Royal Ghouls

by Alex A King

  “What is it?” Leo said. He was staring at me. Worried.

  The second woman appeared. No shimmer. Pantyhose looped around her neck. Pretty but purple from having the life squeezed out of her. Every bit as dense in texture as her friend. She opened her mouth to speak.

  I held up my finger. “Don’t say anything.”

  Leo sat back in his chair. “Okay …”

  He had misunderstood, of course.

  I stomped into the living room, where the Marias were milling around the television, watching Clueless. Kyrios Harry was by the window, for a change.

  “Kitchen. Now.”

  The Marias weren’t happy about leaving the couch but they straggled into the kitchen behind Kyrios Harry.

  “Who do you see in here?” I asked the dead people. Ghosts could see other ghosts, and these ghosts had been able to see Kyria Eva’s apparition before she woke up. Could they see the matching pair of alleged murder victims?

  Leo looked up. “You.”

  “Not you,” I said. “I’m asking them.”

  His forehead crumpled up. He took another stab at the fries.

  “I see sexy man,” one of the Marias said, “and he is eating tiganites. I miss tiganites.”

  “You never ate tiganites when you were alive,” another Maria told her.

  I turned to Kyrios Harry.

  He shrugged. “I see a man and you. Nobody else.”

  “Okay, you can go,” I said.

  Leo pushed away from the table. “If that’s what you want.”

  My Virgin Mary … “Again—not you.”

  He hovered between sitting and standing, clearly confused.

  I turned to the two apparitions, who were casually dying all over again in my kitchen, and pointed my fork at them. “You two are not ghosts. What are you?”

  They quit dying and took up giggling, clinging together against the kitchen wall. “Awww! It’s less fun if he knows you can see us,” they said in unison.

  “Get out of my house.” I jabbed my fork at them.

  “But we like it here with him,” the bleeder said. “He belongs to us.”

  There was a low growling from the other room. Something large and marmalade flew into the room and launched itself at the women in a clatter of claws and hissing. The apparition women shrieked. They fell backward, through the kitchen wall, and vanished. Dead Cat sat on the patch of floor they’d just vacated. Satisfied with his hunting skills, he lifted a back leg and began licking his balls.

  A cold sweat drenched my skin. Shaking, I braced my hands against the tabletop. Sat.

  “What just happened?”

  “More crazy. I’m really tired of crazy. I need to vomit and sleep—in that order.”

  Leo inspected me across the table. His face was grave and concerned. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

  “It’s the food,” I said. “Crusty Dimitri’s is poison. I’ll be fine. You can go.”

  “Are you talking to me this time?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re okay.”

  He scooped me up like I was a feather, carried me to the bedroom, sat me on the edge of the bed and pulled my boots off as though I was a little kid. Then he swiveled me around and tucked me in.

  “Is your couch comfortable?”

  I thought about the Marias lined up across the cushions. He’d never know they were there.

  “You don’t have to stay.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I do.”

  Leo was gone the next morning but he had left a note.

  “It says he has gone to meet with the Thessaly Police,” Kyrios Harry said.

  “Don’t read my mail.”

  “It is not mail, it is a note. An unfolded note, sitting on your desk, where anyone could read it.”

  “Ghosts,” I muttered.

  “We are dead. Our options are limited.”

  So Leo was meeting with the Thessaly Police. What would become of Kyria Eva? Would they treat her like a suspect or victim? I hoped they would have more luck than I did. As far as suspects went, I hadn't managed to rule out anyone definitively.

  Penny Papadopoulo didn’t strike me as a killer. She seemed satisfied that she had made Harry eat wood and sent him on his way.

  Eating wood is a spanking. Sometimes it’s a sex thing and sometimes it’s not.

  As for Angela, I believed her. Opening a supermarket on Merope, just so she could stock Royal Pain bread was the most Angela thing ever. So was her fretting that everyone on the island would hate her for it. The woman needed a therapist. What she had was a bunch of servants and me.

