Free Ghouls Just Haunt to Have Fun by Victoria Laurie Page A

“That’d be great, sir. Thank you.”
    The guard quickly left, promising to return in a few minutes, leaving Steven and me alone in awkward silence. “You sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” I finally asked.
    Steven shook his head. “I can fix this, no problem.” I noticed he was still looking at me oddly. “M.J.?”
    “I was hijacked by a spirit,” I explained before he had a chance to ask the full question.
    “What is this ‘hijacked’?” he asked.
    “It’s only happened to me one time before,” I explained, remembering a tricky bust Gilley and I had done when I was still fairly new to this medium stuff. “Some ghosts are superaggressive, and when given the opportunity they can attempt to literally take over your body.”
    Steven’s jaw dropped in horror. “You were possessed?”
    That made me chuckle. “Not exactly,” I said. “At least, not like they portray it in the movies. But I suppose that technically, yeah, I was a little possessed. Usually spirits who do this sort of thing can only hold on for a short period of time, but while they take over your body, you’re completely unaware of what’s going on.”
    Steven’s expression looked haunted. (Forgive the pun, but it really did look like that.) “Something happened to your face. You looked . . .” He paused as if he were searching for the right word. “. . . masculine.”
    “I did?”
    “Yes,” he said with a nod. “Your face was angry, and your eyes . . . M.J., I swear they turned brown .”
    For the record, my eyes are naturally gray. “That is freaky !” I said, half fascinated, half completely creeped out.
    “And your voice changed too,” Steven added. “It got very deep, and you started speaking Portuguese.”
    I felt my brows shoot up. “Really?” I was now very interested. “Could you understand what I was saying?”
    Steven’s lips pressed together, and he gave a curt nod. “It was some scary shit. You said you were the eater of flesh. That you were looking forward to a meal of virgins and babies. That you wanted to quench the blood thirst of your ancestors.”
    I gaped at him. “Whoa,” I whispered after a long pause. “This guy is one sick son of a bitch.”
    “It was most upsetting,” Steven agreed.
    “Did he mention a name? Did he tell you who he was?”
    “No. After telling me you wanted to eat the babies, your face changed back to look like you, and then your eyes rolled up, and you fell back on the floor.”
    “That must’ve been when I was able to fight him off,” I said with a shiver. “I felt him leave my body right when the security guard began knocking on our door.”
    “Is this spirit still here?” Steven asked, his eyes warily roving the room.
    “No,” I said, feeling out the area with my antennae. “He’s gone.”
    “Do you think he’ll come back and do this hijacking again?” Steven whispered nervously.
    “I sure as hell hope not,” I said, rubbing my neck, and when I noticed that Steven still looked intensely worried I added, “Now that I know this character is on the prowl, I can do things to make sure he doesn’t take me over again.”
    “Like what things?”
    “Well,” I said, getting up and moving over to my suitcase, searching through the zippered pocket to find a certain crystal I’d brought along. “This is sphalerite,” I said, holding up a gray, knobby rock for him to see and feeling an immediate sense of heaviness all through me, as if an invisible weight were pressing down on me. “It’s an ore found in zinc. As long as I keep it close by, my energy is too heavy for this creepy spirit to want to bother with me.”
    Steven got up too and went to peer at his wound in the mirror above the dresser. “I don’t understand,” he said. “The stone is heavy?”
    I came to stand next to him as he inspected his gash. “Not exactly.” I winced as he dabbed at the blood still leaking out of his wound. “But it does make my aura heavy. See, normally my