Free Haunted by Kelley Armstrong Page A

we knew we’d found our haunters. Either that or we’d found the world’s first psych hospital staffed by the National Sadists Institute.
    “No, no, no!” said an elderly man with a snow-white Van Dyke beard. “We had one better than that. Ted, remember Bruce? The one you convinced he could fly?”
    “Oh, yeah,” chortled a ghost with his back to my wall.
    “What happened?” asked a plump teenage girl.
    Ted shifted to better face his audience and I recognized my headless accountant. I backed up and motioned to Kristof that I’d found our ghost. He nodded, and I returned to my peephole.
    “…sailed clean off the roof.” Ted was laughing so hard he could barely get the words out. “Like Superman. Only, as he soon discovered, he couldn’t fly. Landed right on Peterman’s Jag. Hit so hard his fucking teeth popped out like Chiclets. Peterman was picking them out of his seats for weeks. That’s what he gets for leaving his sun-roof open.”
    The haunters roared with laughter.
    The old man waved his arms again, like a bird attempting takeoff. “The best part was when the dumb fuck hits the roof. For a second, he just lies there, dying. Then his spirit starts to separate. He looks around, gives the biggest grin you’ve ever seen, then jumps up and dances a little jig on the top of the Jag, yelling, ‘I did it! I did it! I can fly!’ Then—”
    Ted stepped in front of the old man. “Then he just happens to look down, and there, under his feet, is this body. His body. He stops—freezes on the spot—stares down, and goes, ‘Oh.’”
    “Just like that,” the old man chortled. “‘Oh.’”
    I looked at Kristof.
    “More smacking in order?” he murmured.
    “Smacking’s too good. Think I can rip out their intestines and use them for harp strings?”
    “You could try. Or…”
    He tilted his head toward the paper-thin wall.
    “…are the best,” someone said, then sighed. “We haven’t had a decent new one in weeks.”
    I glanced at Kristof. We smiled at each other.
     
    We found an empty room farther down the hall, where we could talk without being overheard by the haunters.
    I perched on the bed. “So one of us will play patient and the other should be a nurse or—”
    “First, I need you in a nurse’s uniform.”

    “I don’t think I saw any nurses on the way in. I should go see what kind of outfits—”
    As I slid off the bed, he put out a hand to stop me.
    “I think I can handle this,” he said. “May I?”
    Being able to change women out of their clothing may be most adolescent boys’ idea of heaven, but ghosts can’t do it unless they’re given tacit permission by the other party. I closed my eyes and concentrated on letting Kris change my clothes.
    “There,” he said.
    I looked down and saw my boobs looking back at me. Well, the tops of them anyway, stuffed into a white shirt with cleavage so low I was bound to pop out if I so much as sighed. I wore a skintight white nurse’s dress that barely covered my rear. Speaking of adolescent fantasies…
    I glared at Kris, who was grinning like a thirteen-year-old.
    “Hey, it’s a nurse’s uniform,” he said.
    “Yeah…from a porn movie.”
    A wide grin. “Works for me.”
    As I sighed, he stepped closer, finger sliding along the hem of my dress, rippling the fabric so it tickled against my thighs.
    “Remember the last time you played nurse for me?” he murmured. “I was working at the New York office, and you came up for the weekend. We were supposed to get together for dinner, but you called—”
    “I remember,” I said, quickstepping away. “Now, we need a plan—”
    “Oh, you had a plan.” He stepped as close to me as he could get without touching. “I was on my way to a meeting and you called and said, ‘I can’t wait for tonight, Kris.’”
    I opened my mouth to say something—anything—but his gaze met mine, and the words dried up, leaving me standing there, lips parted, face tilted up to his.
    He continued,