Coffee and Ghosts: The Complete First Season (Coffee and Ghosts: The Complete Seasons Book 1) by Charity Tahmaseb Read Free Book Online Page B

He shakes his head. “Even now, I can hear their chatter. It fills you up, but it leaves you empty.”
    And then he is silent. We’ve grown used to this, having him quiet, his gaze somewhere in the middle distance. I don’t ask him what he sees. I know he will tell us when he’s ready.
    In the meantime, Malcolm and I have an incident at the local law firm.
    “Your grandmother can’t keep doing this,” he says. “Someone will figure it out.”
    “You didn’t.” I have graduated back into jeans, my thighs healed, or mostly so. I’ve added a plaid blazer, but still feel underdressed for the gauntlet of lawyers we will need to pass.
    “How about this,” he counters. “She needs to be careful.” He stops our trek down the sidewalk. “You need to be careful, Katy. That thing—”
    “Is gone.”
    He stands firm in the center of the sidewalk so a mother with a stroller must scoot past us.
    “I can’t get that word out of my head,” he says once she passes. “Vendetta. It wasn’t about Nigel, and I don’t think it was about me. That leaves you.”
    “That thing is gone,” I say again.
    “For now.”
    “Yes, exactly. And in the meantime, we have a job to do.”
    “But—”
    I press my finger against his lips, a quick touch, there and gone. This close, he is all Ivory soap and nutmeg. “Let’s go catch a ghost.”
    To my surprise, Malcolm doesn’t protest. He merely takes my hand and starts walking.
    To my surprise, I don’t mind. Not at all.



 

     

    AS FAR AS GHOST ERADICATIONS GO, clearing sprites from Sadie Lancaster’s house almost never varies. I suspect they are the same two sprites, although with sprites, it’s hard to tell. I suspect they hold a certain amount of affection for Sadie since they always return. They don’t mind my efforts to catch them. At least, they don’t mind the coffee I use to do so. All in all, clearing Sadie’s house of sprites guarantees a certain amount of cash flow each month.
    K&M Ghost Eradication Specialists appreciates and counts on that certain amount of cash flow.
    “You know, Katy,” Sadie says to me, hands fluttering. “I’ve been talking to someone who says I should embrace my sprites.”
    “You could,” I say, mentally weighing cash flow against honesty. In my hands, I cradle a cup of coffee, one I plan to place in the master bath. Ghosts of all varieties love toilet humor. You really don’t want one in your bathroom. The mug stings my fingertips and steam rises from the coffee’s surface. In that steam, something glimmers. I may have my first catch already.
    “She says they won’t hurt me,” Sadie adds.
    “They won’t,” I say. “But they will play pranks.”
    Sadie gives her head an emphatic shake. “They’re only trying to communicate. You should know that, Katy.”
    Well, no, they’re not. And no, I don’t know any such thing. True, ghosts have desires, but not in the way most people think they do. None of them want to sit down for a chat. They don’t want to unburden themselves, no matter what you see on television. Like most things supernatural, information on ghosts is very misleading.
    “Anyway,” Sadie is saying. “Mistress Armand—”
    “Wait. Mistress Armand ?” My partner—the M in K&M—is Malcolm Armand.
    “Well, yes. I just assumed she’s a sister, or an aunt. Same beautiful black hair and all.” Sadie waves a hand, dismissing my question.
    Aunt. Sister. Imposter? My hands tremble at the thought. Coffee sloshes over the rim. My skin smarts. I swallow back the pain. When I reach the bathroom, I’ll run some cold water over the burn. Now? Now I want to know more about this Mistress Armand.
    Sadie clutches her hands beneath her chin. “She did a reading, right here in the living room.” Her eyes glow. “She knows everything, about Harold, how even though he cheated, he still loved me ...”
    What else would you say to a widow, especially one both grieving and wronged? I sigh, my breath chasing steam from