Ghosts of Boyfriends Past

by Vivi Andrews

  “I didn’t spaz out.” Much. “He wanted to interview me.”

  “You? Why?”

  “See, this is why we’re friends. Your faith in me warms the cockles of my heart.”

  “We’ll discuss warming up your cockles later. Tell me about the stud. Is interview some new slang I haven’t heard about?”

  Biz grinned. God bless Gilly’s one-track mind. Her feeling of impending doom was gradually fading in Gillian’s presence. She felt almost cheerful. “Dave would be appalled by your prurient interest in another man.”

  “Dave would be stymied by the use of the word prurient. And don’t change the subject. I love my hubby and I would never look at another man, blah blah blah. Now back to the stud. I want details.”

  “He’s a reporter from Raleigh who wants me to share my feelings about having the worst Valentine’s luck in the history of mankind.”

  Gillian drew herself up to her full five eleven, her expression darkening. “I hope you told him where to shove it. What kind of scumsucker makes a living exploiting other people’s grief? Just point me in his direction and I’ll kick the living shit out of him.”

  “Doesn’t beating a reporter bloody violate your Hippocratic oath or something?”

  “There’s a loophole for the press and people who harass my friends.”

  “Handy loophole. And while I appreciate the sentiment, I think instead I’ll just try avoiding him. That seems less likely to result in assault charges.”

  Gillian shrugged. “The offer stands. So you aren’t going to talk to him?”

  Biz thought that one over. She was tempted to hide in her house like a hermit for the next three weeks, but Mark Ellison didn’t seem like the kind of man who gave up easily. But how could she shoo him off without telling him anything? The truth was absolutely out of the question, but he flustered her so much she wasn’t able to come up with good lies when he was standing there in front of her looking like an all-you-can-eat manflesh buffet.

  She needed a plan. A script to follow.

  He was too easy to talk to. There were moments when she’d found words just spilling right out of her mouth with no direction from her. Almost as if she was compelled to confide in him. That was dangerous enough with people who’d known her all her life and accepted her idiosyncrasies. With a reporter from the city, it reached a whole new level of stupid.

  “Biz? Earth to Bizby. Come in, Bizby.”

  Biz blinked and Gillian grinned.

  “There you are. So are you talking to this reporter or what?”

  “I told him I’d meet him here tomorrow at two.” Biz groaned, slumping on her stool. “I just wish I knew what he expects me to say.”

  Not knowing made it harder to lie effectively. The best lies, she’d discovered in her lifetime of covering up her magic touch, were the ones that played on the expectations of the listener. But she had no idea what Mark Ellison wanted from her.

  “You need to know what he knows,” Gillian agreed, her baby blues narrowing shrewdly. “What you need are spies. I think it’s time to call in the cavalry, Bizby.”

  “I don’t have a cavalry.”

  “Babe, this whole island is your cavalry. We’ll sic the town gossips on him. Mrs. Kent, Mrs. Whittaker… The poor bastard won’t know what hit him. Give me twenty-four hours and you’ll know exactly what he wants, and we’ll spin him around so much he won’t know which way is up. It’s almost cruel and unusual.” Gilly’s eyes filled with unholy glee. “I like it.”

  Biz’s conscience squirmed at the idea of unleashing the gossip hounds on Mark Ellison and his dimples. “I don’t know, Gilly…”

  “He deserves it. He’s the one who came out here to interrogate a perfectly innocent woman and stir up all your old feelings and stuff.”

  Biz smiled in spite of herself at Gillian’s description of her feelings and stuff. Her best friend was a walking encyclopedia of medical knowledge, but her bedside manner left something to be desired. She never seemed to understand the concepts of self-doubt or regret. Biz was the expert on those.

  “You won’t have to do a thing,” Gillian assured her when she couldn’t come up with another protest fast enough. “Leave it all to me.” She spun on her heel, charging off to storm the fourth estate.

  “Gilly! You forgot your pumpkin thing.”

