Madame Margarita, Unlicensed (Fake) Psychic

There's a woman in Greg's office. She was here last time. Dressed the same too. All in plaid. Matched head to toe. Plaid skirt, plaid little blazer, plaid pill box hat atop that wavy chestnut bob. She was just sitting there on his sofa. Lips pursed. Jiggling one foot and reading the open magazine on the end table. Her snow-white skin somehow amplified the ethereal glow of her outfit

Greg couldn't see her. Naturally. She was ghost. His complete lack of awareness for her was what gave it away, really.

The vampire paced around his desk like an anxious cat. Scowling. Shoving his hands in the pockets of his gray hoodie. And then out and into the pockets of his leather jacket. And then his skinny's pockets. And then started the whole cycle over again.

Still, those blue eyes glared hard at me. But not I'm undressing you with my mind kind of glaring. More like your little dog's pissed on my carpet and you haven't even offered to clean it up kind of glaring.

The phantom tingle where his eyes found my exposed skin no longer felt like a kiss, but pins and needles.

Quite the shift from last night, if you asked me. Which, if you're reading this, you did.

Last I saw him, Greg left my place sweet (neurotic) and bashful (horny). But it turned out his we need to talk text was sugar free and flavorless. Didn't stop the moths from fluttering around in my stomach.

Hadn't managed to sleep again after Nazira's oh-so-thorough house call. My back and shoulders and stomach and eyelids ached with fatigue. And yet there I was, jumping at the first (presumed) booty call I'd gotten since the last time my ex's wife went out of town (that one, for the record, I did not jump on).

Hey, girlfriend, this would be the opportune time to tell him about those silly little library books. And how I was tragically robbed. Twice. And how, maybe, probably not, but definitely yeah, the resurrected Lily Perez was likely the culprit for both.

"Isla," said Greg, voice stern and cold. "You even listening?"

The woman in plaid whistled. "Ooh, you're in trouble."

Like my last visit, I ignored her. That was usually the best play. "Sorry, I think I'm just still in shock from last night. Thanks for asking."

"You're unlicensed, Madame Margarita," Greg said.

"Trust me," the woman chimed in right after. "I checked every name you've got."

Greg checked if I had a license? He's suspicious of me? Nazira's smiley face warning me that vampires didn't generally take kindly to necromancers popped into my head.

Wait.

The ghost checked the magical license registry?

"Do you work for the Pack?" Greg sat on the edge of his desk, arms crossed and towering over me. Not proud of it, but I did shrink a bit into my chair (not proud that made me notice how eye level with his crotch I was either... not that I was complaining). "The D'Onofrio Pack, specifically."

My stomach dropped out from under me. Might as well have been a gutted goat, my entails making the floor slippery. The heck does he care about Denise for?

"He already knows they own your apartment. Bok Building too," said the ghost. "Shame what they did to that school. Rachel Hoffman, from my temple, went there to be hairdresser. But then, eh, she was as dumb as the bricks that built it so maybe it's better off a bar."

She laughed and it felt like rusty metal grating against the inside of my skull.

"Correction," said Greg, "I know you work for the Pack. They own your building. Café included."

"Down boy, I just rent!" I huffed. "The Pack may own the property, but the Bean & Brew is a solidly human establishment. Pretty sure they'd put me up in a nicer joint if I was on their books, anyway."

Greg rolled his eyes. Dramatically. Oh, come on. It was all perfectly legit on paper. I signed a lease damnit. But leave it to Greg to sniff out when a scenario smells fishy. Or, in this case, like wet dog.

"You're missing the point, darling. You haven't even batted an eye as to what any of this means. Which is why I keep asking myself, over and over, exactly how do you know what you know about Society? You're not some thrill-seeking Tourist, you're—what? Precisely?"

"You already know," I faked a sigh around the ball of nerves on my throat. "I'm just a human girl playing pretend in the monster club. Which, oh, happens to perfectly explain why I'm an unlicensed psychic."

"Don't," Greg snapped. His cute fangs poked out over his bottom lip, "lie to me."

I shivered. The room got cold. But I was still sweating. Just puddles of it pooled between my thighs and pits. Damn, I wore my favorite cocktail dress. The red one. Sweat stains would absolutely ruin the velvet. Plus chafe my nips. I squirmed. Tried to adjust. This was a bad outfit. Bad idea to come in. Bad idea to come at all.

