Page 1 of Ghostlighted (Ghost Townies #2)

Chapter One

“ W hat?” My arm jerked, but luckily the tea that slopped over the rim of my mug hit my jeans, not my laptop. “Crap, that’s hot.”

“Sorry.” Avi, my housemate, waved his hand and a napkin wafted through the air and settled on my thigh over the spill. “I didn’t think that suggestion would cause a spit-take.”

I blotted the wet spot on my jeans and scowled in his direction.

He was standing in front of the window, which meant I took in the lanky, brown-haired man in a shapeless cardigan as well as the view of my neighbor’s house that I could see through him.

Over the last month, Avi’s presence had gotten a little more solid, but he was still mostly transparent.

Because Avi was a ghost, the only one here in Ghost, Oregon. Most of the town’s residents would give an arm, leg, or first-born child to catch the briefest glimpse of a spirit. I had never had that ambition myself, yet here I was—the town’s newest arrival, actually sharing living space with one.

Which… wasn’t as alarming as it sounded. Avi, who, under the pen name Jake Fields, had been one of the most successful thriller writers of this century, and was surprisingly good company.

Except when he nearly made me spew hot tea all over my laptop.

“Not a spit-take, thank goodness. Just a slosh-and-gosh.” I crumpled the wet napkin and set it on the table next to my mug. “And my jeans took one for the team.”

“Clearly not for the first time,” Avi murmured.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. Let’s get back to your previous overreaction.”

“I didn’t overreact.”

He lifted an eyebrow above the rim of his wire-framed glasses. “Your jeans would beg to differ.”

“I’m sorry, but what did you expect after that comment? You told me to use your money to buy a car. I can’t do that!”

“The money isn’t mine anymore, Maz. It’s yours.” Avi’s tone implied that he was being completely reasonable, and I was being ridiculous. “Considering I’m dead and all. That’s how inheritance works.”

“I didn’t inherit this place from you. I inherited it from Uncle Oren.” Technically, Oren wasn’t my uncle. He was my mother’s second cousin once removed, and I’d never even heard his name until Taryn called to let me know I was his sole beneficiary.

“Yes,” Avi said patiently, “since I left everything to him, you’re, shall we say, my heir once removed? It still counts.”

I poked at my keyboard, frowning. “Except usually people don’t inherit from somebody who’s still around.”

“Technically, I’m not still around. Not to anybody except you.” His gaze cut to his feet, and he smiled fondly at my cat, Gilgamesh. “Well, you and Gil.”

Gil twined around Avi’s ankles as though they were corporeal, which, to Gil, they might be. Who knew? Certainly not Avi or me. As far as his life—or rather, his afterlife—was concerned, we were still in the discovery process.

“Besides,” Avi continued, “getting new wheels for you is totally selfish on my part. If your car breaks down and you crash, what will happen to me and the house?”

I squinted up at him, his body not blocking the sun streaming in through the window at all. “That’s a little dark, don’t you think?”

He shrugged. “What can I say? Who better than a ghost to snark about death?”

“I suppose that’s fair.” That reminded me that I should probably make a will of my own, now that I had actual—and significant—assets. “At the very least, Gil would need to hijack somebody else to supply him with tuna and kibble.”

“Are you talking to yourself, Gil, or Avi?” Taryn Pasternak-McHale, my friend and attorney, wandered out of the butler’s pantry, holding a bagel.

“Avi,” I muttered, trying to make sense of the garbled text on the laptop screen.

“I’m guessing from your scowl that either he’s telling you that you’re being ridiculous about your inheritance, or whatever is on your laptop is worse than usual.”

“Both.” I shot a glare at her over my shoulder. “Why are you mooching bagels from my pantry, anyway? Your girlfriend literally owns a bakery.”

“Co-owns, and they don’t serve bagels. Yet.” She grinned as she opened the refrigerator and rummaged around until she found the cream cheese. “I’m conducting market research for their expanded product line, so thank you for your service.”

“Any time.”

She peered at me as she slathered cream cheese on her bagel. “Maz, I could dry my hair with that tone.” When I just grunted, she set the cream cheese on the counter and sauntered over to the table to peer over my shoulder. “Is this one of the ghostwriting gigs you picked up from Ghostline?”

“Yes.” I looked up at her. Her brown skin glowed in the sunlight spilling in through the turret windows that surrounded the table, and she was wearing her long locs down her back today rather than in her usual business braided crown.