  She paused at the door. “I didn’t forget it. You’re keeping it for me, because you’re my friend and you love me and you have plenty of space in this big old house. And it’s a heart. With ventricles and everything. Dave’s gonna love it. The chambers all have little compartments so we can dissect it together on Valentine’s.”

  Biz studied the purple mass. Now she could see that it was, disturbingly, an enormous swollen replica of a human heart. In purple plastic. “Ew.”

  Gilly shrugged. “One woman’s romance is another woman’s…”

  “Creepy plastic nightmare?” Though she had to admit, Dave would probably love it. The Drs. Hale shared a macabre sense of romance.

  “Whatever keeps the passion alive, Bizby. That’s my motto. Gotta run if I’m going to psychologically disembowel this reporter before my day shift starts. Thanks so much for holding on to my heart for me.” She waved cheerfully and disappeared in another jangle of bells.

  Biz felt a bit like she’d just been flattened by a steamroller—which wasn’t unusual after a visit from Gillian. She eyed the Purple Gourd of Lovin’ dubiously. She couldn’t very well leave it sitting there on the counter. It would terrify her customers.

  Not that she had much in the way of customers this time of year. Even with the drastically reduced winter hours, it almost wasn’t worth opening the shop between November and March. She used to get through the slow months by building up holiday enthusiasm—decking the halls for Christmas in November and December, then replacing the wreaths and candy canes with hearts and flowers to amp up for Valentine’s Day all through January and February.

  Charmed, I’m Sure had been love central. She helped most of her magical clients by overhearing their romantic hopes and adding a bit of her mojo to whichever doodad they purchased. Sometimes love just needed to be pointed in the right direction.

  This used to be her favorite time of year, her shop more festive than a florist. Charmed, I’m Sure was the heart of Parish Island then. The locals would pop by to munch on heart-shaped cookies and gossip about matters of the heart, keeping the bells above the door ringing all day long.

  Now the cluttered little shop looked drab and lifeless in the pale grey light filtering in through the single frosted window. Just another tourist trap waiting silently for the summer season.

  Biz flipped over the Be Back Soon sign on the door and snicked the lock. She wasn’t particularly worried about missing an eager customer with deep pockets. With the crowd this morning in addition to Gillian’s daily chat, she’d already had more traffic today than she usually got in a week in January.

  She wrapped her arms around the Purple Gourd of Lovin’ and heaved, staggering a bit under the unexpected weight. The darn thing was heavier than it looked. Dang, what had Gillian put in those hidden compartments?

  Biz pushed through the beaded curtain to the storeroom and navigated the piled boxes to the stairs. The shop and storeroom took up the first floor, with the living room, library and partially remodeled kitchen on the second. Five bedrooms filled the third floor, and then there was the attic.

  To the public, the attic was designated as her hobby room, but the Marks women had been using it for recreational magic for so long, the walls practically shimmered with residual spells.

  Biz shifted the pumpkin/heart to get a better grip and started up stairs narrow and steep enough to be featured in a slasher movie. The door at the top of the steps was closed tight as always—otherwise the winter drafts from customers coming through the shop door would suck all the heat out of the upper level. It was going to be tricky opening it with both arms full of the weirdest Valentine’s gift ever. Biz sighed. This just wasn
’t her day for thinking on her feet.

  Then she got within three steps of the door and the latch clicked open. It swung wide without so much as a squeak, halting at precisely ninety degrees. Relieved she wouldn’t have to juggle the Gourd of Lovin’ at the top of a flight of stairs, Biz smiled at the empty air beside the door. “Thank you, Tony. Always the gentleman.”

  She clomped up the last few steps as the muscles in her arms quaked, reminding her it had been far too long since she’d been anywhere near the gym. She dumped the Purple Gourd of Lovin’ on the floor beside the door before she dropped the darn thing.

  It rocked back and forth against the hardwood floor, the muted ka-thump, ka-thump sounding eerily like a heartbeat. A matching throb started up in her head and she rubbed at the ache. The rocking stopped, but the sound continued. Biz fixed her glare at a point just behind the pumpkin. “Knock it off, Gabriel. That telltale heart B.S. isn’t funny.”

