been alive. You’ve been dead for hundreds of years. Dead. Dead—but not gone—dead. I deal with life as it comes to me. I like you as a friend, but it can be no more than that, no matter how much you flirt.” She laughed. “Call me small minded, but that’s the way I am. I don’t fool around with dead guys.”
“Ghosts.” He corrected her. “A benevolent ghost who thinks you’re beautiful.”
She nodded. As his chocolate-brown eyes filled with sadness, she felt more rotten than yesterday’s compost, but she swallowed her guilt. “I’d love to get to know you and hang out with you, though, and I really appreciate you helping me.”
His sensuous mouth twisted. “What if I were to tell you there are ways for me to come alive.”
She shook her head. “Listen, I know your friend Eric the Viking is looking for an ancient magic rumored to bring the dead back to life, but I wouldn’t want you to take such a risk for me.” She knew all the latest teahouse gossip through Joy.
“Maybe if you get to know me better?”
“Is that wise? I mean, think about it. If we get to know each other, chances are we’ll get emotionally involved and then if it turns out we can’t be together, we’d both be hurt.”
“But there is never a never. Eventually, my dear, you will die.”
“You sure know how to romance a girl.” She winked at him. “Besides, when I die, I don’t plan on hanging out on earth. I’ll have my fun while I’m here in the flesh.” She gave him a saucy look.
“If only we could have met in the same century.”
“Face it Three Sheets, we’re not meant to be.”
***
Three Sheets had only been half teasing about having a relationship with her. There was something about her that got under his ghostly skin the moment he saw her sink to the floor with hypothermia. How many women would have the guts to swim ashore in the middl
e of the night? Desperate ones, to be sure. But it was more than that. Harley had a strength of character that pulled on him. And then there were her exotic looks.
Her crystal-blue eyes transported him back to the beaches of the Caribbean on a sunny day. He could smell the sea and feel the heat of the sun on his skin when he looked at her. She had an earthly purity that made him feel lighter, more human, less pirate. If only he had met her in his time. “Time means nothing to ghosts,” he said truthfully. “You need to get a better perspective, love.”
***
Harley grimaced and folded her arms across her chest. “I could be painting.”
He lifted his finely chiseled chin in the air. “All right, I will not speak of love. But let me get to know you better as a friend. Allow me that.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Your secrets.” His pulled at his mustache, a habit that had stayed with him through death. “I find they are the most interesting thing about a person.”
“Okay, you tell my yours and I’ll tell you mine?” she said. Maybe.
“Saucy lady. Are you daring me to tell you my deepest, darkest secrets?”
She nodded.
“Okay, I’ll start. I’m never half as drunk as I pretend to be.”
“Oh, that’s a good one. You let others feel they have an advantage by being more sober, and at the same time you give yourself license to cross the lines of civility by acting drunk. Very pirate.”
“Precisely.” He lifted his arms in the air and wiggled his shoulders as if he were a dancing drunk. His smile danced across his dead eyes.
“Oh, you are cunning.”
“Your turn.”
“Tell a pirate a secret. Hmmm.” It wasn’t her style, but it seemed only fair. “I like bad boys.”
“That’s hardly a secret, deary.” He moved closer.
“No I mean. I really, really like bad boys. Other guys bore me. I like men who push the edges.”
“As long as no one gets hurt.”
“You got it. You understand.”
“Listen, love, I’ve been a bad boy for many years. I know the hint of danger draws women.”
“That’s it. I’m totally a danger whore.”
“Whore? No, that you are not.”
“Settle down. It’s just a term. I’m actually very selective in my love life, which I’m not discussing with you. Your turn. Give me another confession.”
“I hate rum.”
“No!”
“Yes. I would swear on the Jolly Roger if I had one in the room. I hate rum. It tastes like dirty bath water.”
She laughed. “So what’s in your rum bottle?”
“Cold coffee.”
“Some pirate you are.”
He tilted his head. “Your turn. You have to think of something that is as a big a secret as a Caribbean, pirate hating rum.”
That was quite a challenge, but if you couldn’t tell a ghost, who could you tell? She took a sip of her wine. “I hate doing it.”
His eyes shot wide, as if a cannon ball had hit him in his forehead. “Do you mean what I think you mean?”
“Yeah, you know: hooking up, bumping uglies, knocking boots, doing the nasty. I’m not sure how you described it in your day. Boinking?”
“Boinking?” The rogue’s smile widened. “I am a big fan of the boink, and women tell me I’m good at it, but I can’t say I ever called it that.”
She laughed.
“And uglies?” His silver form shivered. “There’s nothing ugly about our naked bits. Personally I could get behind ‘knocking boots’ cuz I do love a good pair of boots, but they aren’t really necessary, are they. I prefer my women naked and—”
Harley held up her hand. “Too much information.”
Mischief glistened in his chocolate-brown eyes, making him look more of a rogue. She wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to be made love to by a man so sure of himself and his masculinity. But drooling over a ghost was stupid.
“I know,” she said. “Modern women are supposed to love it, want it all the time and do it in multiple positions on office desks, in airplane biffies and in the back of cars. But the fact is, I hate it.”
