Excerpt from Don’t Wake the Dead
is a paranormal cozy mystery with a hefty dash of romcom. Plus there’s a foul-mouthed, perverted ghost roaming around. I know an author isn’t supposed to have a favorite book baby, but if I’m being honest…I totally do. And it’s this one. Oh, and the second book in this series, The Dead Come Calling. Zoe, Mal, Teri, and the rest of the gang make me laugh.
Ch. 1 of Don’t Wake the Dead
If I’d realized he was in the elevator, I wouldn’t have stepped inside. I always tried to avoid him, but I wasn’t paying attention that morning.
“It’s you.”
I looked up from my phone and fought not to cringe. Immediately, I returned my attention back to the screen of my phone.
He leaned into me. “Why won’t you talk to me?”
Ducking my head, I focused on responding to Jonelle’s text as I pretended that he didn’t exist.
Suddenly, I felt an icy cold tingle on the side of my face. I jerked away from him, banging my shoulder into the wall. He stood next to me, his tongue hanging out of his mouth like some sort of overgrown puppy.
The other two people in the elevator, a man and a woman, turned and gave me concerned looks. Then they looked at each other as if to say, “You’ll help hold her down if she loses her shit, right?”
I smiled wanly. “Sorry, I tripped.”
The woman glared at me, but the man eyed me speculatively. I shrugged, trying to look as harmless as possible.
They turned their backs toward me but I could tell that they were on guard. Irritated, I glared at the man to my right. Quickly, I pulled up the note app on my phone and typed him a message.
Leave me alone. And don’t ever lick my face again, asshole.
“I just wanted your attention. Why won’t you talk to me?” he complained, his voice quieter this time. “You’re the only one who seems to see or hear me.”
Bcuz I am.
“But why? Why do they all pretend they can’t see me?” Now his tone was verging on whiny.
They can’t. You know they can’t.
“I don’t understand. Why can’t they see me?”
Usually I tried to be considerate when talking to someone in his position, but we’d had this conversation before. In fact, we’d had this conversation at least once a week since I’d been hired at the insurance firm. If I was alone in the elevator, I would express my annoyance out loud but this time I was hampered by the two other occupants. He knew it too, which was why he was still bothering me. If anything, he was tenacious and willfully ignorant.
I’ve told u a million times, Jerry. Ur dead. Uve been dead for a long time.
“I can’t be dead,” he argued.
Sick of arguing with him, I typed him a final message.
U R a ghost. Don’t bother me again or I’ll come back with holy water and banish ur ass.
Though I wasn’t even sure if holy water would work, it seemed like a viable threat. Maybe my words were cruel, but Jerry had been haunting this building daily for the last four years that I worked here. At first, I managed to ignore him, but I made the mistake of responding to his questions once when I was alone. Since then, he tried to talk to me every time he saw me. I was pretty sure he looked for me.
“Bitch,” he muttered.
I realized then that not only did Jerry understand that he was dead, he enjoyed being undetectable. He liked moving among the living mostly unseen. The harassment he dished out to me was his way of relieving boredom.
Still, he had no intention of moving on. He wanted to remain here, even if no one else could see or talk to him. Probably so he could look up women’s skirts or lick their toes in the elevator, the pervy fucker.
When the elevator reached my floor, I rushed off, accidentally bumping into the woman near the doors.
She huffed in annoyance.
Glancing back, I apologized, “Sorry.”
I didn’t wait to hear a response from her or Jerry, already hurrying down the hallway toward the offices that held the insurance company that employed me.
The receptionist, Claire, smiled and waved at me as I entered. I nodded to her and headed straight toward the break room where the employee lockers were located. I put my purse inside my locker and took a quick trip to the ladies room. Once I was done, I headed back into the break room for a cup of coffee. It was the same routine I went through every workday morning.
As I added sugar and creamer, my boss, Mike, stuck his head into the break room.
“I need to see you in my office before you start your shift,” he stated.
“Okay,” I replied.
Before I could ask him if everything was okay, he disappeared. That was a bad sign. Mike might not be the friendliest man I’d ever met, but he never ended conversations so abruptly.
