Page 16 of The Fantastic Fluke

He said clever like he meant pestilent, and dammit, I took offense.

“They’re the same thing.” Okay, yeah, so I’ve been called clever. That and “gifted” were the gifts that kept on giving well into adulthood. Giving, you know: anxiety, depression, and generalized feelings of failure.

The gunslinger lifted one eyebrow, and the opposite side of his lips quirked down, expression screaming “like I said,” as loud as if he’d actually said it.

“If you’re going to insult my friend, you should go,” I told him, then busied myself counting up the register as though I were just opening for the day. As though I’d made any cash yet. Nope. One hundred dollars exactly. I glanced up at him again after I finished the bills but before starting the change. “In fact, you should go either way. Unfinished business isn’t a real thing, so shoo. Go into the light and leave us to our lives.”

“Unfinished business?” he asked, his expression not changing.

He hadn’t budged either, naturally. He just sat there like the sofa belonged to him, man spreading all over the damn place. I guessed maybe if he was a cowboy in real life, it could be forgiven. If he rode horses a lot, maybe sitting with his legs spread was normal.

I wondered if he was that little bit bowlegged.

Not that that was sexy. Nope.

Or those sun-burnished gold-brown waves, either. Not sexy at all.

He was dead anyway, there was no point in finding him sexy.

I cocked my head and stared at the counter. On the other hand, unlike real live men, he couldn’t hurt anyone. I stopped to consider that. A ghost might actually be the perfect boyfriend.

I glanced back up at the gunslinger speculatively. He had insulted foxy for, like... existing, so probably not. Even if he had soulful dark brown eyes and a strong, square, stubbled jaw. Broad shoulders too. I wondered if he was tall. The way his legs went all the way down, I imagined so.

Looking at my hands, I realized I’d been dropping coins into their slots without counting them for a while. I sighed and slammed the drawer shut. It had the same money as when I’d counted it after the western inventory, or the night before when I closed.

He was smirking at me like he’d been reading my mind, and it was both infuriating and sexy. Dammit.

“Unfinished business,” I reminded him. “There’s no such thing. You’re not going to suddenly feel at peace if I catch the person who murdered you. And unless you’re some kind of cosplayer, it’s probably way too late to catch them anyway.”

His eyes went unfocused, staring somewhere past my shoulder as he rubbed the center of his chest for a moment before he shook his head. “Don’t even know that I was murdered. It’s a little fuzzy. Don’t matter, though. What’s a cosplayer?”

“People who dress up as characters from fiction. What do you mean ‘don’t matter’? Of course it matters.”

Okay, so even foxy turned to give me a funny look at that, head cocked to one side like I was confusing, and well, there was a dead gunslinger in my damn store. I was entitled to be a little confusing.

I was confused.

“I mean I can’t find out who killed you. Even if I were an investigator or something, it probably happened like two hundred years ago, so there’s no way to catch the killer. But that’s what ghosts want because they think it’s what they’re supposed to want. You see it in enough movies, you start to think it’s true. Not that you’ve seen any movies, unless, you know, you’re a cosplayer.”

The way his lips quirked, he had understood at least enough of my ramble to get that I’d talked myself into a corner. Or at least around in a circle.

“I’m not here about how I died,” he said, and his voice was even, tone entirely sincere.

“Then why?”

“I gotta find a mage. Well, you, really.”

I looked around, as though a mage might appear. “Okay, well good luck with that, but you definitely don’t want me.” He lifted that one brow again, and for some reason, a tendril of defensiveness unfurled in my belly. “Yeah, fine, I’m a mage, but barely. I’ve got all the power of a forty-watt bulb. No, not even that. Maybe a candle.”

He didn’t seem put off by the bulb reference, just took one booted foot and rested it on the opposite knee. “Nope, I’m pretty sure you’re the guy I’m looking for. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been put here. I always get dropped right on top of the next student, and I wake up, and here you are. You linked to the convergence yet?”

“Whated to the what?”

“What kind of magic?” he asked, as though he were repeating the same question.

“Social.”

His guffaw was downright insulting.

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