12/09/2024
An unedited snippet from A Boy's Guide to Ghosts, Michael DiSanto, Profiler/Ghosthealer, Book 3) IN PROGRESS! Yay! Here goes: I was nervous enough about starting school. Like Jimmy said, at sixteen. So being younger than everyone else there felt weird, not to mention having Jimmy with me, while a relief, also drew lots of looks, mostly from women passing by, and some guys, not just because he’s buff, but he admittedly has a kind of energy radiating off him, probably built up from his line of work that just pulls the gaze. But I digress.
Jimmy parked his corvette in a space in front of Berkeley Law where my first class, Intro to Criminal Procedure Investigations, was. We were forty minutes early and there’s a little café attached to the school building in front so we went to get a cup of coffee first. The place was basic, small café tables for two inside, men and women in suits and briefcases, sipping and chatting, or reading and marking papers, students with backpacks, sipping and discussing. At one table, sat the guy Jimmy mentioned, pink leg warmers, off the shoulder Flash Dance shirt. He too, had a white cup and saucer and was chatting to another guy who looked like a student, pile of books, jeans and a neat oxford button down.
I figured they were having a chat with the professor who sat at the table with them, an elderly man, also in a white button down dress shirt and slacks. I was wrong. In the next second, the elderly man looked up, gaze connected with mine and he blinked a few times. Then he stared some more.
S**t. Our turn at the walk-up part of the café came up and Jimmy ordered for us, since he knew by now what I always had. Coffee, milk, no sugar. I turned back to dig for the money in my pocket, but Jimmy waved it away. Coffee on the Suzuki’s dime, along with Jimmy’s services. Orders of Kiku back in Tokyo.
I pressed in a bit closer toward Jimmy, although this was potentially one of those situations he could do f**k all for me, since he couldn’t see or hear them. I looked away, then back. The old guy was still there, staring at me. Except, now, he was standing up. The guys at the table remained engrossed in their conversation. The one in leg warmers, however, must have sensed eyes on him because he looked up now too, and saw me watching him. He narrowed his eyes then turned back to his companion.
The elderly man, at this point, definitely identifiable as a ghost, was pointing to me. “You see me! You see me, right?”
I cleared my throat. “Jimmy, is the coffee ready?”
“Almost.” He looked at me, then frowned. “What is it? A deadling?” His word for the mortally-challenged. Again, a surprise of wit I ignorantly hadn’t credited him with. Not good to stereotype people, ever.
“Yes.”
The elderly man reached his tether a couple tables away from me and got yanked back to the table he’d been sitting at with the two young guys. There were two options here. One, he was haunting that table, two, he was haunting one of the guys sitting there.
The coffee was ready and Jimmy handed me my cup, but not before Leg Warmer Guy looked up again and caught me staring in his direction. “Hey, you got a problem?” he called to me.
“Time to go,” Jimmy said. “If that as***le comes over here…”
“I know. I’ll just be really early for class.”
