“There’s a ghost
in my bathroom.”
The woman wore
the white cotton robe provided by the B&B. My nose didn’t twitch, so even
if I didn’t believe her, she believed in what she said.
She turned so I
could see the back of her head. “See what he did?”
A huge chunk of
her hair had been cut from the center of the back leaving her with an
unflattering bald spot.
“Yikes,” I said,
but more concerned she wasn’t freaked out by the whole “there’s a ghost” thing.
When she turned
back to me, her eyes flashed from blue to gold. “I’ve come to Burberry to
because this place is supposed to be safe for people like us, so someone needs
to get the malicious ghost under control before I do some real damage.”
People like us?
Did she mean other witches?
When her eyes
turned from gold to black, I called for reinforcements. “Mr. Berry, can you
please come out here?”
In the past few
days of working the front desk of the Berry Brothers B&B, I’d dealt with
clogged toilets, irritations to soap and shampoo, and that one weird guy who
kept crawling into the ice machine. But angry eyes and ghosts were a challenge
I didn’t know how to handle yet.
Harold Berry
came from the back office and placed both hands on the counter, a professional
smile firmly in place. “What seems to be the problem, ma’am?”
“Ghosts in this
guest’s bathroom,” I answered for her.
“No,” she
corrected me. “Only one ghost. And he’s a psycho.”
He leaned across
the counter toward the woman. “Is it one you brought with you? Because we’ve
been cleared by the LSP of all ghostly items.”
She huffed and
clenched the top of her bathrobe together. “How dare you? I want a refund, and
I’ll be telling everyone about your psycho ghost problem.”
Gerald Berry
lumbered by with an armful of folded towels and had caught the end of the conversation.
“What’s this about a refund?”
“We have a
malicious ghost,” Harold whispered.
The woman
stomped down the hall and I couldn’t help but wonder why she was more upset
about there being a ghost in her room than he fact that she now had a freaky new
hairstyle.
Gerald placed
the towels on the counter and crossed his arms. “Bad enough we now cater to all
types of weirdos in this town, but losing business over something out of our
control makes me want to retire in Florida with the former mayor.”
“I can get rid
of the ghost,” I said and clamped down hard of my nose. My lies could cause a
sneezing fit too. I waited a few seconds and talked myself into the fact that I
might be able to get rid of the ghost so that wouldn’t make it a real lie.
The urge to sneeze
stopped.
“You?” Gerald
asked.
“If I do, I get
to ask for a favor and you can’t say no.” Finally, I had a chance to corner him
about lying when he said he didn’t recognize the woman in the picture I showed
him. “Within reason, of course. It’s not like I’d ask for something crazy.”
He glanced over
at his brother and they did a silent discussion with their eyebrows.
“Fine,” Gerald
said. “Get rid of the malicious ghost and we’ll talk about a favor.”
