by Lotta Smith
Rushing to her side, Marcus inquired, “Madame Giselle? Madame Giselle! Please wake up.”
By his side, Willow shrieked, “Madame Giselle!”
“Come on, Willow! Stop shrieking and give me the phone! Now, go and open the gate to secure the access for the ambulance, and notify Mr. Wilfred and Mrs. Wilma-Diane.” As Marcus, the butler of the McCambridge mansion, shushed away the maid, Giselle let out a low groan.
“Madame Giselle! Are you all right? Are you hurting?” As soon as he finished speaking to the 911 operator, he peppered his employer with questions.
“Marcus…” twitching her delicate eyebrows, Giselle whispered in her usual commanding voice. “You don’t need to scream at me. I haven’t gone deaf.” Then she grimaced. “Ow… it’s so painful!”
Her voice was strong, and her pale gray eyes were piercing as always, but obviously, she was in pain.
“Madame, the ambulance is on the way. Please relax and rest assured—”
“Ambulance? Did I just hear that I’d be riding an ambulance? How embarrassing!” Touching her head, Giselle frowned. “No McCambridge has ever ridden an ambulance.”
“Which means you’re the very first McCambridge given the honor,” Marcus responded, forcing himself to display some humor and a reassuring smile.
“By the way, Marcus,” Giselle said, looking at her now bloodstained fingertips, “you need to call the police as well, because someone pushed me off the stairs.”
“Oh, my…” The butler gasped, but soon regained his composure. “Who committed such dreadfulness?”
“Marcus, will you collaborate with the police to catch the culprit?” Giselle reached for the butler.
Taking the mistress’s hand, Marcus consoled her. “Madame Giselle, you will soon feel better. The doctors at Beth Israel will make sure you’ll be as good as…” He stopped talking when he realized Giselle was writing the letter W on his palm in blood—over and over. “Madame Giselle?”
He intended to ask her for the meaning of W.
“It is by no means acceptable to push someone off the stairs.” Before Marcus spoke, Giselle did, looking the butler straight in his eyes. “Marcus, I recall that you like Jeeves, am I correct?”
“Yes, Madame. You are correct. I’m a huge fan of Jeeves.” Even though Marcus was dying to ask more about W, he knew his mistress too well to butt in. When Giselle McCambridge had something to say, she had to say it, and there was no room for the butler to change the subject.
“Good. Make sure that this crooked criminal who hurt me gets caught and justice is served. Be my Jeeves.”
“I will, Madame Giselle. I will be your Jeeves. By the way, who is W?”
“W is… I mean… find…” As Giselle started to talk, she grimaced and gasped for air. Her entire body convulsed for a moment. Then she closed her eyes, never to open them again.
Find W—these were the last words of Giselle Carolynn Axtell McCambridge.
By the time the family members and the visitors came to see what the commotion was about, Giselle had become unresponsive.
The paramedics arrived and took her to Beth Israel, but even the world’s greatest physicians couldn’t bring her back to life.
Giselle’s death was a total shock to Marcus. Considering her advanced age—seventy-seven, that was, though she stopped counting since hitting fifty—Giselle was extremely healthy, and her death was unexpected. At the same time, Marcus knew that solving the assault, which was upgraded to a murder, of Giselle McCambridge had become the last mission assigned by his employer for the past twenty-five years. By filling the blanks and reading between the lines of his previous conversation with his employer, he knew that W was the culprit.
Under normal circumstances, the most straightforward answer would be someone with names starting with W. And considering that there was no burglar at McCambridge mansion at the time of the crime, it was only natural to assume that whoever committed this crime would be someone at the house.
The only problem was everyone at the McCambridge mansion at the time of the crime had at least one W as the initial of their names—including Marcus Warne-Smith himself.
Book 3: Wicked Little Secret: http://amzn.to/2du4JWy
Everyone has secrets--ghosts are no exception...
FREE on Kindle Unlimited!