His eyelashes fluttered, clearly struggling to comprehend. “What do your partners think of that?”
“Oh, I pretend to like it. A lot. I whimper, pant, and mew. I call out. I scream on occasion. But I hate it.”
His face twisted as if he had just bit down on a lemon. “Hate it?”
“It’s messy and time consuming.”
“Passion, my love, is time well consumed.”
She shook her head. “Your turn.”
“You can’t be doing it right, love.”
“I’ve read many books.”
“Humph. You don’t learn it from a book.”
“It just isn’t my thing.”
“What do your lovers say?”
“Oh, I don’t tell them. In fact, I tell each of them that they are the best ever.” Okay, there had only been four, but that is what she had told each of them. “Would you like to hear me fake it.”
He gave her a dazed stare. “No, love.”
“Yes … yes … yes …”
He put his hand up to stop her. “Woman, you need a good man.”
“Ha! That’s my problem. I’m never attracted to good men. I like bad-boys. It’s the theme of my pathetic love-life.”
“So you, Deary, need a bad-boy with a good heart, and one who knows how to treat a lady.”
Harley’s cheeks burned. “Your turn.”
Three Sheets looked pale even for a ghost. “Have you ever enjoyed it?”
“Your turn.”
“How many lovers have you had?”
“Your turn.”
“I broke many a heart in my day, though that wasn’t my intention, but I never ever left a lady unhappy.”
“You sure?”
“Aye love, I am sure. You need a good man.”
“Okay, enough about my love life. It’s your turn.”
“I have to confess that I am a failed pirate. I had planned to retire, but then I heard of a Spanish galleon about to sail right past my harbor. I couldn’t resist that. I decided it would be my last raid. And it was.” His face faded for a moment and then he continued in a softer, sadder voice. “My treasure is hidden in three different locations where no one will ever find it. I had planned a great retirement, but that last raid did me in. And now the treasure is worthless to me.”
How do you console a ghost? “So you worked your whole career to build up gold and then you died before you could enjoy it.”
He scratched his mustache. “Oh, don’t feel too sorry, my dear. I had a lot of fun collecting it. Now it’s your turn. Tell me more about your boinking history.”
“In your dreams.”
8
The Break In
“Sailors tell stories, Pirates make legends.” (source unknown)
Ghosts communicate with one another easily on the human plane and even more easily on their ghostly plane. With little else to do, they gossip and the news passes from one to another faster than water running through a drain.
Three Sheets had sent out a warning to the teahouse regulars that they would have unwanted company tonight, so it was no surprise when they all arrived at seven o’clock instead of eleven forty-five. Harley was upstairs sketching, oblivious to their maneuvers.
The same four thugs Three Sheets had watched earlier in the day arrived just after dark. Two went around back and stood guard by the door in case anyone came out, while the two he had haunted earlier tried the front door.
“Fuckin’ hell,” said Giovanni when he touched the door knob. “It still won’t turn.”
“You want to use the crowbar?” said the blond.
“Let’s try the windows towards the back. We don’t need anyone seeing us.” They went to the poker-room window, the farthest from the street.
The ghosts inside the house laugh
ed as they watched the Mob guys approach. When Hulk tried to open the window and found it stiff, Rufus, a biker ghost, opened it for him.
“Did you see that?” said the Hulk.
Giovanni grunted.
“It opened on its own and there’s a light on in there. Can you see anyone?”
“Nope, but it’s not easy to see from here. You need to get inside.”
“Me? I don’t get paid enough for this,” said the blond. “I wanna go home.”
“It’s just a house with an open window, stupid. Nothin’ to be scared of.” Giovanni pushed the blond forward. “You first.” When the guy didn’t move, Giovanni added. “You know you gotta do this, right?”
The blond grunted. After a minute of staring at his toes he said. “Okay.” He pulled himself up to the window ledge, which was at the height of his shoulders, and crawled into the room.
The ghosts waited in silence.
Giovanni followed a minute later.
They stood beside each other inside the poker room lit by a single candle.
“See, nothin’ to be scared of,” said the Italian.
The window slammed shut with a bang. The door slammed shut next.
Rufus, the biker-ghost, snickered. “You boys came to the wrong house.”
The blonde turned and headed for the window, but he ran right through Eric the Viking. The Hulk screamed. “Jesus, tits and God America, something’s touching me. Urrgh. It’s deadly cold and wet.”
“And angry,” said Eric in a warrior’s voice of doom. “I want vengeance.”
Three Sheets shimmered into view and with the flick of his fingertips lit a second candle. In the middle of the room three other spirits shimmered into view: Headless Joe, a French peasant from the time of the revolution, held his severed head oozing blood in his arms, Rufus the biker with a bullet hole between his eyes; and Leroy the former cop in his full 1920’s New York City uniform with a knife protruding from the left of his chest. Blocking the door stood Eric the Viking with a triumphant warrior’s grin and a battle-axe in his hand. “Hello boys,” said Three Sheets.
The blond jumped. “What. What. What’s going on?”
Confessions of a Pirate Ghost (Gambling Ghosts Series Book 3) Page 4
