Free The Ghoul Next Door by Victoria Laurie Page A

shoulder. Gil stood back and tapped his finger to his lips. “Maybe,” he said.
    “I like it,” said the salesgirl.
    “It might be a little big,” Gil replied. “If it hits her too low or too wide, it makes her look hippy.”
    “I like it,” Salesgirl said again.
    “Try this one,” Gil suggested, plucking the handbag off my shoulder and replacing it with another equally beautiful bag.
    “I like it,” Salesgirl repeated for the third time. Clearly she was a one-hit wonder.
    “The first one was better,” Gil said. My opinion had stopped mattering four stores ago. So I just stood there stiffly as bag after bag was draped over my shoulder until finally Gil made the decision to go with the first one. I blinked wearily and lifted the price tag, nearly choking on the gasp that came with it. “Holy freakballs! Gilley! Four hundred and fifty dollars?!”
    He stared at me like he couldn’t understand why I was so upset.
    “Four
hundred
and fifty
dollars
!” I repeated . . . perhaps a little louder than I should’ve.
    The confusion on Gil’s face lingered.
    “Honey, the bag I came in with only cost me forty dollars!”
    Gil pursed his lips and looked at me with disapproval. “Sugar,” he drawled. “This is Michael
Kors
, not Michael Kohl’s.”
    “Should I ring that up?” Salesgirl asked Gil, even though
I
was the one holding the credit card.
    “Yes, please,” Gil said, reaching for the card. I held on to it firmly and Gil and I had a tug-of-war in the shop for ten seconds before he poked me in the side and I let go.
    Just when I was about to yell at him that I wasn’t buying a four-hundred-dollar anything, my cell rang. Looking down, I saw the call was from Heath. “Hey,” I said, still glaring furiously at Gil. “Did you get our note?”
    “That you went shopping? Yeah, I got it. And Gil’s been texting me the whole time.”
    “He’s been texting you?” I repeated. “What’s he been saying?”
    Heath cleared his throat. “You wouldn’t like it.”
    My narrowed eyes became slits, and I mouthed, “You’re dead!” to Gil. He shrugged nonchalantly and turned away.
    “So, are you guys heading back soon?”
    “Definitely. This is our last stop or I’m going to threaten to return everything we got. Did you want to try and grab dinner after we meet with Luke and Courtney?”
    “Uh, sure, but that’s not why I’m calling.”
    Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gilley hand Salesgirl a belt before he twirled in a circle and began to head toward the clothing section. Trying to shift the phone to my shoulder while I picked up the bags, I asked, “Oh? What’s up?”
    “You’re on TV.”
    I dropped the phone. And the bags. Gil glanced over at me, smirked, then went back to sifting through the clothing. Grabbing the phone off the floor, I said, “Sorry—did you say we’re on TV?”
    “No. I said
you’re
on TV. Did you do a reading for a reporter this afternoon about a girl who’d been murdered?”
    I felt the blood drain from my face. “Son of a bitch!” I hissed.
    “I take it that’s a no?”
    I shook my head. “What
exactly
is happening on the broadcast?”
    “Well, the reporter, Karen something—”
    “Kendra,” I corrected, pinching the bridge of my nose with my fingers. “Kendra Knight.”
    “Yeah, Kendra, she says that she had a, and I quote, ‘bizarre’ encounter with a woman named Mary Jane Holliday who claims to be a world-renowned psychic.”
    “I never claimed any such thing!”
    By now Gil had left the clothing rack and was making his way toward me—obviously sensing that something was wrong.
    “Not my words, babe,” Heath said. “Hers.”
    “Yeah, sorry. Okay, what else?”
    “Well, she says that she thought at first that you were trying to pull some stunt on her to promote your show debuting on cable TV in a few weeks, but then she did some checking into your background and also what you said on camera. She replayed the tape a couple of times and says you