  Johnny Margas was still a candidate. As Kyrios Harry’s secret brother-in-law, he stood to benefit directly from Harry’s death. His wife would inherit the Royal Pain business. If he had succeeded in snuffing her with that pillow, he would now be the sole heir of the Royal Pain company. He wouldn’t need Wundebar Bread. Johnny Margas was about to become that child from the Bible, the one with two mothers, except instead of mothers he had two different police departments yanking on his arms.

  I sat at my desk and opened my mail. The few jobs waiting were small but they all contributed to Finder Keepers’ bottom line. I would never be rich but that was okay, especially now that I owned my own place. I found coveted trinkets, sorted out a family squabble by finding a solution the siblings couldn’t see, and let a perennial client from the mainland know that her “missing” daughter was still alive and well and working hard under her alias.

  Procrastinating?

  Who, me?

  Definitely me.

  Those two spooks last night had freaked me out. They weren’t ghosts, so what were they?

  Betty Honeychurch was the closest thing I had to an encyclopedia of the paranormal and weird, but it was too early to take my questions to the Cake Emporium. Later, I would be on Betty’s doorstep, questions in hand. But first, I wanted to talk to a long-dead woman about closure.

  My phone rang.

  “Sorry I had to leave,” Leo said. “What are you doing?”

  I told him I was on my way to Merope’s Best for a steaming cup of punishment and regret.

  He chuckled, then he turned serious. “We need to talk. Tonight. Dinner at my place. Any questions?”

  “Are we having Crusty Dimitri’s again?”

  “This body is a deadly weapon,” he said. “Do you think I would fuel it with Crusty Dimitri’s food three times in one year?”

  “Can we really call it food?”

  He laughed but there was tension in his voice. “I will see you tonight.”

  I showered and threw on jeans, layering a black sweater over a long-sleeved shirt. One pair of boots, a belt, and a ponytail holder later I was ready for the short walk to Merope’s Best. The scorched beans hunkered down on top of last’s night’s ouzo and Crusty Dimitri’s mystery meat, threatening to give me a wicked case of heartburn. I silenced it with a kourabietha. Those Greek shortbreads smothered in powdered sugar will cure almost anything.

  Time to burn off the sugar.

  I grabbed my bicycle from the apartment building’s foyer and peddled up to the cliff, where the long-dead Maria Petsini was contemplating the churning water below.

  “You again,” she said, then fell.

  I sat cross-legged on the ground and waited for her to poof! back into position.

  One … two … three … “You’re still here?”

  “Maria Petsini?”

  She blinked. “I know that name.” Her forehead scrunched like cheap toilet paper. “I was that name, wasn’t I?”

  “You went missing twenty years ago.”

  “Missing …” She touched her collarbone, lost in thought. “I left something behind. I know I did. What was it?”

  “Your parents?”

  “My parents … are they still alive?”

  “I think so. They offered a reward for information, but there wasn’t any. If anyone knew what happened to you, they didn’t
speak up.”

  “I remember,” she said. “I was working on a yacht.”

  “Doing what?”

  “A stewardess. I did everything my employer demanded, and I did it without complaint. My family thought I was studying at the university.”

  “You didn’t tell them you were a stewardess?”

  “Maybe I did. I don’t remember. Has it really been twenty—”

  No finishing that sentence. She fell again. Seconds later, there was a shimmer, a poof!, and she was back. “I keep doing that,” she said. “I never mean to but it happens.”

  A dark thought blossomed. That was it. She couldn’t stop jumping because she had never jumped in the first place. Was Maria was pushed to her death twenty years ago?

  “You didn’t jump? Maria, were you pushed?”

  “Why would I jump? I had everything to live for.” The grooves on her forehead deepened. “There was an argument … and then I was in the water.”

  “An argument? With who?”

  “I don’t remember, or maybe I never knew. Would you do something for me?”

  “Yes.”

  Before she could tell me, she fell again. Then, four seconds later, she popped back, dry and unruffled.

