Free Jade's Spirit (Blue Collar Boyfriends Book 2) by Jessi Gage Page A

speaking to her, or at least trying to. She heard nothing except the blaring of the music from the radio and the rush of blood in her veins.
    Clawing her way into a crouch behind the ottoman, she gathered her courage and shouted, “I don’t want you here! Stop trying to scare me!”
    The shadow turned his head from side to side, saying no. Oh, so he was going to play it that way. Fine. This ghost was messing with the wrong girl.
    She got to her feet. “This isn’t your home! It’s my grandmother’s! I’m taking care of it for her, and I want you out!”
    The shadow reached up his shadow arm and took off his hat. From what she could make out, he was holding the hat in front with both hands. The gesture struck her as oddly polite.
    “Don’t you try to sweet-talk me.” She stepped around the ottoman but didn’t venture any closer. “I mean it, you stubborn bastard. Go away.”
    The shadow moved again, playing tricks on her eyes. She blinked, trying to reconcile what she was seeing. A black, misty arm lifted away from the wall. The shadow was pointing at her.
    Oh, shit, shit, shit.
    She knew he could come away from the wall. How else would he have gotten the candlestick onto the dining room table? But seeing the proof right before her eyes turned her knees to Jell-o. She held onto the arm of the couch to keep her feet.
    The shadow crooked a black finger, asking her to come to him.
    “No.” All her bravado slipped away on the whisper.
    Terror became a bitter taste on her tongue. Why was this happening to her? Weren’t ghosts supposed to go away if you stood up to them? What more could she do?
    Run.
    But she couldn’t. She didn’t have anywhere to run to. This was her home now. And she would be damned if she’d leave town while Grandma Nina was in the hospital.
    She lifted her chin. “I’ll call a priest. I’ll bring in some ghost hunters to stick a microphone in your face and ask you to do tricks.”
    The shadow dropped his arm back to the wall. He hung his head.
    Her courage returned.
    “That’s right, buddy. I’m not messing around. You get out of this house, or I’ll do it. I swear to God I will. I’ll make your life…or death or whatever miserable.”
    The shadow man hunched his shoulders and glided toward the basement door.
    Emboldened by her success, she strode into the hall in time to see him dip around the corner toward the basement stairs. “Oh no you don’t. The door’s that way.” She jabbed a finger at the front door.
    Closer now, she could make out the ghost’s facial features. A shadow nose. A shadow mouth. Eyes like darker shadows within shadows. His eyes blinked.
    Her stomach shriveled into a prune.
    “Oh, God,” she breathed, backing up until she was plastered against the front door, hand over her heart. The shadow disappeared through the basement door, but the image of blinking shadow eyes had branded itself in her memory. Mr. Shadow had looked kind of…depressed.
    Fear and sympathy clashed in her gut. She stood in her front hall shaking like a leaf until a man with a car dealership in Wilmington shouted at her from the radio. She went to the living room to turn off the stereo. Her hand shook as she punched the power button.
    She was cold. Cold to the bone.
    She fled to the kitchen, keeping the basement door in view until she was secure in a wash of warm sunlight. Sliding open the glass door, she stepped onto the deck.
    Ah, that was better. Life not death. Light not shadow.
    With her face tilted to the sun and minutes of calming-down time between her and “the incident,” she realized the shadow man had listened to her. Sort of. He hadn’t left the house like she’d demanded, but he’d gone away, eventually. It was a triumph, really, if she looked at it the right way.
    Choosing to remain positive, she decided threats were the way to go. Better yet, she’d make good on her current threat. She had twenty minutes left before she planned to leave to visit Grandma Nina. Marching