Dead Suite by Wendy Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

locations, it was hard
     to tell where metal and ink stopped and their own skin began.
    “Great to see you,” Rosemary exclaimed, offering Sadie enthusiastic waves and air
     kisses as if they were old friends instead of occasional ghost busters together. If
     Rosemary hadn’t been touch-sensitive and prone to feeling ill at Sadie’s touch, like
     Maeva used to be, it probably would’ve been a bear hug.
    Rick nodded hello.
    “We put some water bottles in the fridge. Help yourself.” To Sadie he said, “I’m glad
     Maeva convinced you to take the job.”
    Sadie turned to Maeva, her eyebrows raising. “Job? What job?”
    “I hadn’t gotten to that part yet,” Maeva said, scolding Rick. She turned to Sadie.
     “The new owners have been trying to renovate the house. As I told you in the car,
     they got it for a good price and would like to renovate it and then flip it for a
     profit.”
    “And what’s stopping them?” Sadie asked, already fearing the answer.
    “The workers they hired all quit because they were tired of dealing with what they
     call angry spirits.” Maeva drew air quotes around
angry spirits
and smiled as if this were the silliest thing she ever heard, even though spirits
     were her bread and butter. “The drywaller got a concussion from a flying paint can.
     Then they all walked off the job.”
    “So they called the ghost busters at Madam Maeva’s? Why wouldn’t they just hire different
     tradesmen?”
    “One of the partners who bought the house attended that Wiccan conference where I
     was a guest speaker. Apparently I made an impression. She’s convinced we can solve
     the problem before the house gets a bad reputation among contractors and nobody is
     willing to work here.”
    “But what does all this have to do with me?” Sadie was getting an uneasy feeling.
    “We came, we saw, and we smudged the hell out of the place,” Rosemary explained, then
     broke out into a fit of giggles. “But, well . . .”
    “What she means to say,” Rick said, “is that although we
tried
to contact the spirit who resides here and encourage her to move on, she wasn’t exactly
     receptive to the idea. As a matter of fact, she tried to scare us off by throwing
     things at us. Lucky for us there isn’t much inside the house.”
    “We had flying paint brushes and a drop cloth tossed our way,” Rosemary added with
     a laugh.
    Maeva joined the Thingvolds and the three had a good laugh over a ghost tossing around
     painting supplies, but the hairs on the back of Sadie’s neck stood up and she began
     to feel distinctly unwell.
    “You referred to the ghost as a she,” Sadie said. “How do you know the ghost is female?”
    “We are assuming that the spiritual entity is Iris, the fourteen-year-old who was
     killed here,” Rosemary said matter-of-factly. “Of course, it could also be Della,
     her crazy mother, although she didn’t die inside the house.”
    “Or someone else entirely. This house is a hundred years old. The spirit could be
     that old too,” Sadie pointed out.
    “True, but that would mean it’s been haunted all along,” Maeva put in.
    “That’s my point,” Sadie said. “Maybe it was haunted. Maybe that’s why Della Prior
     thought it had to do with her daughter, and maybe—”
    “That’s a lot of maybes. You look beat.” Rosemary opened the fridge and tossed Sadie
     a water bottle. “Whoever the spirit is, we’ve tried to have a sit-down chat with them
     to find out what we could do to help them move on, but that only got us more angry
     tossing of items around the house. We were at a loss, but then it hit us.” She smacked
     the palm of her hand against her forehead. “Sadie Novak could do this because this
     is
exactly
the kind of stuff she does every day!”
    “Um. No, it’s not.” Sadie took a gulp of water and then looked pointedly at Rosemary.
     “This is
nothing
like what I do every day. I clean up crime scenes, unattended deaths, meth labs,
     and