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The Misplaced

An Angel Falls Novella

Ghost hunting with Chris Abeyta

Chapter One

“RISE AND SHINE, porcupine.”

Chris cracked open sleep encrusted eyes. “Can I help you?” His throat rasped, and his body groaned, begging to return to sleep.

“I don’t know, but I definitely want to find out.”

The amount of perkiness in her voice made Chris cringe and wish he slept with earplugs.

“Come again?” He glanced at the clock on his dresser. Four-fourteen a.m. As an early riser, this should not have been quite such a shock to his system. But he went to bed late after a grueling night of spiritual cleansing, and an unexpected battle with a particularly spiteful ghost, at the local pool hall. Professional ghost hunter and shaman, Chris Abeyta, was dog-tired, bushed, and mentally unprepared for… anything that didn’t involve staring at the back of his eyelids.

Rolling over, he ignored his visitor. His exhausted mind and body deserved one full night’s rest. More like a year’s worth of sleep. He’d settle for eight hours. The soul residing within him, however, could not ignore the woman standing over the bed. A feminine and luminous quality, added to captivating eyes, taunted his sleep-addled brain. Perhaps he only imagined the halo of light surrounding her abundant hair. What color is her hair? Black? No, not black, burgundy? No, not that either. Darker than auburn, but not black. Damn. Thinking clearly on two hours of sleep is not happening.

“Yoo-hoo,” she sang.

The attention getter registered but didn’t make him turn over and face her.

“Not yet.” Chris didn’t know if the grumble was spoken aloud or not. He didn’t care. He needed to decipher the exact color of her hair. Why her eyes looked so painfully familiar. In his current state of bone-deep exhaustion these details seemed absolutely vital before abandoning the comfort of his mattress. Chestnut? Sable? A cross between the two. That's it. Blackened chestnut. There. He’d done it. Solved yet another mystery. Now, about those eyes. Brown? He thought so. He’d been so fixed on the waves of shiny blackened chestnut that her eye color didn’t stick. It might be the distraction of her eyebrows. Sculpted, sleek, and expressive. Yes, the eyebrows perfectly complimented the hair. Lips, nose, cheekbones. They accentuated each other on a sensual and attractive oval face. He hadn’t thought any female remarkably beautiful since meeting Juliana Crowson. Sure, he appreciated a feminine figure and a nice smile here or there, but no one ever stood out enough to garner a second look.

Chris liked bachelorhood. Not only liked it but preferred it. He and women were at odds. No. That wasn’t totally accurate. He and people, in general, were at odds. It was a choice he made daily, but in actuality more a genetic default or birth inheritance. When Chris Abeyta entered this world, Great Spirit took one look at him and declared, “This one. The chubby-cheeked vibrant son of Sherman White Wolf Abeyta will be gifted many powerful medicines to be used for healing. He will have clear vision and insights into the ghost worlds. He will use his gifts to help those who suffer, and assist others who need help finding the Good Red Road.”

Nowhere did Great Spirit mention people skills or a getting along with the human race. It showed. Chris could hardly stand being with himself, let alone anyone else. Particularly those who made life more challenging. So, pretty much everyone, in every conceivable way. He grew up as a solitary participant. He learned to become a shaman from his father and made a few friends along the way. A father and friends he rarely ever saw. Keeping his distance benefitted everyone, especially him. He tolerated his clients only long enough to aid their spiritual needs. He would deal with a haunting, perform a ceremony, or do whatever else they needed from him. Most of the time, Chris just wanted to be left alone.

Juliana was the only friend he made since returning home from University — almost four years ago. If he could call her a friend. One friend every four years. The thought plagued him. Sixteen years from now, a handful of people would bother him on a regular basis. It’s time to cut someone loose, he thought.

It would not be Juliana. His apprentice needed more training. Somehow, Juliana Crowson managed to wedge herself into his life and obliterate his better judgment. She had intrigued him at first. Not just because of her looks and her half-Native bloodline, but also her natural abilities to see and hear the afterlife and its occupants. She had absolutely no inkling of what to do with her gifts. The danger she put herself in astounded Chris. He couldn’t stand by and let her be killed. She surely would have been if he hadn’t intervened. His lessons with Juliana on the afterlife progressed slowly, but steadily, and he was satisfied with her development. Last night, she proved again her willingness to be scared witless, yet do as instructed, to bring balance and harmony to the spirit world.

“Listen up, Sleeping Beauty. I understand the need to sleep it off. Believe me, I do. I’ve been hung-over a time or two myself, but there's no time for a morning cuddle and a long chat over coffee. Get up right now or I’m going to make you!”

He shoved all thoughts concerning Juliana aside. The mystery woman demanding his attention rose to the forefront. Chris groaned again, and the reverberation traveled through his body all the way down to his toes.

