Page 33 of Ghost of a Chance
He thought about it for a long minute.Did he trust her?As much as he could trust anyone with this.Plus he didn’t want to talk about Paul to anyone else.The four of them in this house were about all he could handle.“Sure.”
“Took you a minute.”
“Sorry, this entire occult thing…it’s not something I normally believe in.”
Throwing her head back, she laughed hard.“You’re the one with the haunted book.”
“Point taken.”He paused, looking around the room.The house suddenly felt too quiet.“I need a drink,” he said.
“Me too.But not tequila.”
“Why not?”
“Just…listen, I’m not doing that again.This is my career on the line,” she said as she led the way into the kitchen.She opened the fridge and took out a can of Coke.“I think I saw some rum in the pantry.”
He fetched it and they made themselves rum and Cokes before he realized he needed to take Chewie out.The dog was whining impatiently by the door.But he still wanted to talk to her.
“Want to take a walk with me and Chewie?”
“Yes.”
Once they were on the sidewalk, he gave Chewie a bit of the lead and then looked over at her.“What did you mean your career is on the line?”
“Just that if this goes south, then everyone will look at my books differently.Look at me differently,” she said, taking a large gulp of her drink.
“I thought you wrote ghostly murder mysteries.”
“I do.Cozies really.So the murder takes place off the page.I don’t really depict any real violence.And the ghosts are benign.”
“So…how is this going to affect your career?”
She paused, eyebrows furrowed.“Wow, you really aren’t a fan.”
“I told you I hadn’t read any of your books,” he said sheepishly.He was curious now, even thumbed through her latest at the bookstore.He’d heard that authors often put a lot of themselves in their books.Was that what had her worried?“Your heroine is a medium, right?”
“Not by choice.She hates her gift and never uses it publicly.It’s more like the ghosts come to her while she’s working at her little bakery and then she ends up helping them to solve their own murders.”
“Wouldn’t the ghost know who killed them?”This was new ground for him.His only ghost knowledge came from Paul, who seemed to be anything but a normal ghost.
“In my world they can’t remember their death.They only know they can’t move on and that there was something violent about how they died,” she said.“You have to make up the rules for your world.Readers will go on a ride with you, but if you fuck up the rules then they don’t believe anything.”
“Do you think Paul can’t remember and that’s why he’s—”
“I have no idea in the real world.That’s fiction.I do it that way so Eva has to dig around and find clues.”
Interesting.Did that mean her medium skills were even harder to believe?“Why did you start writing?”
“I always liked to read, and my mom suggested I take a creative writing course.I was working full-time at a bakery and took a night course.The teacher was really great and very encouraging…and after I wrote my first book, I got an agent and thought that I was going to be big.”She said the last part sardonically.
“And you are.Lots of readers wrote to ask for tickets when we were going to have you on the show,” he told her.
“That’s nice.But my first manuscript didn’t sell and my agent wanted me to write a bakery mystery instead…then we had a fight and I dumped her.”
“Is this the breakup you mentioned at Dead Boys?”
“Yup.I went home, put onUmbrella Academybecause it’s one of my comfort watches and there was Ben aka Number 6.”
“Never seen it.”