  The tick-tocking faded into a groaning creak of the floorboards that sounded eerily like a whine.

  She nodded her approval, though her headache continued to pound. “Thank you.”

  Biz had no control over the ghosts—as evidenced by the fiasco in the shop when they’d practically assaulted the oblivious reporter—but she made an effort to demonstrate her appreciation whenever they took her wishes into consideration. It was that or scream hysterically over the travesty her life had become, and that was just so unproductive.

  A brush of cold air whispered across the back of her neck as Tony closed the door behind her. She really should get back down to the shop, but her stomach growled and she decided the stresses of the morning entitled her to an early lunch. As she wound back toward the kitchen, she heard muted strains of Chopin bleeding through the closed library door. Gabriel’s favorite musical pout.

  In the kitchen, she set a can of soup to heat—the pinnacle of her culinary efforts—then sat down to watch as Tony adjusted the heat on the stove, added a sprinkle of some spices off her spice rack and stirred a wooden spoon through the soup in a steady, constant circle.

  She knew she should have been uncomfortable, living with a bunch of dead guys, but the truth was they made her feel safe. Looked after. And they kept her from feeling lonely.

  In an odd way, her wish to find love and companionship had come true. If only she weren’t accidentally killing innocent men in the process. The crushing guilt did put something of a damper on the situation.

  “I’ve got to find a way to end this curse,” she said aloud.

  The beautiful thing about living in a haunted house was that she could talk to herself and it barely counted as crazy. She always knew someone was listening, even if their responses sometimes required a bit of creative interpretation.

  “It’s starting again,” she told Tony. “There’s a new guy in town. He came in to the shop today and I practically drooled on him. It has to be the curse. That kind of attraction isn’t natural.”

  Paul appeared, glowering in the doorway, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Don’t be jealous, Paul,” Biz said absently, too emotionally drained to invest much energy in feeding his narcissism at the moment. “I was extremely attracted to you.” Though not as attracted as she was to Hot Dimples, the Reporter from Hell. “That’s my point. It’s the lure of the spell. It has a force of its own, sucking you in, drawing you to me no matter how I try to avoid getting involved with anyone new. That’s why we have to find the counterspell.”

  Though finding the counterspell wasn’t as easy as it sounded. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been looking.

  She’d started her quest for the cure two years ago, the night she’d heard about Gabriel’s car crash and began to suspect the truth. If only Gran hadn’t been quite such a collector of grimoires. If only Biz hadn’t been so drunk she couldn’t remember which one she used to cast the original spell. If only the damn books didn’t have such capricious personalities, hiding and revealing their secrets to her according to their own twisted whim.

  There were days when it flat-out sucked to be a witch.

  Mark Ellison’s dimples flashed in her mind, taunting her.

  She’d close the shop and spend the rest of the day in the library, digging through more of Gran’s old grimoires for clues. If she could find a counterspell, she could save those dimples.

  And prevent any more unwanted attention from coming down on her.

  She already had one reporter breathing down her neck looking for answers. She didn’t need any more nasty coincidences adding fuel to the fire. Witches weren’t burned at the stake these days, but she’d just as soon not spend the rest of her days in a mental institution mainlining lithium.

  She needed that counterspell and an airtight story to give to Mark Ellison to get him off her back.

  Biz groaned. What she needed was a miracle.

  She served herself a bowl of soup, grabbed a spoon and headed toward the sound of classical music. “Come on, boys,” she called to Tony and Paul. “We’ve got some reading to do.”

  The library was massive, lovingly expanded by generations of Marks women. Towering bookcases lined the walls. As a child, Biz had been captivated by the scents of wood shelves and leather bindings in the library—not to mention the sounds.

  Her grandmother had always spoken of the books singing to her. She couldn’t get lost in the library because the books would guide her. But Biz had never heard their voices that clearly. To her ears they were just low, sibilant whispers, the words themselves indistinct and foreign. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the sounds, running her fingers along the spines, struggling to hear their instructions, wanting so badly to be guided by the shadow voices, but all she heard were the jumble of whispers lost in time, riddles of spells long forgotten.

