1. Thick thighs and pretty eyes #2
“Oh, please, call me Lana.” She giggles. “Sit, I’ll explain everything. Tea?”
“That’d be great, thank you,” I say, finally tearing my eyes away from the white cat. Its fur is glowing green from the banker’s lamp on the desk.
Lana closes the door of her office with a flourish as we both get swallowed alive by the two massive leather chairs in front of her desk.
Moments later, she places two cups of tea—with cats on them, I can sense a pattern—in front of us.
There is a large window behind her, framed in stained glass, showing dusk falling over Edinburgh’s skyline.
Her office looks like it would fit in a prestigious university such as Cambridge or Oxford, with the great bookshelves along the walls and the expensive-looking wooden furniture.
“So, you’re my ghosts experts,”’ she repeats after sitting down.
We just nod. “I’ll be honest, I feel terrible.
These ghosts have been haunting this house long before I inherited it, who am I to evict them from the property?
But they have become restless as of late, and are causing damage to the house.
I can’t let it go on any longer. The hostel is doing great, but not great enough to throw money at it every week.
This is an old building, and the list of repairs grows longer every year even without having poltergeists add to it. ”
“Poltergeists?” I say.
“Yes. Mr. Pickett informed me that they’re the kind of ghosts I seem to have here? Spirits who can cause physical disturbances. Throwing objects, breaking things...”
I know what a poltergeist is, I just didn’t expect such a bonkers job. I’m not sure I’m a good enough actor to pretend to fight off imaginary evil ghosts. I want to share a glance with my new teammate, wondering if maybe he can be of help here, but Ewan is staring at Lana, white as a sheet.
Wonderful.
I clear my throat. “Can you go into details? We need to know what we’re walking into.”
Lana sighs, tapping her cheek with a manicured pink nail.
“Well it started with the fire in the kitchen last year. The curtains went up in flames during the night. The fire didn’t spread, thankfully, or we might have all joined the ghosts by now.
” She snorts. “But an entire wall was blackened and we had to rebuild it. I’ll let you imagine how inconvenient it was with all the guests.
And during winter, too! Quite drafty. We first thought it might have been someone staying at the hostel, but then the incidents kept happening for months.
There was the water damage in the ladies showers—that one cost me an arm and a leg.
Ah! And then there was a quake near the foundation. ”
I blink. “A quake?”
“Two weeks ago, the ground shook during the night. It was subtle, but my cats warned me.” She extends a hand to caress the white cat on her desk. The thing is still staring at me, unblinking. “They’re my little helpers, you know? Nothing goes on in this house without them knowing.”
Ewan opens his mouth for the first time since we sat down. “How many cats do you have? We saw the other two on the way up.”
“Seven.” She giggles. “I’m a crazy cat lady, and happy to be one.
When I inherited the house ten years ago, I brought my three cats with me from the United States, obviously.
They took to the life in a giant house like a fish to water.
It’s their kingdom now, and the guests love them.
And since the place is quite frankly enormous, I adopted more over time. ”
I try not to react. Who cares about the damn cats?
My teammate, apparently.
“The quake?” I repeat.
“Oh, right,” Lana says. “I followed Misty,” she pets her white cat, “and the others to the basement. And the closer I got, the more I could feel the ground shaking, as if the entire house was shivering. It was weird, to say the least. The next day, I checked online for seismic activity, but it was just us. I’m certain it was the ghosts.
They’re trying to bring the house down on us, and I’m not having it.
” She glares at the walls and the ceiling.
“You hear me, you incorporeal pests? I won’t have it! ”
Okay...
“Very well, thank you,” I say. “We’ll start the ghost hunt at night, as requested. Any idea where we should start?”
Lana pulls out a little notebook from one of the drawers of her desk. “I made a list of the ghosts in the house and their different haunts.” She snorts as her wording. “You’re the experts, I’ll let you decide where you’d like to start.”
I accept her offering and quickly look at the scribbles inside before handing it to Ewan. Our fingers touch, and I look at him for a moment. He looks a little unsure, and his cheeks have a rosy tint. I have a feeling I’ll have to wing it on this job.
“I expect it’ll take some time to hunt down my ghosts,” Lana says. “So we prepared a room for you—not in the dorms, of course. You can stay as long as necessary. Shirley will take you to your room. Misty will go fetch her.”