  “Tell my family where I died. You are the first person to speak my name in twenty years. Maybe they will give you the reward.”

  I had nothing solid to give Maria Petsini’s family. Telling them a ghost story wasn’t evidence, it was grounds for a restraining order.

  Did that stop me? Not for a minute.

  I hunted down the family’s phone number and called them, cool wind whipping my cheeks. Overhead the sun was shrugging shoulders it didn’t have, saying, “You want heat? It’s hot and sunny in Australia right now.”

  The Petsinis’ phone was answered with a heavy male sigh and a single word. “Come.” Standard Greek phone greeting, minus the sigh. I identified myself and asked if I could speak to him about his daughter Maria.

  There was a long silence.

  “Kyrios Petsinis?”

  “It is impossible right now, no matter how much we wish it.”

  “Please. It’s important. Can I come and speak with you? Would that be easier?”

  “No. I am sorry. There has been a death in the family and we are in mourning. After forty days, then you may come see us, but before that we cannot receive you.”

  Greek funeral protocols. Wear black; head to toe for women; armbands for men because Greece embraces its double standards and hugs them tight. No socializing for forty days. The funeral doesn’t count as socializing. Neither does the wake.

  “When the forty days is over, I’ll call. How many days is that from today?”

  He hung up without ceremony … or words.

  I glanced at my phone. The Cake Emporium would be flipping the sign in the door to Open any minute now. Betty would be there with cake and information.

  And she was. The cake was midnight black, thick blackberry jam spread between the layers. It tasted like some long lost summer.

  “It’s Halloween,” she told me. “I doubt we will have any children come by for sweets, but we’re prepared all the same.” Either side of the door sat two enormous glass pumpkins, overflowing with candy, each generous piece wrapped in orange or black. If any of Merope’s children did Halloween, the Cake Emporium would become the haul of legend.

  “We? You mean you and your brother?”

  Jack Honeychurch was responsible for every confection in the store. So far, I had not met the elusive Jack, nor had I spotted him around the island. The Honeychurches didn’t get out much. Merope in winter wasn’t exactly a thriving metropolis. Most people only poked their noses outdoors to load up on groceries and firewood. Gossip came to them through the phone and some magical communication system. A hive mind.

  “Jack isn’t one for people. He’s shy. Has been since we were knee-high. But I’ll be here handing out sweets to anyone who wants them. He made the candy bars, but I get the fun part, don’t you think?”

  I missed Halloween and the candy that went with it. Traipsing from house to house in costumes made for early September, not the end of October. Inspecting the loot afterward with my friends, stuffing ourselves with sugar until our bodies levitated. Halloween wasn’t something I’d done as an adult. Handing out candy to cute kids was one of those opportunities I’d lost when my folks got tired of my grandmother faking imminent death and moved back to Greece.

  “You’re welcome to hand out sweets with me,” Betty said. She inspected my face. “No, you have other plans, and that’s why you’re here, aren’t you?”

  Yikes. I didn’t want her to think I was using her. I wasn’t. Betty was one of my favorite people. “I’m also come here for the company and the cake. I don’t need cake today though, sorry. You loaded me up yesterday.”

  Her laugh was a bright tinkling sound, delicate yet it filled the air. Like Tinker Bell, if Tinker Bell hadn’t been suffering from unrequited love.

  She reached across the table, patted my hand.

  “You would have to work hard to offend me, luv. You’ve got a good heart. Even the work you do is about helping other people.”

  “For money.”

  “People don’t help other people, even if it’s for money, unless they’ve got a smidgen of goodness in them. You’ve got more than a smidgen. Your center is gooey caramel.” Elbows on the table. Chin in hands. Eyes on me. “Now, tell me what you saw.”

  I laid it out for her. The date. The dead women. My escape through Taverna! Taverna! Taverna!’s bathroom window. Their encore performance in my kitchen last night.

  “It sounds to me like that policeman of yours has picked up a problem or two,” she said when I was done.

  “What are they? They’re not ghosts.”