Greg didn't trust me. Why should he? I was lying. But the lie was better, Greggy, I promise, you grumpy nocturnal sucker. Lying might make you pissy now but the truth was worse. Nazira was right. I couldn't tell him about the books or my break in. He wouldn't vibe with that. Damn. I was liking our vibe too.

That was another mistake.

"I don't know what else to tell you."

"Tell me what you do for the Pack. I fail see how a human pretending to be a psychic could be a lucrative investment," Greg went back to pacing. He ran both hands through his hair, pulling a tad, like he was trying to pull out whatever bothersome thoughts raced through that noggin of his. "Did Lily even want a séance from you or were you just supposed to keep tabs on Dmitri's girl? And then me too after Dmitri hired me? Hmm? Whispering back to your masters the twists and turns of my investigation? What cookie-jars Dmitri's got his talons in? Hate to tell you this, but I stay away from politics."

I laughed. Burst right of me.

I mean, I was livid, but still.

"Don't flatter yourself Mr. Bond, I'm no—"

He groaned. "Don't you dare make a Pussy Galore joke."

"You don't know me!" I ripped open my purse with shaking hands. Needed a cigarette. "For a private dick you don't stick to the facts much, do you?"

Greg's cold eyes narrowed. His fangs remained steady. But he could feel it. Or hear it. Whatever it is that vamps do to know that my blood pressure was spiking through his tar covered roof.

"Don't smoke in here."

"Rachel was a good kisser. Had that going for her at least. Fooled a lot of boys with that mouth. Wonder whatever happened to her," the plaid woman muttered. "Oh! I did the math! Rachel be ninety-two. Oooph. No way she managed to scrape by that long."

Oh, for the love of death, she needed to shut up.

"I'm poor, jackass," I spit around the cigarette perched between my lips, nervously clicking my lighter to life. "Think I borrow baristas' tip money for kicks? My apartment is trash but the rent is cheap. Was cheap. The Pack are slumlords. Grimiest kind. Turns out harassing tenants to pay their only just legally steep rent increases is more effective at overdue collection than filing eviction papers."

This little chat was absolutely thrashing my vibe. We needed to move the party off this furry topic. Cigarette lit, I took a drag and leaned back into my chair, puffing out my chest. I oh so sensually uncrossed and recrossed my legs. Well, tried to. Static in my stockings made them cling together and crackle.

Just when I thought the vamp's eyes were softening, he zoomed at me. I flinched, expecting to feel the sharp thrust of fangs shredding through my neck. But Greg merely, slowly, and so, so carefully, dragged the cigarette out my mouth. His fingers grazed my lip, light and soft, making me tingle. We both stiffened.

Greg snapped back to his desk. He stubbed the cigarette out on his own hand. Rubbed the burgundy stain of my lipstick off his knuckle with his thumb.

"Don't smoke in here," he said.

"Eat your own dick."

"I think you'd like that too much."

"Hey," the ghost snapped her fingers at Greg. "Stay on mission, lover boy. There's a missing girl at stake. He thinks it's all over this real estate kerfuffle you're in, but whatever happened to the good old love triangle angle? Ha. Angle-angle."

Yes, lover boy. Let's stay on target. I came here last week to find Lily Perez. We're going to get your mind off real estate. You're going to find a missing resurrected barista/stripper for me. Then you can stop making me all soft and gooey and screw off into oblivion.

"Real estate kerfuffle seems a bit unmelodramatic, doesn't it?" I said. Greg simultaneously raised a brow and sagged his shoulders. Graceful as a ballerina he was. "Come on, missing barista swindling a vamp into believing she's the reincarnation of his dead ex-wife and flaunts it in front of his current undead wife? Have you really ruled out the love triangle angle?"

"If Rachel's dead, I wonder who she's haunting now—what you say?" The ghost looked up from her magazine. Hazel eyes wide. She had a pretty, doll like face. Thin as a toothpick. Her tapping foot finally came to a rest. I felt her looking at me. I didn't look back.

Greg bit the inside of his cheek. After an eternity, he exhaled, nostrils flaring. "Sorry, Ms. Santiago-Corrigan, but I can't discuss my cases. You understand client confidentiality, I'm sure."

Son of a witch—"I am a client."

The vamp withdrew a paper from a folder on his desk. My contract, presumably, by the way he tore it up. (The ghost lady gasped).

