Page 2 of The Accidental Ghost

Or at least one of them was—and brutally so. Nina the vampire would be the first one in line to tell her friend Marty if her ass did, indeed, look like too much sausage stuffed into its casing.

In return, Marty was unafraid to tell Nina she could only hope someday her brain would grow to be as big as her mouth.

5: Terrifying.

As awesome as they were as a group, each of them had the single most terrifying properties available in existence in any one person.

Nina’s surreal beauty belied sharp fangs she flashed when she was angry. That wasn’t to say her incredible speed didn’t match the spectacular baring of her teeth. Ralph had never seen someone clean a house like the Roadrunner on speed, but Nina moved like a special effect in an Avengers movie.

Marty, on the other hand? Phew, child, when she did that thing she called shapeshifting, it was one for the books. Hair, drool, shredded clothing, and the end result? A werewolf. The first time she’d seen her do it on the night of a full moon, Ralph still couldn’t believe no one had heard her scream.

In all her fifty years, five months and twenty-six days, she’d never in a million years have believed such a thing existed. But it did. Mind officially blown.

Then there was Wanda…

Ralph’s heart swelled just thinking about her. After observing them this week, coming and going, bickering and laughing, yes, Wanda was definitely her favorite. She liked them all, but Wanda reminded her of a favorite colleague she’d often turned to for advice through the years.

Golden Girls aside, paranormally speaking, she was a combination of Marty and Nina. Half werewolf and half vampire, but all regal elegance and grace personified. She was kind and smart, and she deserved a purple heart for not cracking the other women’s heads together out of sheer frustration from being in the middle of all their arguing.

Instead, she was the glue that kept them from tearing each other apart. Wanda was a stellar mother, not only to her children, but to all of them.

She was the warm chocolate chip cookie dipped in chilled milk, while wrapping your favorite blanket around your shoulders kind of comfort. The gentle caress of a cool breeze across your overheated cheeks. And even though Wanda had no idea, Ralph had connected with her simply by observing her tender nature, her quiet calm.

She’d been watching them all week as they came and went, dropping in for lunch or a family dinner, picking up children, bringing them over for playdates, puppy sitting for one another, going off shopping together, watching movies.

At least, she thought it had been a week. She’d looked at the calendar Nina had hanging up on the side of her fridge (who even had a paper calendar anymore?)—a fridge mostly filled with IV-like packets of blood for Nina and broccoli for Carl.

Add in some fresh fruit, vegetables, yogurt, milk and juice for Charlie—her half-witch, half-vampire toddler daughter—and dog food for her two-legged dog, Waffles, and that just about summed up the extent of the excitement in Ralph’s life since this happened.

Floating through Nina’s castle, watching these women and their families live their lives, and making lists, including a catalog of what was in the vampire’s fridge.

What a rush, right?

Ralph tried her level best not to dwell on figuring out how she’d come to be here, because it only brought her to tears for the trying.

But she couldn’t put off the inevitable forever. She had to figure out what had happened to her, what was to become of her, and how she’d landed in, of all places, a castle on Long Island.

She knew it was on Long Island because Nina and her husband Greg’s snail mail said so. But a castle in New York was the least of the oddities she’d encountered this past week.

For instance, one minute she was in her tiny bookstore, Once Upon a Time, the one she’d taken early retirement from teaching first grade to buy. The one she’d worked endless summers for, doing any job she could get her hands on for extra money—the store she’d saved for years to purchase.

The last day she remembered before this happened was a week ago. She’d been in her store late at night, unpacking some inventory and looking forward to going upstairs to her tiny loft apartment, where she’d order in some Chinese and catch up on one of her favorite British mysteries.

Then everything had gone black.

The next minute, she woke up, or maybe it was more like resurfaced from the darkness, and she was here, floating from room to room like some creepy voyeur no one could see or hear.

And trust, she’d tried to make her presence known. In fact, she’d become so desperate yesterday, Ralph had literally screamed directly in Nina’s face, only to have the vampire wrinkle her nose and flare her nostrils as her only acknowledgement.

Then, in a conversation with her small blue friend who went by the name Archibald, he of the British accent and spiffy suit, Nina had groused about how something didn’t feel right.

But that had been the only reaction Ralph had gotten thus far, and she’d done a whole lot of talking and yelling. She’d even done jumping jacks on the couch.

So, either this was a really bad, really long nightmare, or she was…

What?

Dead. For sure she was dead.

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