My stomach twisted as I stirred my coffee. I might not be clairvoyant, but I had an idea what was coming. I’d been hearing rumors about company restructuring for a couple of months.
I made my way to Mike’s office. I noticed halfway down the hall that I’d left my coffee on the counter in the break room. It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t have been able to drink a drop right now anyway.
I knocked on his open door and stuck my head in when he called out.
“Hey, Mike.”
His face was serious as he gestured for me to come inside. “Please close the door behind you.”
That’s when I knew my worries were well founded. Mike had a stringent open-door policy in the office. Meetings, unless they were reprimands or terminations, were always held with the door open. Mike wanted his employees to trust him and refused to hide in his office.
I shut the door and took a seat in the chair across from his. Lacing my fingers together, I rested my hands in my lap and waited.
Mike sighed and mimicked my pose, his expression unhappy. “You’re an intelligent person, Zoe, I’m sure you already have an idea of why I called you in here.”
“If this has something to do with the rumors of company restructuring, then yes,” I answered.
“I’m afraid it does.”
“Go ahead and spit it out, Mike,” I invited.
“General Insurance is eliminating over a thousand positions this year. All claims centers will pare down from five hundred to four hundred claim reps. As much as I hate this, I have to terminate people based on seniority and you’re one of my newer reps.”
My eyebrows lifted. “After four years, I’m a newer rep?”
He shrugged. “It’s twenty percent of my staff, Zoe. A few of these terminations are for people who’ve been here longer than you.” His face fell. “For what it’s worth, I hate doing this and I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mike,” I replied.
Even though it wasn’t okay as I claimed, I couldn’t be angry with him. He had a job to do, even if he didn’t necessarily like it.
I hauled myself out of my chair. “So I take it I have the day off?”
He sighed and I felt a twinge of remorse for my quip. “I’ve enjoyed working with you. Please put me down as a reference. I’ll give any prospective employers a glowing recommendation.”
My smile was half-hearted but I appreciated his effort. “Thanks, Mike.”
I trudged out of his office, unsure of what to do next. Retracing my steps, I returned to the break room. My full coffee cup was still sitting on the counter. I poured it down the sink and washed the mug.
I didn’t bother to go to my cubicle. I stopped bringing personal items to work when I realized that Norma, the woman in the workspace directly behind me, was a kleptomaniac and stole everything on my desk that wasn’t nailed down. Except for my work files. Those she was happy to leave.
Removing my bag from my locker, I left the break room and took one last look around the place I’d worked for the last four years. The bland grey carpet and white walls weren’t much and the generic landscape paintings hanging throughout the offices were actually damn ugly, but I’d enjoyed my time here.
Now, I was leaving for good.
I said good-bye to Claire as I left. She seemed to know exactly what was going on because she looked sad.
The elevator doors opened up and I was face-to-face with Jerry the Annoying Ghost again. He sneered at me as I stepped on.
“Back so soon?” he asked.
After I pressed the button for the first floor, I faced him. “For the last time. I gotta tell you, Jerry, I won’t miss you.”
“Miss me?” he asked.
I was actually kind of glad I was alone in the elevator with him so I could speak freely without people thinking I was a fruitcake.
“It’s my last day. I won’t be back.”
He actually looked surprised. “But who’ll I talk to?”
I laughed. “No one, Jer. No one. You should really think about moving on.”
The elevator steadily descended toward the bottom floor with no stops.
“You can’t leave me,” he demanded. “I won’t let you.”
The elevator dinged as it halted on the lobby level.
“Good-bye, Jerry,” I replied.
“I’ll find you. I won’t let you leave me here alone,” he spat out. His words were venomous and full of menace, but they were empty. He’d never be able to leave the elevator unless he went to the next plane.
“Fuck you, Jerry,” I answered levelly, marching off the elevator car as the doors slid open.
I could hear him screaming at me as I walked through the lobby and out the front doors, but I didn’t look back.
Like all ghosts, he was stuck in the past and that’s where I intended to leave him.
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