Free The Ghoul Next Door by Victoria Laurie

everywhere he went. And I can’t afford a new wardrobe.”
    “This is New England,” Gil replied with a wave of his hands. “The only place more haunted is Europe. There’re disembodied footsteps all over the place. And you can afford to go shopping because I’ve spent all the time I wasn’t talking to Kendra booking you appointments.”
    My eyes bugged. “You’ve already booked me some appointments?”
    Gil leaned over to look at his computer screen. “Thirty, to be exact. And there’re twenty more in my in-box that I haven’t had a chance to get to yet.”
    My mouth fell open.
“Thirty?”
    Gil rolled his eyes. “Chill out, M.J. They’re not all on the same day. In fact, I’ve scheduled you the next ten days off, giving you plenty of time to talk yourself into doing them again.”
    “How did we already get thirty appointments on the books?”
    “I sent out an e-mail to all of your old clients. They’re replying in droves.”
    I blinked furiously for several seconds, crunching some numbers and trying to calculate how much extra cash that’d be.
    “Seventy-five hundred bucks, honey,” Gil said, as if reading my mind. I squinted at him. I’d come up with a different, lower, figure. “I gave you a fifty-dollar raise,” Gilley added. “You’re a TV star now. And you can command it.”
    I groaned. “What’s my schedule so far?” I worried that Gil would try to pack them in.
    He clicked his mouse and pivoted the screen toward me. “You have twelve a week, honey. Four readings a day, three days a week. A bit like the old days.”
    I used to read for clients Monday through Thursday, but my maximum then was six a day with a three-day weekend. It was crazy intense and it used to drain the life right out of me. I saw that Gil had set my new schedule up for Monday through Wednesday, with readings scheduled every fifty minutes from noon to four with ten-minute breaks in between. “You’ll have to eat lunch before you show up for work, but I thought this would work for you.”
    I nodded. It’d work well, I thought. “Okay,” I said at last. “Just remember, no matter what the response is, don’t book me beyond the end of August and no more than twelve readings a week.”
    Gil saluted. “Now, can we go shopping?”
    I eyed my watch. It wasn’t even noon. “What about him?” I asked, nodding toward the door to my office, where we could hear laughter. Heath must be having a good time with his client.
    “He’ll be fine,” Gil said, getting up to come around and grab my elbow. “He’s got two more clients after this, and lots of time in between. He can handle it.”
    With that, we were out the door.
    •   •   •
    Three hours later I was crying uncle. Loaded down with far too many shopping bags and a credit card that was almost too hot to hold, I tried to get Gil to listen to reason. “My feet hurt, I’m hungry, tired, and I still have to go home and change before we meet Luke and Courtney!” (Okay, so maybe my argument wasn’t exactly laden with “reason.”)
    “Just one more stop,” Gil called over his shoulder as I shuffled along behind him.
    I glared hard at his back. He’d been saying that for the past three stores. “Gil,” I whined. “Come on!”
    But he wasn’t listening. He was scooting into yet another store. I thought about leaving him, but he had the car keys. With a (huge) sigh I trudged into the store and almost came up short. All around me were racks and racks of gorgeous handbags. My eyes darted around until I spotted Gil, already talking the ear off one of the sales associates. As I headed toward him, two other associates saw my shopping bags, and when they blinked, I swear I saw dollar signs in their eyes.
    I kept my head down and hurried over to Gil. “Try this on,” he said before I could even get a word out. In an instant the shopping bags were pulled out of my grip and a gorgeous black leather handbag with plenty of brass accents was draped over my