  “Definitely not ghosts, although they’re pretending to be. Two women, putting on a show about how they were either murdered or offed themselves, trying to scare you off. Showing up when you finally get some alone time with your policeman. I bet they soiled their knickers when they realized you could see them.”

  “Both times there was food involved. Although I’m not sure Crusty Dimitri’s can be called food.”

  “Of course.” Her bright eyes clouded over. Gravity grabbed the edges of her lips and gave them a good tug. “Succubi. I detest succubi. They’re worse than a bedbug infestation, and they seem to have attached themselves to the detective.”

  The contents of my head were on the spin cycle. Ghosts were real—okay. Most paranormal creatures were based on a speck of truth—also okay. But now succubi were, too? Before I’d walked in here my mind was open. Now it was just full.

  “Three questions.” I set the fork down and ticked them off on my fingers. “Why? How? Is there an exterminator for this kind of thing?”

  She got up for a moment. When she came back there was a cup of hot chocolate in each of her hands. Underneath each cup, a saucer. Atop each saucer, surrounding the cup, were three kinds of fudge. I breathed deep as she sat them down. At least one of the fudges was loaded with whiskey.

  “Succubi don’t attach themselves to just any man. They’re drawn to attractive men, men who naturally draw the female eye. They’re like crows that way. They like pretty, shiny things and collect them where they can. And they don’t like competition.”

  “They see me as the competition.”

  She sipped her hot chocolate and smiled into the cup. “Perfect every time. Yes, I’m afraid they see you as the competition. You’re not.” She looked at my face which had broken out in a rash of disappointment, despite me trying to keep a neutral mask, and gave me a motherly smile. “There, there. Your police detective has a great deal of interest in you. How can those succubi possibly compete? He doesn’t even know they exist.”

  My mood lifted slightly. “What do they do?” I scrounged through my memory banks for mentions of succubi. Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Gary Oldman sporting wicked hair buns. Keanu Reeves and his stilted British accent,
writhing around with women in period costumes from no time period ever.

  “They are avid collectors of men, mostly. To most demons, people are collectables, like those Smurf figurines from the 1980s, or Charles and Diana’s wedding memorabilia.”

  “Most demons,” I muttered. “How do I get rid of them?”

  “The succubi? You don’t. That’s up to your policeman, I’m afraid. That’s why banishing a succubus is so difficult and annoying: most men don’t realize they’re part of a collection.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Although I suppose since you can see them, you might try asking them to naff off politely.”

  Naff off? That had to be a British thing. “Politely?”

  “Most demons respond well to good manners. They’re not all monsters.”

  “And if they won’t go?”

  “Then you’ll have to help the detective see the light.”

  Tough. Too tough. Leo didn’t believe in woo-woo things. He’d told me so with his own mouth.

  “Maybe not,” Betty said, reading my mind. “But he believes in you.”

  I spent the afternoon in the weak sun, sipping good coffee and clearing a couple of small jobs off my list. The Thessaly Police hopped on their boat late afternoon and sailed off into the sunset. They’d spent the afternoon combing over the wreckage of the Royal Pain and they had left a couple of their forensics guys behind to pick over the bones. As they were pulling out of port, Leo texted. Johnny Margas went with them. Eva Vasiliko was being transferred this afternoon.

  Two suspects gone. My case, such as it was, had ground to to a halt, along with Leo’s.

  Sam called. “That garbage you gave me was clean.”

  “It was the bread,” I said.

  “You didn’t give me bread.”

  “I didn’t have any to give you.”

  “Always logical. I like that about you.” He blew me a kiss. “You want to come over for dinner and bring dinner with you?”

  “Can’t. Not tonight.”

  “Woman, you better be blowing me off for a hot date.”

  “You know,” I said, “I think maybe I am.”

  A good dinner guest is one who shows up with things like dessert or wine. Or, in my case, dessert and wine. For the second time that day I stopped at the Cake Emporium. Betty steered me toward tiny cakes she knew Leo would love.