by Lotta Smith
Chapter 1
Okay, so suppose I’m going with blue, but what kind of blue? What shade?—that is the question… I thought to myself, as I looked at all those super cute cupcakes in so many colors lined up behind the glass showcase.
Not that my days were limited and I was looking for the last supper, but I was thinking about bridesmaids dresses. As the old saying goes ‘Something blue’ I was going to use blue with my bridesmaids dresses—well, at least for the time being, I was thinking of blue, however, there were so many other tempting colors such as rose pink, purple, yellow…. Anyway, even if I had made up my mind with blue, there were approximately gazillion shades of blue in the world.
“Next in line please!”
I caught the voice of a woman, but I wasn’t listening. My attention was purely focused on the colors of the sweet delights. By the way, did I mention it was the first time that I was more obsessed about the color of food rather than the taste, or what I wanted to eat?
I was groaning when she added, “Ma’am?”
“Hey, Mandy, girlfriend.” Jackie popped up by my side from out of nowhere.
“Yow!” I gasped.
“Come on, you don’t have to act like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“Because you’re a ghost,” I pointed out.
“You want to place your order pronto, I suggest. The girl manning orders doesn’t look happy,” the ghost of a drag queen said matter-of-factly.
“Oh…” I was about to say “Triple-chocolate,” but…
“Ghost cake, that is. One?” the young girl manning the order asked, slightly squinting at me.
“Yes, yes.” I nodded, because I didn’t seem to have much choice.
“Are you sure?” Jackie squirmed. “You’ve just placed an order for a squid ink flavored cupcake.”
“What—” I glanced at the cupcake in the very dark hue of black. “Oh…”
“Anything to drink?”
“A glass of iced tea would be nice, thank you,” I mumbled, trying my best not to flinch.
“Okay. Proceed to the right and pay that guy at the cashier.” She handed me the order sheet scribbled with illegible handwriting.
As instructed, I went to the cashier guy, handing him the order sheet. “Twelve eighty-nine!” he said.
“Mandy, you’ve got to tell me all the juicy details about your squid ink flavored cupcake,” Jackie said happily, grinning from ear to ear.
I rolled my eyes. I was tempted to express my dismay to the guardian angel in neon yellow skimpy dress, but I opted out. I was getting more than enough stares that screamed ‘Suspicious!’ for the day. So I started walking toward the dining area carrying a tray of a black cupcake and iced tea.
My name is Amanda Meyer. Most people call me Mandy. I used to work for the FBI’s New York City headquarters, but Rick Rowling, my boss and the only colleague at Paranormal Cases Division—and gasp! my fiancé—left the feds and joined USCAB, United States Cover All Bases, a huge security-based conglomerate owned and run by his family. I guess you’d figured it out by now, but I have a unique skill communicating with dead people. And thanks to—or rather, no thanks to—this ability, the FBI invited me to keep on working for them after Rick’s departure, but Rick didn’t trust my expertise of staying out of danger, and to be honest, neither did I. So I joined USCAB with him as one of his secretaries, however, having our wedding scheduled within a month—we were having the ceremony in early August and it was already July… it’s so true that time flies!—most of my time was focused about meeting with the wedding planner about the wedding dress, bridesmaids dresses, flowers, food and beverage.
To be continued.
Books by Lotta Smith
Paranormal in Manhattan Mysteries: http://amzn.to/2nnn8N9
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.
<
br /> 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 canvas 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.
About a month ago, I was a medical student in North Carolina. I was in my third year—busy studying for exams, memorizing all the medical and surgical knowledge, and doing clinical rotations—until I got kicked out of medical school.
Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a bad student.
So I didn’t hold high hopes of graduating at the top of my class, or someday becoming a Nobel laureate. Then again, my academic performance wasn’t that bad. I was usually at around the top 50-60 percent of the class. At a place where the majority of your classmates have an IQ of 180 and up, even being a mediocre student took lots and lots of hard work.
Anyway, the odds of my finishing medical school and becoming a doctor or getting some cushy job with some pharma/biotech/insurance company were pretty high. Back then, I used to picture myself in the future driving a nice car and vacationing in beautiful resorts.
Generally speaking, doctors are highly regarded in today’s society. Sometimes, people talked about the top-notch physicians in comparison with God. On the other hand, I was held in comparison with the Grim Reaper and the Angel of Death. And as a result, I got kicked out of medical school, saying good-bye to my life plan as a doctor.
Oh, did I mention getting kicked out of medical school didn’t offset my larger-than-life student loan?