“I appreciate you posting my credentials there. I really do.” For an online town chat room for a place as small as Ghost, the post had generated a surprising number of jobs for me.

“And this contract pays really well. It’s just frustrating. ”

She leaned closer, scattering a few bagel crumbs on my shoulder. “What’s it for?”

“Rewriting online help for a geography game app. Their launch date is looming and the first version was?—”

“Unhelpful?”

I snorted. “You could say that. I’m pretty sure they just pointed generative AI at their wireframe documentation and called it good.”

“I take it that it wasn’t.” She took a bite of bagel. “Good, that is.”

“Not if you expected, you know, actual help. Plus, whatever engine they used had huge problems recognizing images, which is kind of an issue for a game that’s literally about the shapes of countries.

Slovenia was tagged as a rooster, Belize as a microwave oven, and Italy as—wait for it—a kinky boot.

” She and Avi both laughed, but I just shook my head. “AI is the tool of the devil.”

“So what was Avi saying to you?”

I glanced at Avi, who was leaning on the air in the vicinity of the wall. “He wants me to use the Jake Fields royalties to buy myself a car, of all things.”

“He’s got a point.” She frowned down at her bagel and walked back to the counter to plaster it with more cream cheese. “Your car looks like it’s held together by coat hangers, rust, and desperation. It’s older than you are by at least a dozen years.”

I squinted one eye. “It’s a classic?”

“It’s one step from a wreck,” Avi said. “Even you call it a beater. Stop being so stubborn and take the money already.”

I hunched over the laptop. “You didn’t complain when Ricky refused payment for maintaining the house for a decade. This is no different.”

In fact, when I’d made the offer, Ricky—whom I hoped might someday transition from friend to boyfriend —had been so insulted I was afraid he’d stop speaking to me. Luckily, Ricky wasn’t nearly the touchy diva that my last boyfriend had been, and the awkwardness had passed quickly.

Taryn, finished with her bagel, licked cream cheese off her fingers. “I’m guessing Avi just told you to take the money.”

“Yes,” I grumbled. “But it doesn’t feel right to use it for something like that. It’s not like Avi can drive a car.”

“Look, Maz, while it’s admirable that you want to share with Avi, there are some things that aren’t possible. Ghosts don’t have a credit rating or investment accounts, and they certainly can’t stand in line at the DMV.” She paused. “At least, not that I know of.”

In an attempt to get them both off my back, I deflected.

“This is a new look for the office, isn’t it?

The hair, the clothes.” Taryn favored jewel-toned pantsuits in raw silk when she was in no-nonsense attorney mode, and though she had her usual Doc Martens on her feet, she was wearing a white linen camp shirt untucked over black knit pants today. “Instituting casual Wednesday?”

She shook her head, her locs swinging behind her and pattering against my arm. “I’ve only got two official things to do, and then I’m off for the rest of the day.” She eyed the damp spot on my thigh. “What’s your excuse?”

“I’m barred from the Manor for the next two days.” When her brows rose, I said, “A Eugene company booked the Manor for business development nonsense, and the staff is cordially not invited to remain on the premises.”

“Oh right. Which reminds me that Pop’s taking advantage of the situation and dragging Dad up to Victoria for the weekend.

” Taryn’s dad, Saul Pasternak, was my boss at Richdale Manor, Ghost’s answer to the Winchester Mystery House.

“Dad wanted me to let you know he wouldn’t be back until Monday, so you could take Friday off, too. ”

“He did, huh? So why didn’t you?”

“I forgot,” she said, not abashed in the least. But then her face clouded.

“Dad was happy enough with the venue rental fees, but I think the company could have at least catered their food locally. They’re bringing it all in from Eugene, even the morning pastries.

The job would have been a good bump for Isaksen’s. ”

I swiveled in my chair to look up at her. “Is Isaksen’s hurting for business?”

“Eh.” She waggled one hand. “Yes and no. More is always better, within reason, anyway. Haley and I are heading into Florence to try to drum up some commercial clients for them. The lack of tourism here in town is still a problem generally, and once bookings at Jenkins House dried up, they lost their biggest local bulk order.”

“Jenkins House?” I still hadn’t visited the place, although it was on my to-do list. Other than my house, it was the only example of Uncle Oren’s work in town. Since I’d never met the man who was Avi’s lover and my own benefactor, I was curious. “That’s the B & B, right?”

“It was. The couple who owned it have decided to move on.”

“Rats,” I muttered.