"My guy!" I yelled.

"I don't accept cases from those who aren't good for my wallet. And, as recent evidence suggests, you're poor." He crossed his arms, "how the fangs you planning to pay me?"

"Ugh, fine," I pointed at the ghost. "I did offer an exchange of services."

"Is this—I don't get it. What's wrong with my sofa?"

"I'm offering to take care of your little ghost infestation."

Greg sighed. "I think you should go."

"Nah." I snapped my fingers at the woman, mimicking the way she futilely tried to grab Greg's attention. "Hey, you, Phoebe, right? I think I recognize your voice."

She slapped a hand to her chest.

"You actually see—you don't see me! How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Three on your right hand and just the pinky on your left."

And that's when Phoebe went ga-ga-bananas.

She leapt onto the sofa and shrieked. A horrifying, terrifying, bloodcurdling ghostly wail. You've heard it before. But, for you, it probably just sounded like the wind howling through the trees. If ghosts could hyperventilate, I'd consider grabbing Phoebe a paper bag to breathe in and out of.

Greg's phone rang on his desk. But a gust of wind shot through the office too. The vamp, mouthing some choice words, ignored the phone and slapped his hand down on a stack of torn papers to keep them from fluttering off his desk. Phoebe's magazine was ripped off the end table.

"No! You're not real!" Phoebe screamed at me, "I've spent sixty something years—you people've never been the real kahunas!"

Sigh. Okay. Figured she'd react this way. Ghosts stuck in their little routines and bubbles tend to have a hard time accepting when somebody can suddenly overhear all the mean things they say about them behind their back (Yeah, old lady haunting the bodega around the corner, I know you think I look fat).

"Yep, I'm legit. Hey, how does a vampire even manage to employ a ghost? This an unfinished business snafu? How do you even get paid to answer this prick's phone for the rest of eternity? I can fix that."

I stood and crossed the room to Phoebe (Greg, juggling his fussed-up paperwork and ignoring the phone, scowled).

"Hands off, blondie!" She slid away, just out of my reach, arms over her heard, as she bounced across cushions to avoid me. "Don't you lay those spooky mitts on me!"

"What?" I pulled back. That, uh, wasn't the usual reaction.

"How do I know one spark from those fingers won't just poof me out of existence! Nuh-uh. Greg. Greg! Get her out of here!"

"Why would you think I could do that?"

"I don't know! I've never met anybody who could just see me before! Not risking it," she said, leaping off the couch. "And it's not fashionable to wear gloves with every outfit! What's up with that!"

Phoebe skipped across the room to hide behind Greg. Course, Greg didn't notice the ghost cowering over his shoulder. His focus was on me. Frowning like the grumpy old man he truly was behind that pretty façade.

"For the record, this has not been cute, and I don't appreciate your lackluster attempts at swindling me." He strode to his front door, plucking my coat off the rack, and opened it. The chill seeped in immediately. Greg, my coat draped over his arm like a butler, gestured to the exit. "Please leave."

"You heard him!" Phoebe said. "This is my home. Don't you come here and try to kick me out you little vamp tramp!"

"Firstly, I am very cute, and not a vamp tramp," was it me, or was that a shadow of a smirk Greg just wiped from his mouth? "And your home is haunted, Greg. Haunted. You got the ghosts. This house is not clean, and you're just, what, chill with it? Hey!"

The vamp was suddenly at my side. He took my arm (gently) and pulled me toward the door (softly). I dug my heels into the rug. Let him drag my ass to the door. I wasn't done yet.

"Congratulations, Ms. Santiago-Corrigan—"

"That's a mouthful. Can't we go back to first names and darlings?"

"—nobody has ever accused me of being chill before," he gave me a firmer tug.

"Oh, you don't say!"

"You're a clever con artist, but this is gone too far. You know Phoebe is dead because you've spoken over the phone, it's the only way she can communicate, and Phoebe doesn't like anything as much as she enjoys gossip. You're exploiting a tragedy."

Phoebe had been childishly sticking her tongue out at me from the safety of over Greg's shoulder. But at the mention her name, she stopped (and the phone stopped ringing). Her jaw dropped in disgust.

"Excuse me?" she yelled. Oh, mother of fucks. My head was aching from her from competitive volume. "You think I gossip about myself?"

"She's offended you think she gossips about herself, you know."

