The Cold Kiss of Death

My phone broke into my musings with something that sounded suspiciously like the theme from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Damn gremlins! I checked the display to see a message from Grace; she was coming round after her shift ended. I texted her back to say I was working and to let herself in, then as I caught sight of the time, everything, gremlins, ghosts, witches and blood-sucking vampires, went out of my mind. I had a job to go to; my ‘hot date with a satyr’ or rather, my boss, Fi

Then my ‘date’ would be ‘hot’ for all the wrong reasons.

Chapter Two

My ‘date’ washot; nothing to do with Fi

The hairs on the back of my neck rose as another ghost shuffled into view, his bloated, blackened feet scuffing along the dirt floor, sending little puffs of dust into the still air. A deep cut marred his left cheek; the bone it revealed was white and glistening. His eyes stared blankly out of sunken sockets and the end of his nose was eaten away by a huge black sore. He headed straight towards us and I counted the seconds down— three, two, one—then winced, half in sympathy, half in teeth-gritted anxiety, as he hit the wall of the protective circle in which Fi

Sighing with relief, I touched my laptop keypad and entered the time against the ghost’s name—Scarface—on the spreadsheet, then duplicated the info on my pad, just in case. The laptop might have an extra-strength Buffer spell in the crystal stuck to its case, but I wasn’t taking any chances. All it needed was a stray bit of magic and I’d end up with one crackedcrystal, one dead hard drive and an irretrievable ghost survey.

I tapped my pencil on my pad and wondered for about the hundredth time what I’d done to deserve a night sitting under London Bridge counting ghosts, especially after my frustrating run-in with Cosette. And not just any ghosts, but the ghosts of fourteenth-century plague victims. My phobia’s bad enough when the dead look relatively normal, without adding in all the stomach-roiling stuff. Not to mention we were camped out deep in the bridge’s foundations in the area known as the tombs—right on top of the plague victims’ burial pits.

Could my night get any worse?

‘That’s the fifth time he’s done that,’ I said, drawing a little Edvard Munch face, mouth wide open in a scream. ‘I was sort of hoping he’d catch on that there was something in his way by now.’

Fi

Damn, ru

‘Who’s done what?’ Fi

I sighed. Or maybe it was spending time with a hot satyr who didn’t seem to notice me any more. Previously he’d asked me out often enough that I’d wished he’d stop. Oh, not that I hadn’t wanted to say yes—maybe not for Happy Ever After, but I’d definitely wanted a chance at Happy for Now with him—but keeping my secrets meant I’d always said no. Then the Mr October thing happened. Fi

The old adage of being careful what you wishfor was never so true.

Or so disheartening.

‘Gen, who’s done what?’ Fi

‘Scarface just passed by.’ I pointed my pencil at the ghost disappearing into the distance down the tu

Fi

‘Hell’s thorns, Gen, the circle’s fine,’ he said, pushing a hand through his dark blond hair and scratching behind his left horn in faint exasperation. ‘It’ll take more than a couple of knocks from a ghost to break.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ I lifted up the laptop to give my jeans a chance to cool down and balanced it on the chair’s frame. It wasn’t just the circle, though; I felt like I wanted to warn Scarface or something, tell him to walk round the side.

Fi

‘Sure,’ I agreed, and he went back to his reading.

Except relaxing wasn’t an option, not with the sweat still itching down my spine. So instead I stared down the brightly lit tu