I frown, looking at the animal, wondering how a cat would—
Misty jumps from the desk. I tense as she runs by my chair—my grandmother’s awful cat used to bury her claws in my legs any chance she got—before leaving the office.
Not long after gathering our bags and saying our thanks, the cat is back, followed closely by the purple-haired receptionist.
What the hell?
“Yes?” Shirley asks from the open door.
“Will you take these gentlemen to their room, please?” Lana says.
“Of course.”
Before we can make our exit, Lana adds, “By the way. Respect my cats, please. If I hear you even pulled one of their whiskers, you’ll learn how crazy of a cat lady I can really be.” She’s smiling, but there’s no mistaking the dormant fury in her eyes.
I nod, suddenly feeling a little awed by her.
Ewan looks appalled by the idea of anyone hurting the felines.
As for me, I don’t like cats, but it doesn’t mean I wish them harm.
I’m not that big of an asshole. Even my grandmother’s hell-spawned creature didn’t need to watch its back around me.
Growing up, I just avoided the fucker like the plague.
We follow the receptionist through the hostel again, up a few more stairs and to the last level of the house. We meet two other cats on the way. A black one and a ginger one. They seem to be accessing us. Ewan, of course, has to pet both.
Shirley stops in front of a door at the end of a long hallway. She makes a face before pushing it open. “Sooooo, I might have thought it was just one of you, so I only booked you one room. Sorry! We’re at full capacity, so you’ll have to share.”
We both lean through the doorframe, shoulders touching. The room is small, with only one double bed, a chair, and a narrow window offering a view over Edinburgh Castle.
“You’ve got to be kidding me...” I whisper.
“We have an air mattress, no problem,” says Shirley, as if it makes things better. “I’ll bring it up.”
I’m about to glare at her when Ewan looks down at me. I can’t help but to notice that he smells good. His shampoo perhaps. He has really pretty brown eyes.
“You can have the bed, I’ll take the air mattress,” he says.
“If you snore, I’m kicking you out of the room,” I grumble.
He blushes. “I don’t...”
Fuck, the guy’s annoyingly cute. It’s disarming. And that, combined with his height, pisses me off a little.
I shoulder him to push inside the small room and I drop my bag on the bed.
“You have free access to all the parts of the house, except the rooms where the guests and the staff are sleeping, of course,” Shirley says, offering a heavy set of keys to Ewan.
She drops a hand on his forearm. “You can join us for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the staff kitchen. We take turns cooking, and you’re welcome to eat with us.
We know you’ll be doing the dirty work.”
“Yes, hunting ghosts is hard work,” I say, pulling Ewan inside forcefully. He blushes again and follows without resistance. “Thank you. We need to prepare for the first hunt. Have a good evening!” I close the door over Shirley’s confused expression.
I face Ewan and extend my hand to him. He stares at it, blush deepening.
“The notebook,” I say. “Let me see it again.”
“Oh, aye...” He fumbles with his pockets, hands smacking his thick thighs—why are his thighs so massive, really?—until he finds the little notebook.
I sit on the bed and leaf through it. “They divided the notes into chapters, one for each ghost. Then at the end, the events with no definite culprit.” Like the quake in the basement.
I sigh. “This is bonkers. So they nicknamed them. We have the Lady in Red, the Lamenting Urchin, the Burning Crone, the French Nobleman, and the Flashing Warrior.”
“Actually, these are the names from the Ghost Bus Tour book,” Ewan says. “Except I’m not sure why they added flashing in front of the Warrior...”
“You got the book?”
His expression is self-conscious. “I was early for the tour, so I bought the book and read it while waiting. I didn’t know when you’d show up, and they didn’t give me your phone number...”
“That’s good, it’ll help us paint a decent story. Take it out please.”
He pulls out the Ghost Bus Tour book from his bag and hands it to me.
I compare it with the notes. Lana and the staff added clearer descriptions of the ghosts and where to find them in the house.
The Lady in Red, for example, is often found in the library.
She is said to manipulate people’s emotions. I snort. Right.
“We need to decide who to start with,” I say. “Any running favourite?”
Ewan shakes his head. “I just really don’t like the Burning Crone...”
I smile wickedly. “Then let get her over with first. Your discomfort will make it all more believable.”
Ewan looks confused. “Believable?”
“Yes, our pretend ghost hunt.” I gesture at our surroundings.
He stares at me for a moment too long. “You don’t believe in ghosts?”
I chuckle. “No. Wait... do you?”