"As he should be. Is that all I'm good for around here? Gossip. Not faxing the Scrolls and Records Keepers Department hunting for a bogus license? Not scheduling all his client meetings that he never checks the calendar for? He should be thankful I don't love gossip so much that I tell every client calling he eats the Cool Raunch chips in bed till he's ill and sleeps naked in the crumbs."

I choked. "You sleep naked?"

Greg's jaw tightened.

"I mean, I hope you at least wipe the Cool Ranch—it's Ranch, Phoebe—the Cool Ranch dust off your coffin before you do."

"Boy's claustrophobic!" said Phoebe, the turncoat. "Sleeps in a king bed."

"Oh!" I sang out. "Phoebe says it's a king bed, not a coffin. Nice. Sorry about the claustrophobia."

"And no, he hasn't had any other ladies or fellas in it in a long time."

"Uh," a hot blush erupted across my cheeks at the thought of Greg twisted in his sheets with another lady or fella. "Who he brings up there might be a little TMI, Phoebe."

Greg's eye twitched.

"Look at him! Getting all riled up cause he's so low on blood. I've been telling him: he better remember to eat when he's working but I don't think he's listened to a word I've said about it since nineteen fifty-two! It's all just gossip anyway, right? You better watch out before he jumps your throat. Trust me, I know he wants to, he scribbles carnations in that notebook every night."

"Oh, boy, Phoebe's afraid you'll bite me from the way you doodle carnations in your little black book—you dig my tattoos, Greggy?"

We were nearly at the door when Greg whirled on me. The anxiousness overtaking him was clear. He was fidgeting. Eyes twitchy. He pinched the bridge of his nose and inhaled deeply.

"Alright, fine," he half choked, half laughed and the way his chest rose and fell as he did was mesmerizing even under all those layers. "If Phoebe is in this room, right now, and you can commune with her, have her tell you the name of the first client we ever took together."

"Ahem. Estelle Mulversmitt," Phoebe chirped with pride.

"Uh, Estelle Mulversmitt?"

Greg's nostrils flared. He tossed my arm aside, flung my coat at me, and pointed an angry finger at an empty corner of his ceiling.

"Phoebe!" he growled. "Boundaries."

Phoebe sat nowhere near the ceiling corner, but on the edge of his desk, harrumphing.

"I could gossip about a lot more you know," she nodded at me, as if just remembering I could see her. "He knows."

"Obviously, he knows!"

"What!" Greg said, mussing his hair with both hands. "What is she saying now? We have rules Phoebe. You can stay so long as you don't spy on me at every hour of the evening. It's an invasion of privacy. You—I'm calling you!"

"Ooooooh! Now you want to answer your phone! Where else am I supposed to go all night, Greg? I'm trapped haunting your house!"

Well. This got awkward quick. Greg, unable to hear her shrieks, dug his phone out from under a stack of papers and waved it in a pathetically unthreatening manner at the air.

"Um," I said, pointing at the open door. "You still want me to go?"

"No! No, you're staying now. You—" Greg snapped. Literally, with those fangs. His eyes glowed vibrantly, but as he caught me standing dumbly with my coat in my hands they dulled. He swallowed, seeming to come back to himself. "Phoebe we can speak in private. Later. And you... you're fanging legitimate?"

I shrugged. "Surprise?"

"I am! I'm surprised!" said Phoebe, waving her arm between me and Greg to break that longing stare we seemed to be sharing. "Also we have company."

I turned and smacked straight into Greg's visitor.

"Evening," the Korean-looking, middle-aged guy said, soothing down his wrinkly, oversized suit jacket, "glad you saw my lord's invitation was BYO."

The vamp appeared beside me, grabbed my coat, and tugged me close to him again. Nearly gave me whiplash. But I felt a different kind of tension coiling in his arms and shoulders this time.

"What are you doing here?" said Greg.

The guy swung aside like a ringmaster making his grand reveal. A white van that absolutely screamed you're getting murdered in me tonight was double parked out front. "Delivering you," he said. "Get in. My lord won't be kept waiting."

We didn't move.

The guy frowned. "I left a message with your secretary."

"Oh!" Phoebe gasped. "Shoot!"

She squeezed her eyes shut and balled her hands into fists, pressing them against her temples. Think I was the only one who felt it, but for moment the air in the office seemed to tighten and tighten and then pop. An invisible pressure released behind my eyeballs.

Greg's phone buzzed.