Finding her body taken over by a ghost with unfinished business while entertaining a tempting (yet dangerous sounding) invitation from Rick Rowling--her boss--has Amanda Meyer, FBI special assistant and resident ghost whisperer for the Paranormal Cases Division, in a tailspin. Her drag-queen-guardian ghost is acting even stranger than usual, a murder victim holds a clue to finding a stolen sculpture, and a parade of well-meaning family members might just set another murder in motion.
What's the girl nicknamed Grim Reaper to do when a departed witness won't fess up, and she finds herself living with her crazy, arrogant, yet irresistibly sexy boss? Everyone's got secrets, but only the ghosts know whose will be revealed in this hilariously wicked romp in the Paranormal in Manhattan Mystery Series.
Wicked Little Secret is part of the Paranormal in Manhattan Mystery series. If you like fast-paced mysteries full of quirky characters and unexpected twists, you're gonna love Wicked Little Secret.
Buy Wicked Little Secret and start solving your next mystery today!
Paranormal in Manhattan Mystery Series
Each book in the series is a stand-alone story, but your enjoyment of each story will be increased if you read them all.
*Book 1-Wicked for Hire
*Book 2-W is for Wicked
*Book 3-Wicked Little Secret
*Book 4-Wicked of the Christmas Past
Excerpts:
“By the way, are there any rooms off-limits to me?”
“No. Why?” he said, frowning.
“Well, this place reminds me of Christian Grey’s penthouse, so I assumed maybe you have something you’d like to hide from me—such as a torture room.”
It was supposed to be a joke, but Rick sucked in air. “How did you know that? Actually, I’ve got seven of them in the upstairs. Each room has uniquely themed décor and equipment for you know what.”
“What?” My eyes widened. It was my turn to gasp for air. “Not just one but seven torture rooms?”
“Yup, so I can shift them every day of the week. I’m sure you’ll like them.” He winked and ran his finger across my lips. “Don’t tell anyone, it’s my dirty little secret that I have those rooms.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but words failed to come, so I nodded like a bobble-head.
“Good girl.” Glancing at his splinted and heavily bandaged right leg, he said casually, “The stairs are a bitch to climb up and down on crutches, so I’d appreciate it if you’d bring down the handcuffs and whips, along with a silk blindfold and hogtie. Oh, I’ve got a can of whipped cream in the fridge. We’ll have tons of fun.” He winked.
PROLOGUE
Aurora Westwood was irritable.
As the most celebrated psychic in America, she had it all—bestseller books, her own TV show, a large mansion with a green garden in the Upper West Side, an even larger mansion in the Hamptons, and a smorgasbord of prime-location estates all over the world.
She regarded herself as more of a sorceress than a psychic. The only reason she used the title of psychic was because it had a more captivating effect on American consumers than the term sorceress. She could communicate with and exorcise dead people’s spirits, but she also had power to control, manipulate, enslave them, and create magic agents out of lifeless objects.
She saw many imitators emerging into the spotlight and then disappearing throughout her decades-long career. Seeing recycled versions of herself being wiped out of the picture only augmented her confidence. Sometimes, she went so far as to sponsor her imitators secretly, using shell companies, only to dump them later by blowing their cover, revealing their fraudulent nature, and boosting her own reputation.
An earlier in
cident had upset Aurora. She found a woman as good as herself, maybe even better. This woman, Amanda Meyer was able to disable Aurora’s spell without using magical words or anything. She practically broke Aurora’s sorcery just by being there. She was working with the FBI, and she didn’t seem to be interested in the showbiz industry. However, the woman was much younger than her.
On that fateful day about two months ago, Aurora was scheduled to interview a billionaire’s wife—a possible murder victim—in her TV show, The Voice from the Other End. In her long career as a psychic medium, Aurora had assisted law enforcement and solved numberless cases, and that day was supposed to turn out to be as glorious as ever. The cameras… TV crews… the setting… everything had been carefully planned and executed for shooting. The episode was promised to be another success, but the FBI and Amanda happened. The case was closed without Aurora’s involvement.
