Ghostly: A Paranormal Romantic Comedy (Perks of Being Paranormal Book 1)

Chapter 19

Gabriel barely made it to the sofa and pulled a book onto his lap when Perry walked into the living room.

“Oh, you’re here. You didn’t say anything.” Perry bounced onto the sofa. “Is ghostie around and—dude, you okay? You’re looking like you just ran a mile.”

Gabriel ran a hand over his face. “I think I turned the heating up too much.” Not entirely a lie. What had he been thinking, whispering some erotic fantasy to a ghost? Making love to a ghost?

Well, getting there, as the pulsating pain between his legs reminded him.

God, he needed a cold shower.

“If you need to work, why don’t you get to it,” he said to Perry, trying to sound polite through the frustration. “I’ll just take this upstairs and… be back soon.” He rose, keeping the book in front of him, and hurried to the hallway.

In the bathroom, he turned on the shower, but then just leaned his head on the cool tiles, breathing in and out. That damn perfume. What had it done to him? He’d fantasized about Ida before, but this… it had been too much. He’d gone too far. Ida wasn’t like him, or even like most of the other women he’d had relationships with. She’d never gone through a wild college phase or had a one-night stand or done it at all, and he pounced on her like some sex-crazed maniac.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

By the time Gabriel had cooled down—physically more than mentally—Perry was deep into his work, and Ida was still nowhere to be seen. Not wanting to shoo Perry away, Gabriel instead pushed through an afternoon of occasional chit-chat and a walk around the house. It wasn’t until half an hour after Perry’s departure, well into the evening, when Ida finally came out of the deer-hog.

Gabriel had several openers prepared, all including a profound apology, but as he saw her wringing her hands and shifting her gaze to anything but him, his fancy words evaporated. She was ashamed, wasn’t she? And he made her feel that.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was the perfume. It never should’ve happened.”

Ida lifted her eyes and opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I understand,” she said, and floated upstairs.

“Don’t you…”

She disappeared through a wall.

Gabriel frowned. Perhaps talking about it would only make it worse. If this was what she wanted, he’d ignore the incident… and in time, all would return to normal.

Two weeks later

On the bright side, Ida and Perry were getting along great.

He came by frequently, and they found many new ways to interact. They used Gabriel’s old trick from the Christmas fair, only with an added text-to-speech app, and Perry went around town and showed Ida places, while she explained how the town used to look like. They invented a game of knocking, and for hours, Gabriel would sit and work while listening to the continuous knock-knock, knock, knock-knock, like he was in some twisted reality where the only communication was via Morse Code.

That communication was only meant for Perry. Ida had decided to snub Gabriel. Easy for her, perhaps; at least she had her distractions. Gabriel’s best distraction was the research on Mrs. Ashford-Abernathy’s case and (completely uncorrelated) the more documents he read, the more he realized the perfume had nothing to do with him going crazy. He simply wanted Ida.

One day he was sanding the peeling paint off the garden-facing walls, to prepare the facade for the fresh coat. When he returned inside, a scent hit his nostrils—sweet, but citrusy. And creamy. Creamy, like Ida’s skin. If he could touch her for real, it would’ve been soft and warm—

Hold on.

He strode into the living room and took in the scene: Perry, with a blindfold over his eyes, arms stretched out, headed for a disaster: the shelf with the porcelain vase on it. Ida, a few feet left of the said vase, hand over her mouth, trying to suppress her giggles.

“What’s going on here?” Gabriel’s voice came out harsher than he’d expected, but he didn’t care. The damn perfume was back. And Ida—

“Oh, we’re just playing a game.” Perry took off the blindfold. “Ida’s got this perfume that can stick to her. I’m trying to find her by smelling.”

“Then why do you need the blindfold? It’s not like you can see her, anyway.” Gabriel turned to Ida. “And you don’t need to control your giggling, he can’t hear you!”

“Dude, chill.” Perry spread his arms. “We’re just having fun.”

“You nearly destroyed the vase.”

“That vase means a lot to you, huh?”

“Whatever you’re doing, go do it somewhere else. I’ve work to do in here.”

Without a word, Ida disappeared.

