A Ghoul's Guide to Love and Murder (5 page)

I realized that the first step in having Gilley mostly out of my life had already been taken, and it upset me more than I could say.

“Em?” Heath said, moving to my side. “Are you crying?”

I buried my face in my hands and tried to choke back the emotion, but it came out in small sobs anyway. And then I heard Gilley begin to cry in earnest and a moment later both Heath and Gilley were hugging me.

After a little while, Gil and I settled down and he squished into the chair with me and wrapped his arms
around my shoulders. “I don't know how I'm going do it, sugar,” he said. “How do I leave my best friend?”

I caught Heath's eye and he smiled sadly. “We love our husbands,” I said, laying my head on Gil's shoulder. “And to have the best life with them that we can, we need to let go of each other a little.”

He nodded and made a little squeaking noise like he was trying not to cry again. “I'll always love you, M.J.”

“I know,” I told him. “Me too.”

For a while no one spoke. Heath got up after a bit and moved to the kitchen, and Gilley and I just sat cuddled together. I heard the sounds of a meal being prepared, and still Gilley and I sat together. I was still furious with him over the dagger, but there wasn't much I could do about it at the moment.

“I'm sorry,” Gil said at last.

“For . . . ?”

“For the dagger. For wanting to move to New York. For leaving you here in Boston to fend for yourself when Heath hogs the remote on Sundays to watch football.”

I smiled. Little did Gilley know that I wouldn't be staying in Boston. “It's okay,” I said. “Well, it's okay about everything except the dagger.”

Gil pulled back from me a little. “I have a call in to Gopher,” he said. “I think he'll support us if we tell him we need to get the dagger back.”

“Can you reach him?” I asked. “I mean, he's still in Nepal, right?”

“He is, but I put a call in to his assistant. She says
that he might call in from there in the next couple of days.”

“The next couple of days?! Gilley, we can't wait that long! We've got to get that dagger back immediately.”

Gil winced, likely because my voice had risen. “I'm trying,” he said.

“Call that producer who talked you into giving up the dagger,” I said. Gilley winced again. “What?” I asked.

“I haven't gotten the check yet,” he muttered.

“Why does
that
matter?”

“Because I was hoping to keep at least some of the money,” he admitted. “I mean, I did loan out the dagger for the exhibit and it was there on the day the
Ghoul Getters
exhibit opened to the public.”

“Gil,” I said sternly. “Call him and have him talk to the museum. That dagger comes out of there tomorrow morning. First thing.”

“Okay, okay,” Gil said. “I'll call him.”

“Good.” And then I had a moment to reflect on what'd happened at the exhibit, and I said, “You know, I saw all the precautions you took to keep the dagger neutralized. What I can't figure out is how that damned spook, or his demon, or both of them, managed to douse the lights and drain every cell phone in that room. I mean, how was that even possible?”

Gilley scratched his chin. “I don't know, M.J. It shouldn't have been. The only thing I can think of is that there were so many people there tonight who were nervous and afraid—especially around the
dagger—that maybe they supplied a little fuel for Oruç or his demon to zap the lights and drain all the batteries.”

I had to concede that Gil had a point. Spooks
love
inciting fear. For the meaner ones, there's the added bonus that all that outpouring of terror can actually fuel them; like a vampire sucking blood, it can make them incredibly strong and powerful, able to do things like appear fully formed, or move stuff, or throw things, or launch a vicious attack.

The more fear emitted by unwitting innocents, the more powerful a spook or a demon could become, so I could understand Gilley's theory, but it still shouldn't have been possible given all the magnets in the exhibit room. What I also wondered was, why was every phone in the place drained of battery life—except for mine? Shrugging out of my vest, I set it on a chair with Heath's. I'd take them back to the office in the morning. “Gil,” I said as I moved to the sofa. “Assuming it takes us longer than the next sixteen hours or so to get the dagger back, can you do a little checking with one of the EMF meters at the museum tomorrow? I want to know if Oruç or his demon is gaining enough strength to overpower all the magnets and escape the dagger.”