  She pulled down the next book on her methodical, one-by-one examination of the collection and settled in for a long day of eyestrain.

  Chapter Four—Conspiracy to Commit Confusion

  Mark Ellison did not consider himself a paranoid man. He didn’t think anyone was out to get him, and he’d never before been tempted to accuse perfect strangers of collusion. So he was reasonably certain his current conviction was not born of a delusion.

  The entirety of Parish Island was conspiring against him.

  It started as soon as he walked out of Biz’s shop that morning. He’d crossed the street to the Shoreview Guesthouse, stopping to grab his emergency overnight bag out of his trunk. The entry was small but crammed with homey touches, with a narrow counter holding a register and a bell. The rapid patter of footsteps heralded the arrival of Mrs. Kent who ushered him into her ruffled beachfront utopia, fluttering around him eagerly, and asked him again what story he was chasing in Parish, her eyes gleaming with the promise of fresh gossip.

  It had seemed like the perfect opening. He’d been intentionally vague, referencing Valentine’s Day and dropping Biz’s name, then trailing off to let her jump in. And jump in she had. Though in no direction he could have anticipated.

  Matchmaker. Amorous consultant. Love witch. Before he knew it, Mark was listening to Mrs. Kent wax eloquent on how Biz’s grandmother had introduced her to her Harry forty-seven years earlier.

  He’d tried to bring the conversation back to some sense of relevance by mentioning Biz’s victims. That was when Mrs. Kent started with the ghosts. Ghosts Biz herself was apparently seeing—though Mrs. Kent was quick to point out it was perfectly normal for Biz to be seeing specters, given her supernatural sensitivity. Had she profited from their deaths? The very idea was absurd.

  And so the conversation had gone with virtually every Parishioner he’d managed to corner throughout the day. The only exceptions were the blue-haired biddies who had interrogated him relentlessly about his own love life. He’d thought he was a master inquisitor, but they’d grilled him about everything from his upbringing, to his economic stability and his willingness to father offspring in the near future, amid heavy-handed hints that he’d be perfect for thei
r Biz.

  The woman was universally adored. When he’d implied she might have had something to do with a series of mysteriously croaking beaus, the Parishioners had looked at him like he’d just confessed to drowning kittens in his spare time.

  With all the Biz-introduced-us stories on Parish, he had enough material for a dozen sappy Valentine’s pieces, but was no closer to figuring out the truth behind the woman herself.

  Jinxes, witches and ghosts. Did they really believe that stuff? Or were they all protecting Biz, hoping to steer him off course with hints of the paranormal? Was she just a beloved kook or a mastermind running an enormous con? Was it a conspiracy? Were they all in it together? Bumping off new arrivals to the island with Biz as their ringleader?

  When he’d started thinking conspiracy theories, Mark decided it was time to call it a day.

  Mark strolled down Main Street, past an empty ice-cream shop and darkened windows filled with island souvenirs. At the end of the street he kept walking, along the wide, abandoned boardwalk that curved beside the beach. He needed space to think, the rhythmic pounding of his footsteps to steady his thoughts.

  The questions of the day plagued him. His own and those he’d been asked. Why is a handsome young man like you still single? Is something missing in your life, Mr. Ellison?

  He wasn’t the kind of guy who spent a lot of time navel-gazing. He’d never really analyzed himself the same way he did his interview subjects, and he didn’t particularly want to start now.

  His life was fine, damn it. Yes, he was single, but last he’d checked that wasn’t a crime. Even for a guy on the far side of thirty. He’d seen all his friends pair off and start breeding in the last few years, but that didn’t mean he was overdue for a house in the suburbs himself. Not that he didn’t ever want that life, but he had plenty of time and other priorities. Things he wanted to do first. He had intentionally avoided messy, overly emotional relationships to focus his energy on his career. And now, jobs for print reporters weren’t exactly reliable with more and more papers closing their doors or going wholly digital. Even with a steady column and an editor who thought he walked on water, his professional life was too unstable right now to start a serious relationship.