Perry looked at his phone. “Sure, sure. Hey, I love music boxes! Used to have one when I was little…” He wandered to the hallway, eyes glued to the screen. “Aw, man. I think my phone smells like flowers now…”

Gabriel opened his laptop and checked his mail. Only a new briefing to run through. He downloaded the document and scoured it with intense determination, trying to dismiss the orange blossom scent still lingering in the room.

Stop with this weird jealousy. She has to bond with Perry.

But when he lay in bed at night, unable to sleep, he could only think about how it would feel if she lay next to him. When he finally fell asleep, she chased him into his dreams—waves of her hair spilling over her naked shoulders, tiny moans and cries escaping her lush mouth, legs wrapping around him. Some mornings, he had to dedicate another six minutes in the bathroom just to cool himself off.

She was driving him insane.

***

He was driving her insane.

Forget revenge over family; Gabriel was going to single-handedly turn her into a crazed, lights-flickering, house-wrecking spirit, just by existing. Well, to be fair, some of it was Ida’s fault: she couldn’t stop thinking about the perfume, couldn’t stop recalling all the things he’d made her feel, and she couldn’t get him off her mind.

Which was exactly how ghosts went crazy, wasn’t it?

Sometimes, she’d be talking to Perry, and Gabriel’s smooth, seductive voice would cross her mind, and it would feel so, so very awkward. One day, she’d been haunting Perry’s phone when it happened, and a pop-up for a website with women of dubious morals turned up.

That one was hard to explain.

When she’d come out of the deer statue after the event, she hadn’t expected a love confession, but a nice word would’ve sufficed. A small, but knowing smile, like the one Armando had given Jane after their night in the tent.

She certainly hadn’t expected Gabriel to say it was all in the perfume.

What could she say back to that? She was only glad she’d made it to her bedroom before the embarrassing hiccup noises began, and while she’d sat there, not knowing whether to laugh or cry at her idiocy, thoughts swirled.

Even in Emerald Fever, Jane and Armando only had their implied happy ending. Jane returned to her life, and Armando had to run to escape the clutches of the cartel. At the very end, Jane saw someone through the window, ran down, and through her smile and a shot of Armando’s signature boots, it was implied he’d returned.

He probably hadn’t, the scoundrel. Or he had, only to tell her it was onlythe perfume.

So in the weeks to come, Ida decided to put it all behind her. Gabriel seemed all too happy to dig into his work, his mind clearly still set on returning to the city once her resurrection was complete. Apparently, the perfume had left no lingering feelings.

If only she’d be as successful getting rid of hers. Unfortunately, her obsession tended to stick even better than all the random information she’d absorbed by haunting objects through the decades.

“So you’re going to use this music box as one of the objects for the ritual?” Perry’s voice came through muffled and robotic when she was in the phone. They were in her old bedroom again; lately, she preferred to spend time here instead of in the living room with Gabriel.

“Yes. My mother got it for me when I was little.”

“My mom got me one, too! My biological mom. It’s the one thing I have of hers.”

Perry didn’t talk of his birth parents often. His voice took on a sad note when he did, but it wasn’t the true, deep sadness; since he’d been so young when they died, Ida suspected he missed the idea of what he could’ve had more than he missed his parents.

“And what else?” he asked. “Besides me.”

“I also need to create an object imbued by emotion. Gabriel”—don’t think ofhis fingers sliding up your thigh, do not think of it—“got me some lockets I can use for that.”

“Cool! Let’s do it now! Show me some ghostie mumbo-jumbo.”

“I’m not sure you’d see anything. Also, it’s not the best idea.” She explained her problem with anger, treating the subject with caution—Perry didn’t need to know exactly how she’d tortured his ancestors.

“But what about trying with lighter emotions? Aw, come on, ghostie. It’s gonna be cool.” His voice screeched as he leaned in closer. “You think you could make, like, an object that gives you focus? Or inspiration? Confidence? ‘Cuz I’d love myself some.”

If she channeled her feelings into an object, would that help her get rid of them? Alleviate them? The book hadn’t mentioned this, but it made a pinch of sense. Like letting out anger by punching a ball.