Aurora had been surveying and manipulating the entire event using a magic agent disguised as a rosary, but somehow she couldn’t take a full control of the whole situation. And she blamed that for Amanda’s presence. The rosary had sufficient power to manipulate everyone including the police and the FBI, but the people gathered in place were least affected. Witnessing her spell broken was the last straw for her. The moment Amanda approached and looked at the rosary, it exposed its ugly true form of a magic agent spider. Amanda’s power was so strong that the spider, which was originally the size of a rat, had to dissolve into thousands of tiny spiders, to escape from her.
To Aurora’s annoyance, she saw a vision of Amanda becoming an obstacle in the near future. It plagued her the entire way from the Midtown TV studio to her home overlooking the Hudson River. Even after taking a long bath, the foreboding image of the newbie psychic remained in her soul.
Sitting at the makeup table in the bedroom, looking into the mirror, she was deep in thought, muttering to herself, “I have to do something about her.”
“I know!” All of a sudden, a furry black spider the size of a Chihuahua popped up on the makeup table. “It’s about that girl called Mandy, isn’t it?” the spider said in a chipper tone.
Without a word, Aurora lifted an arm to swat the monster spider, but she stopped short. The spider wasn’t real, for it was a magic agent she had previously created to pass the time. The funny thing was that she had disabled him, but he reappeared in front of her. Also, he was larger than before. The last time they’d talked, the spider was only as large as a rat.
“Don’t hit me! I have an idea,” the spider said proudly, jumping up and down.
“What idea?” Aurora asked. She detested this creature and its disgusting spider form, but at the same time, she was a little curious about him. “Tell it now, or I’ll make you disappear. This time, you’re going to perish into total nothingness.”
“Wow, I’m scared. Though if I were you, I wouldn’t kill me because I’m a part of you, and getting rid of me is synonymous with murdering a part of you.” The spider chuckled, but he stopped doing so when Aurora clenched her fist. “Okay, so you’re concerned about this Mandy. You want to get her out of the picture before she gets in your way, right?”
“I’m too good for her to get in my way.” Aurora shrugged. “Still, she’s offensive.”
“I know!” the spider enthusiastically agreed. “My guess is that she’ll be interviewing many spirits of the dead, won’t she?”
“I think so. She’s with the feds… aha!” A wide smile spread across Aurora’s face. “I can use the help of those spirits! Especially if I provide them with a little portion of my power. After all, the kind of spirits the feds would need help with will be obsessed with wrath and vengeance. Yes, I can do it. Definitely!”
With the heavy cloud of irritation clearing from her mind, she felt youthful. She was determined to strike Amanda Meyer out of the picture.
CHAPTER 1
The Manhattan skyline outside the office windows was uncharacteristically clean and translucent—radiant, even. The rain and thunderstorm that poured and roared until half an hour ago had washed away all the grime and dirt from the air. I was glad for that because I was expecting to go out soon, and I appreciated the nice weather. The rain had started just minutes before I made it back to the office from my lunch break, and I didn’t enjoy my previous run in the drizzle.
It was the moment when I took a look at my phone, computer screen, and the clock on the wall for the umpteenth time that Rick Rowling made a comment. “Mandy, you’ve been checking the time every thirty seconds for the past hour. Why don’t you just set an alarm on your phone?”
“I know, but even if I used an alarm, I’d have to keep checking the time. I really don’t want to be late for this appointment.” I glanced at the clock again. I was a little nervous because it was the first time I’d be working on my own and collaborating with people from another department. No, a little nervous was an understatement. Actually, nerves were somersaulting in my stomach. “I want to make a good impression,” I admitted. At the very least, I wanted to be remembered as a punctual person.
“You can show off your skills, but don’t act like you’d give anything to please them. If you give them the wrong impression, they’ll start taking advantage of you. Don’t ever short-sell yourself, because that means short-selling me as well. I don’t want that to happen. Okay?” Rowling warned me. My boss hated to be exploited, mostly because he was the one who usually took advantage of others.
