The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo & the Poltergeist Accountant by Vivi Andrews Read Free Book Online Page A

anything she could do to help, she was going to do it. She liked Jake and wasn’t about to give up the opportunity to use him as her own personal gigolo once they were no longer being bombarded with bullets on all sides.
    During a lull in the gunfire, Lucy launched herself from behind her crate, dashing toward Jake’s legs. She skidded to a stop against the crate he was bent around, tucking herself out of the line of fire.
    “Lucy! What the hell are you doing here?” Jake snapped, rolling behind the crate to sit beside her as he slid the clip out of his gun and jammed another one home.
    “See? He’s still alive. Can we go now?”
    “Shut up, Eliot!”
    “Go draw their fire or something,” Jake growled.
    The ghost hmphed and drifted away.
    As soon as he was gone, Jake turned to Lucy. “Are you hit anywhere?” His eyes raked over her. “How did you get in here? Are the cops outside? Why did they send you in? Jesus, Lucy, what were you thinking?”
    Lucy blinked at him, her brain suddenly rebooting after the half an hour of thoughtless panic that had brought her rushing to his aid. “The cops. That would have been smart. Damn.”
    Jake closed his eyes. “You didn’t bring reinforcements.” He groaned. “I’m down to my last clip, and you show up with no help other than the damned ghost who got us into this in the first place. How could you put yourself in danger like that?”
    “I wasn’t thinking,” Lucy admitted. “I was worried about you.”
    “I’m touched. Next time you’re worried, maybe you can bring me an AK-47 or two.”
    “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
    Another volley of gunfire exploded around them, deafening them for a few minutes as they cowered together in the dubious shelter of the crate. When she could hear him again, Jake was swearing fluently.
    “If that ghost wasn’t dead already, I’d kill him myself.”
    “In Eliot’s defense, he doesn’t really see death quite the same way we do.”
    “He sent me walking blind into fucking Fort Knox, Luce. I can’t believe I was so stupid. I thought ghosts couldn’t lie.”
    “I think that’s demons. Ghosts are the imprint a person has left on the world after they depart it and people lie constantly, so it’s only logical that ghosts would be deceptive. Besides, Eliot didn’t technically lie. There is a lot of evidence in the warehouse. There just happens to be a lot of guards and a lot of guns also.”
    “Not to mention Joe Morrissey himself.”
    Lucy gaped at him. “Big Joe is here? Oh, no.”
    “I don’t see that it matters. We’re equally dead whether he’s here or not.”
    Lucy grabbed his arm to get his attention. “Eliot can’t see him, Jake!”
    “Big Joe is invisible?”
    “This isn’t a joke! Murder victims cannot confront their murderers. It’s bad.”
    “Define bad.”
    “If we’re lucky, he’ll just maim Big Joe a little.”
    “I can think of worse things. And if we aren’t lucky?”
    “You know that part at the end of Ghostbusters where Rick Moranis turns into a mutant dog, and Gozer the Gozerian blows the top off a skyscraper and opens up a portal for all of the supernatural nasties to come through?”
    “Eliot could do that?”
    “If he went poltergeist on us and decided to call up some demonic force to take vengeance on Big Joe, that’s the least of what he could do.”
    “Okay, yeah, that’s bad. So we keep Eliot away from Joe.” Jake looked around as much as possible without coming out from behind their cover. “Where is Eliot, anyway?”
    Lucy glanced around, surprised. “He should be right here. He can’t go far.”
    The gunfire stopped suddenly and for a moment silence reigned in the warehouse. Then a low rumble sounded, like a freight train coming, and the warehouse’s foundation began to shiver and roll.
    “Shit! It’s an earthquake!”
    “No,” Lucy said direly. “It’s Eliot.”
     
    Eliot drifted out to the end of his leash, pausing to examine the ethereal tether