Gil frowned. “Aren't you and Heath better equipped to do that?” he asked.

I had a feeling he was scared of going back to the museum by himself. “We can't,” I told him. “We've been banned from showing up there again.”

“Great,” he muttered.

“Gil . . .”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I'll go.”

“Good man,” I said, softening toward him again.

Heath called to us from the kitchen. “Hey, guys, dinner's on.”

Gilley clapped his hands and said, “Hey, over our meal, maybe you two fools can explain why you went off and got hitched without either telling me or including me.”

A new note of pain lit up in Gilley's eyes, and a sharp pang of guilt settled into my chest. “We didn't want to steal your spotlight,” I said gently, reaching for his hand as we headed to the bar off the kitchen. “Heath proposed to me the second day we were there, and, what can I say, Gil? It wasn't something we gave a lot of thought to. We just didn't feel like waiting a year or so to be married. In fact, once we were engaged, we both agreed that what we really wanted wasn't an engagement, but a marriage, right away. And that left us with the choice to either elope, or come back here and risk upsetting you by having our own wedding so close to yours. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to upset you or your wedding plans. So, we decided to elope and not tell anyone—not even Daddy or Heath's mom, Gil. You were the very first person I planned on telling, because, next to Heath, you're the person I love most in the world.”

The hurt faded from Gil's eyes and he lifted my hand to kiss my knuckles. “You mean all that?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yes, honey. And, like I said, we had
planned to keep it a secret until after you got hitched, but in all the hurry to get to the museum and reclaim the dagger, Heath forgot to take off his wedding band.”

Gil looked down at my bare left ring finger. “Where's yours?”

“It's in the safe, where Oruç's dagger used to be.”

Gil narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. “I'll take that as a hint to get moving on making those calls to Gopher, et cetera.”

“Nothing gets by you,” I said to him with a wink and a nudge of my shoulder.

Gil sighed and went to his phone on the counter, where he'd left it to charge from the plug there. I took a seat on one of the barstools as Heath set a plate of steaming vegetables and noodles mixed in a heavenly smelling white wine sauce. “Bon appétit, Mrs. Whitefeather,” he said with a wink.

“Merci, Monsieur Whitefeather,” I replied before tucking in. The dish was sublime. It was so good, in fact, that I nearly forgot to listen as Gilley spoke to Gopher's assistant. “Rachel, it's super important that I get ahold of him,” he was saying. “Isn't there any way you can contact him and tell him it's an emergency?” There was a pause, then, “His sat phone was malfunctioning and you haven't heard from him in three days? Are you kidding me?”

My shoulders slumped and I looked at Heath, who was also listening. He pressed his lips together and shook his head.

“When will he get a new sat phone?” Gil said next.
There was a pause, then,
“What do you mean probably not for a week or two?”

I reached over and laid a hand on Gil's shoulder. It wouldn't do us any good to upset poor Rachel, who was a young girl in her twenties and had no control over the situation.

Gil looked up at me and took a deep breath. “Sorry,” he said to Rachel. “Just . . . if he gets ahold of you at all in the next twenty-four hours, I need to talk to him. It's an emergency.”

Gilley clicked off and turned to us. “You guys heard?”

“We did,” Heath said, sliding Gilley's meal over to him. “I guess Gopher can't help us, so, Gil, you've got no choice. You've got to call that producer back and tell him the deal with the dagger is off, and he can keep his money.”

Gilley bit his lip, and for a moment I thought he might protest, which made me wonder exactly how much money the studio had put up for the dagger, but then Gil said, “Yeah. Okay. I'll call him right now.”

I gave Gil an encouraging pat on the back and went back to my dinner. I hadn't realized how ravenous I'd been, and Heath chuckled at the way I was eating with gusto.

Meanwhile, Gilley apparently got voice mail and left a message for someone named Bradley. It wasn't a name I recognized, but I didn't think much about it. The movie had so many names attached to it, there was no way I could keep them all straight.

“He'll probably get back to me,” Gil said, putting his phone back on the charger.