“Okay. I got it.” I nodded, making a mental note not to be underrated by the people I was going to work with.
My name is Amanda Meyer, but most people call me Mandy. I happen to work for the FBI’s New York City field office. If it was a book, film, or TV show, I would be a special agent, profiler, or sniper serving our country and protecting the citizens from terrorists and other catastrophes, such as vicious attacks by deranged, psychopathic aliens. But I’m talking about my life, and it’s not as exciting or glamorous as those of fictional characters from the big screens or the actresses portraying these characters.
My job title is special assistant, though I haven’t figured out what is so special about being an assistant. Perhaps it’s just the feds’ jargon of calling common things special so they sound distinctive, or it might be that they’re simply obsessed with specialness to the point of naming positions at the in-bureau cafeteria as special cook, special barista, and special cashier.
As a special assistant, most of my tasks were clerical, such as keeping case files up to date, answering phone calls, calendar creation and maintenance, and making coffee for my wacky, temperamental boss. Oh, I forgot to include “communication with dead people” in the list of my job duties—or maybe I had deliberately omitted that task.
Yes, you heard me right, I talk to dead people. On this particular day, I was going to interview a murdered IT engineer in order to help agents from the counterterror unit obtain information from the victim.
I know. In general, we don’t interview dead people, mostly because they don’t talk to us. Asking the people in Deadville how they ended up dying, and who killed them was considered a special asset. Presumably because I happened to be a part of the Paranormal Cases Division, which dealt with cases involving supernatural elements, and I was the only person at the New York City field office with the ability to communicate with the deceased.
Anyway, my ghost whisperer skill just popped up out of nowhere since I started this job. And guess what? It’s not easy, especially when the interviewee is either unaware of his/her death, vengeful, or has pathological liar traits. Things can get ugly, stressful, and downright weird sometimes. I once tried to quit talking to dead people and focus on clerical tasks, but Sheldon Hernandez, the head of the New York City field office, dismissed my plea immediately.
I suppose that I should be grateful for my good fortune. At least my name isn’t Clarice Starling and I don’t have to deal with Hannibal the Cannibal. So far, Rick Rowling is my only colleague in the Paranormal Cases Division. He’s monikere
d as Zombie Repellant. Not that he smells of rotten flesh or looks like an undead. Just the opposite actually, he's exceptionally good-looking. Perhaps even better-looking than your average heartthrobs on the big screens, and he smells wonderful...sexy, even. This unearthly nickname has more to do with his outrageous, loose-cannon attitude. But at least I haven’t caught him cracking open any human skulls and eating their brains.
As I checked the time over and over by looking at the office clock, my computer screen, and my phone, Rowling said, “Mandy, you’re nervous, aren’t you?”
“No!” I said, a little bit too desperately, which prompted my boss to raise an eyebrow. “Okay, so I’m feeling like it’s the first day of school, but I’ll be fine,” I added hurriedly.
“I don’t think so.” He looked at his computer screen. “Okay, I can reschedule my physical fitness test. I’m coming with you. All you have to do is sign here,” he said, producing a piece of paper from a thin paper folder.
Book 5: Sweet Wicked of Mine: http://amzn.to/2nxMtAG
I could stay awake just to feel you creeping...
FREE on Kindle Unlimited!
Life is sweet for FBI Special Assistant Amanda Meyer. Her live-in boyfriend just happens to be her sexy boss, Rick Rowling, head of the Paranormal Cases Division, and cozy evenings at home are becoming a thing - but that just means a wicked new case is right around the corner.
When a little girl is kidnapped, the evidence points to world renowned psychic Aurora Westwood but something just doesn’t add up. In exchange for her help finding the missing child, Aurora has a proposition for Mandy that could change everything.
Juggling life-changing proposals, grim reminders of her haunted past and a parade of restless spirits is just another day at the office for the girl they once called the Reaper in this madcap fifth book in the Manhattan Mystery Series.