Last night should have gone a whole lot smoother. When he’d been in the attic above the pool hall, the spirit he’d been chasing led him straight to a section amidst the rafters that had no floorboards. Chris hadn’t seen it. He was too busy casting the varmint into the hereafter to pay attention to the missing floor. Falling and banging his shin on a joist had been unfortunate. Hitting his head on the rafters had just been humiliating, and painful. The impish ghost thought it rather hilarious.

The case had been interesting. Chris wanted to take the time to ponder over the unusual details of what transpired last night. In the past, the billiard hall and bar had never seen any spiritual or otherworldly trouble. Chris wanted to know what had changed. It could be as simple as a patron bringing a nasty spirit with them into the building, but Chris’s instincts told him otherwise. Something seemed out of sorts. He needed to figure it out. Otherwise, the owners of the building might be calling him back. Not that he failed to send the mischievous spirit to the afterlife. He succeeded, and Juliana gained valuable hands-on experience. When he finally left sometime after midnight, he didn’t have the sense of closure that normally went with a completed job.

All that would need to wait. Sleeping off the headache was his first priority. That, too, should fall to the wayside, as far as his unexpected visitor was concerned. Four more hours of rest would make life bearable. Was it really too much to ask? Didn’t this woman come with a built-in snooze button? How about a mute switch?

Chris smelled cigarette smoke and determined he had to be dreaming. She wouldn’t light up inside his cabin, would she? That level of disrespect and bad manners? Unthinkable, and unheard of in his personal space. It was a dream. A dream where he remembered the smell of the smoking lounge at the back of the pool hall last night.

“Beep…beep…beep…beep!”

Chris launched himself out of bed and saw his uninvited guest standing on the corner of his mattress holding a lit cigarette up to the smoke detector. The piercing wail penetrated every cell in his fatigued body and made his ears cry for relief. She brought the cigarette to her lips, inhaled, and blew a long stream of smoke toward the ceiling.

“Told you I’d make you get up.” She jumped down from the bed before Chris could snatch the cigarette from her impudent fingers. The cigarette had the distinct spicy scent of clove mixed with tobacco. No matter. He still didn’t like it or want it in his house.

Mystery woman scooted out of the room, and he didn’t pursue her. Instead, he reached up and jammed the tip of his finger against the minuscule button to shut off the alarm.

With a sigh that didn’t relieve his exasperation, exhaustion, or impatience, he glanced out the bedroom window and saw nothing but the blessed dark. The dark he longed to return to in the form of sleep.

“We’re running out of time, sleepy head,” she called from the direction of his living room.

“Time for what?” he said with no enthusiasm and the barest minimum of curiosity.

“Oh, you know, the usual. Saving souls and protecting the planet.”

Chris didn’t bother looking for her before changing into a pair of cargo pants and a fresh shirt. He shuffled down the hall wondering if she continued to pollute his cabin with her cigarette. He no longer smelled it, but more importantly, he wanted to know why she showed up there at all. The woman, with the wildly curly multi-colored hair, was not in his living room when he entered.

“You may need your medicine bag,” she said from behind him.

Chris spun one-eighty and headed to the back of the cabin to his sunroom and workroom.

“Explain yourself.”

His unnamed guest perused the workbench and had her nose stuck in the top of a jar of copal.

“I always enjoyed burning copal. It’s a necessity for someone like myself.”

“Who are you?” Chris asked.

“A girl who needs your help. We really don’t have time for jibber-jabber. Grab your tools and let’s get out of here.”

“Refusing to answer will only force me to make you leave. Your behavior is unacceptable.”

She set the jar down and turned a beguiling gaze on him. Chris refused to be bewitched by this stunning woman in his sunroom. Her face might be appealing and her body attractive, nearly every curve highlighted in her tight stretch pants and a long sweater, but it would take a lot more than physical beauty to persuade him to blindly follow. So far, she had not provided any reason to go with her.

“You need to take me back to the pool hall. Now. Before someone gets hurt.”

“Did you follow me home?”

“No. I mean yes, and no. I don’t know.”

Confusion tangled with apprehension on her face. Chris didn’t like seeing either emotion. “What is your name?”

“Naomi Hutson.”

He knew she wasn’t lying. Chris always knew when someone lied to him. Auras gave them away, and if there were no aura because they belonged to the ethereal realm, he still read their eyes and their body language. Even if her answers were obscure, she was honest about her name.

“I did not see you at Jack’s Corner Pocket.” The pool hall and smoking club had been busy, but Chris would have noticed her. He considered it part of his job as a ghost hunter and shaman to pay attention to everything in his domain when working a case. Not to mention, this woman stood out. She would ping on his radar immediately.

She shrugged as if to say, not her problem, but the solemn pleading in her eyes couldn’t be ignored.

“The entire town is in danger, Mr. Abeyta. I’m in grave danger. We need your help, and we need it now.”

~ End preview ~