Lucky humans.

“You know what, let’s give it a try.”

Perry fetched three kitschy silver lockets and laid them on the fireplace mantel. Ida jumped into one. No, not silver—only sprayed over. Bringing forward the feelings she held for Gabriel wasn’t hard. She only needed to think of his name, and she could swear the locket grew warm.

That’sright. Get it all out.

Images replayed in her mind, half-real, half-made up—Gabriel’s lips on her skin, the silk chemise sliding over her body, his voice near her ear—

Unwillingly, other images took over. Gabriel fixing the light bulb she’d broken, grinning as he thought he fulfilled a condition. The zeal when he told that ridiculous story about a tomato being legally recognized as a vegetable. How proudly he’d looked at her at the dinner with the neighbors, after she’d fixed their misunderstanding. His eyes, soft and understanding, as she told him about her past.

I lit a candle at your grave.

She assumed what he told her of the grave wasn’t entirely true—perhaps it didn’t look bad, like man-made things, taken by nature, could get a romantic look to them—but she was certain no one maintained it. Gabriel only said that for her benefit. He didn’t want her to feel sad, abandoned.

More images came: Gabriel bending down, as if about to kiss her; stealing a glance at her every now and then, as they watched the movies he let her pick; hugging her after her breakdown, when she needed solace the most… Many of these could be only her perception; her looking through the rose-tinted glasses, imagining feelings behind those glances that were never truly there.

But she imagined them anyway, and continued to remember and channel everything she felt about Gabriel. The locket vibrated and grew warmer and warmer, and then—

Ida got thrown out, as if the device was too full of energy to sustain her. She wasn’t as light and free as she’d expected—she still wanted Gabriel to continue where they’d left off, so there was that—but she did feel better, like after a solid, heartfelt conversation.

Perry sat on the bed, bobbing his head as if listening to invisible music.

Ida knocked on the mantel a few times, and he looked up. “You did it? Is that the locket?” He walked to the fireplace and dangled the locket off his fingers. “You know, for a man with a good sense of fashion, Gabe sure is the worst at picking jewelry. I’ll pity his wife if he ever gets one.”

Judging by the sickly feeling in her stomach, Ida guessed one locket session didn’t mean she was over Gabriel.

“So what’s this one? Focus? Confidence?”

The door opened, revealing a stern-faced Gabriel. “There you are,” he said, eyes passing straight over Ida and stopping on Perry. “I’d like to go over your portfolio and job interview now, if you can.”

The last three words were redundant; Gabriel’s voice left no room for objection. Perry better tread lightly. Gabriel was in his full lawyer mode.

“Sure, man.” Perry pocketed the locket and, on the way out, tapped Gabriel on the shoulder.

Poor boy. He has no sense of self-preservation.

Trapped in her musings, Ida needed a few moments to realize what had just happened.

Perry took the locket.

Oh, no, no, no.

She phased through the wall; Gabriel and Perry were already on the stairs.

Quick, into his phone!

Where was that app that allowed her to text Perry? She always had trouble finding it—Perry’s phone was a mess. Ah,there—

“And turn that off,” Gabriel said. “I know you’ve got stuff to do, and I appreciate you being available all the time, but we’ll try to simulate a real job interview here. I don’t need to explain what your potential employers will think of you if your phone is buzzing all the time.”

No, no, no.

Ida frantically turned her thoughts into text.

Perry, take thelo—

She was ejected, and found herself staring at Perry and Gabriel’s backs, and then the kitchen’s door as it slammed into her face.

Ever since the perfume incident, Gabriel preferred the kitchen over the living room for work. Outside of warning Gabriel—and there was no chance she’d tell him about her love locket—she had no way to communicate with Perry.

Shucks.

***

“All right, Mr. Huxley.” Gabriel set an old alarm clock he’d picked up at the pawnshop on the counter and sat across Perry.

“Uh…” Perry glanced suspiciously at the alarm clock. “What’s that all about?”

“It’s to create artificial pressure, simulate the ambiance of a job interview. You’re hardly going to be as relaxed as you are now.”

“So… what’s gonna happen with it? The alarm clock?”

