Haunted by Kelley Armstrong Read Free Book Online Page B

I’m near a phone.”
    “Good. Please do that.”
    Some of her unease evaporated, but there was still a healthy dose of caution behind her shuttered gaze. Nothing new for me. I’d spent my life trying to build a reputation as a fair dealer, but when you’ve also built a rep in the black arts, no one ever gives a shit about how fair you are. Blast a person’s eyes from their sockets, and you can be sure that story will blow through the grapevine faster than an energy bolt, but somehow, the part about the “victim” siccing a demon on you gets lost in the transmission.
    I opened my mouth to say more, when something across the café caught my attention. I’m not easily distracted, but this was a sight to divert even the most focused mind. A man, in his early thirties, weaving between tables, with his head in his hands—literally, his severed head in his hands. Gore trickled from his neck stump, congealing on the collar of his dress shirt. Intestine poked through a small hole in his shirt. All around him people continued to eat and talk and laugh. Which could only mean one thing.
    “Ghost at ten o’clock,” I murmured to Jaime. “And it’s a ripe one.”
    She turned and gave a tiny groan, then sank into her chair.
    “Not a first-time visitor, I’m guessing,” I said.
    The man strode up to the table. His gaze cut to me.
    “What are you looking at, spook?” he snarled.
    “Exactly what you want me to be looking at,” I said.
    “Kill the theatricals. The necro is not impressed, and neither am I.”

    “Oh, does the horror of my death offend you? Well, excuse me. Next time, I’ll make sure I die all neat and tidy.” He slammed his head onto Jaime’s salad plate. “There. Better?”
    Jaime’s cheeks paled. I swung my gaze up to glare at the ghost…only his eyes weren’t there, which made the move slightly less effective. I glowered down at him.
    “She’s not talking to you until you put your head back on,” I said.
    “Fuck y—”
    “Put your goddamned head back on now.”
    He crossed his arms. “Make me.”
    I slammed my open palm into his ear. His head flew off the table, rolled across the floor, and settled in front of a seeing-eye dog. The dog lifted its muzzle, and its nostrils flared as it picked up the whiff of decay.
    “Yum,” I said. “Go on, boy. Take a bite.”
    The ghost’s body flew across the restaurant, plowing through tables and diners. Beside me, Jaime made muffled snorting noises, stifling laughter. She mouthed, “Thank you.”
    The decapitated ghost stomped back to the table. Only he was decapitated no more, having apparently decided his head was safer attached to his shoulders. He’d also freshened up his wardrobe. This would be his normal ghost self. The headless accountant look was a glamour, a trick some ghosts used to revert to their death body—the condition they’d been in when they’d died—either to play on a necromancer’s sympathy or to scare the bejesus out of humans with a little necro blood.
    “Now, doesn’t that feel better?” I said.
    “Oh, you thought that was funny, did you?” he said, advancing on me. “It’s always funny to pick on those less fortunate than yourself. Maybe when you’re done here, you can go back to paradise, and have a good laugh, tell them how you abused the earth-spook.”
    “Earth-spook?”
    “I’m a spirit in torment,” the man said, his voice rising like a preacher at the pulpit. “Condemned to tread the earthly realm until my soul finds peace. For five years—five unimaginably long years—I’ve been trapped here, unable to move into the light, seeking only a few minutes of a necromancer’s time—”
    Jaime thudded face-first onto the table and groaned. The elderly woman at the next table inched her chair in the other direction.
    “See how she treats me?” the man said to me. “She could set me free, but no, she’s too busy going on talk shows, telling people how she helps tormented spirits find peace. When