“He'd better,” I heard Heath mutter.

Gilley appeared pained, but I thought we needed to talk the issue through. “What do we do if we can't get anyone to make the call and get the dagger out of that museum?” I asked them.

Heath and Gilley were quiet for a moment, and then Gil said, “We could sabotage the exhibit. Shut it down so that no one can enter and get close to the dagger. That should keep it isolated long enough to have the loaner period expire, and then the museum has to give it back to us.”

I frowned. “How? I mean, Heath and I have both been banned from the premises. What kind of damage could we do that wouldn't get us sued or arrested and would ride out the next two weeks?”

“I could mess with their computer network,” Gil said. He's an incredibly skilled hacker, and he flexed his fingers and grinned slyly to show me that he welcomed the opportunity to work a hack on the museum.

“What if it comes back to you?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It's not like I'm tinkering with a government agency, M.J. I'll just mess with the sprinkler system.”

“The sprinkler system?” Heath said.

Gilley chuckled slyly. “The museum has an extensive fire-prevention sprinkler system. I could make it rain, rain, rain.”

“But what about the other exhibits in the museum?”
I said. “Gil, we can't destroy or damage anything but the movie exhibit. If you mess with the sprinkler system, it has to be in that room only.”

“I'll look into it,” he promised.

“Good. And remember—it can't get back to us.”

Just then Gil's phone rang and we all jumped a little. He looked at the display, gasped, then ran off to my home office in the spare bedroom. Heath and I shared a look and a sigh. “Want some popcorn?” he said, getting up to take my plate and his to the sink.

He and I were eating very healthy these days. We'd turned vegetarian a couple of years earlier, and now we were on a no-sugar kick. He'd been so good about it that I didn't have the heart to tell him how very, very,
very
much I missed ice cream. And brownies. And especially ice cream over warm brownies.

“Sure,” I said, trying to muster up some enthusiasm.

He grinned at me and there was a knowing look in his eye. “Why does the image of ice cream and brownies keep popping into my head?”

I sucked in a breath. “Whoa,” I said. “Who ratted me out?”

Heath, like me, was a medium—able to communicate with the dead as easily as the living. The dead are funny—and I mean that literally. They're big on pulling pranks and teasing, and I had no doubt that one of the spirits connected to me had told my husband what I'd been too chicken to say. That I hated the “absolutely no sugar ever, ever again” diet and really wanted
to switch to a “sugar every once in a while when I'm really craving it” diet.

“It was your mom,” Heath said with a laugh. My chest filled with warmth, but my eyes misted just a bit.

My mom passed away when I was eleven. Her loss was the most devastating thing that'd ever happened to me. It was like a terrible earthquake that'd caused me to fall from a high shelf and shatter into a thousand tiny shards. All these years later I was still picking up the pieces and trying to reassemble them into something whole and unbroken. But no matter how hard I tried, I could never get the pieces of myself to come together in a way that made me feel sound. Her loss was always there, pronounced and ready to level me. I'd come to realize that I could glue back all nine hundred and ninety-nine pieces, but the most important piece, the piece I needed more than all the others and the one piece that could actually make me feel fully myself again—well, that piece was her. And she was gone. So I'd never be whole. I'd never be sound. I'd never be quite healed. I'd be okay, I'd be happy, I'd be loved and love in return, but a part of me would forever remain broken, like a china doll with a chip in it. I knew that about myself, and it was something I accepted, but there were times when I couldn't hide how very much I missed Mama. Sometimes, that chip in my armor was the only thing I saw or felt.

Blinking furiously and turning my face away from Heath, I forced a laugh and said, “Mama shouldn't rat me out like that!”

I felt his arms around me a moment later. He knew.
“Why don't we go out for ice cream?” he said. “We can sneak out while Gilley's on the phone and come back with a scoop for him.”

I leaned back against him. “We'd have to go, like, right now,” I said.

“I'm game,” he replied.

“Ohmigod!” Gil shouted, coming out of the study. “You two will
not
believe who just called me!”