Gabriel smiled. “I’m not going to tell you.”

Perry gulped.

“Let’s get started then.” Gabriel tapped away on his laptop. “You’re interviewing for the position of an assistant artist. I looked at your portfolio and also asked a friend, a graphic designer, for additional feedback. I have some follow-up—”

Perry was staring at him, mouth half-open, one hand supporting his jaw.

“Mr. Huxley?”

Perry continued to stare.

Gabriel cleared his throat. “Perry, you can’t act like this at an interview. I understand if you are in awe of your potential employers, but you can show it in other ways.”

Perry shook his head, as if waking from daydreaming. “Right. Sorry. What was the question?”

“You’d better not do that, either. Stay focused.” Maybe zoning out was Perry’s way to deal with pressure? Had he overdone it with the alarm clock? “Let’s start with the basics. Tell me why you’d like to work for our company.”

“Your game, Galaxy Hopper, is what inspired me to start drawing in the first place. I could spend hours just staring at the artwork—not that the story wasn’t impressive, either…”

Gabriel let out a breath as Perry rattled off a bunch of good, very personal reasons, mixed with some constructive criticism. At least he got over that weird zone-out. And the staring.

“… and so is your jawline. So… crisp.” Perry stared at him again, nearly drooling.

Spoken too soon.“Excuse me?”

“As if it was carved from the finest Carrara marble. And your face is as fine as that of Michelangelo’s David—”

“Perry!”

“Yes?” Sweetness dripped from Perry’s voice.

“Are you messing with me?”

“What? No.” Perry’s voice returned to normal. “Anyway, you’re the leading company in RPGs, and as someone who cares about the nuances of a story as much as the visual factor, I think I’d be a great fit for you. And you for me.”

What game was he playing? Gabriel forced himself to focus on the interview—somebody needed to be professional. “Thank you, Mr. Huxley.”

“No problem.” Perry let out a nearly giggling laugh. “You really are very nice.”

“Ahem, yes. Would you mind leading me through your portfolio? In particular, I’d like to discuss your working process on this project…”

Perry’s chair screeched as he pulled it, still half-sitting on it, closer to Gabriel. They stared at the laptop.

“This was one of my freelancing projects. Yeah, the client asked me to create backgrounds for a platform game. As you can see, the concept itself is simple…”

Perry’s hand landed on Gabriel’s thigh.

It’s just an accident. He’snervous, cut him some slack.

“…a progression from light to dark, to symbolize the inner journey…”

The hand squeezed.

“…so, here’s the beginning concept art, just sketches…”

The hand traveled higher.

Gabriel gritted his teeth. “Perry.”

“Yup?”

“I don’t know how to say this…” He carefully removed Perry’s hand from his thigh and placed it on the desk. “I don’t want to be offensive, or make you think I don’t like you, but… I don’t play for your team.”

“What?”

“Though I do have two friends in town, and if you have questions, if you need guidance while you’re still exploring what you’re feeling, and for whom—”

“Dude, whatcha going on about?” Perry shot up. Something slipped out of his pants pocket and clinked as it fell on the floor.

A locket?Didn’t he buy these for Ida?

Ida and Perry had been spending a lot of time together. Alone. Had she done something to him? He didn’t believe she’d harm Perry intentionally.

“Perry, how are you feeling?” Gabriel asked.

“Fine, I guess.” Perry grimaced—lifted an eyebrow, scrunched his nose, moved his mouth to the side, as if he was testing his facial muscles. “I did feel kinda nice during this interview, though. I think the alarm clock worked.”

“I don’t think it was the alarm clock,” Gabriel drawled. “What did you—”

Someone rapped on the front door.

“Must be the paint for the facade.” Gabriel stood. “Don’t move. We’re not finished discussing this.” He walked to the front door and, without checking, opened it wide.

A thirty-something woman with a meticulous bob cut in a pantsuit stood on the porch. No package in hand. Didn’t look like a postal worker, either. Gabriel only had a second to flash back to that night after the scandal—opening the door, the photographer, and her—as the woman said, with a stern, but victorious voice that perfectly matched the suit and the haircut, “Gabriel Vane. Found at last.”