You're So Dead to Me (Grimdale Graveyard Mysteries, #1)

by Steffanie Holmes

“Walpurgis, stop that,” Agnes snaps. “You’re supposed to be a servant of Satan, not a gibbering pup.”

“I hope you steered well clear of France,” Agnes says with a sniff. “French people live there.”

“Invoke Satan!” Agnes pipes up. “That always sends them running.”

B + P + E + A = 4EVA.

I’m overcome with a sensation that’s become increasingly elusive to me during my spectral years. I’m horny. Concupiscent. Downright lustful and randy.

Edward didn’t like being confronted by his own grandiose and garish grave erected by his friends, since his family disowned him (although he did occasionally deign to stand on the edge of the cemetery to give a suitable backdrop for his morose and terrible poetry). And when Pax was alive, the cemetery land was the site of a bloody battle between the Roman forces and the Celtic tribes where he was slain, and he can still hear the Celtic war cries as they mowed down his friends…

Here’s Ambrose, my childhood friend, and it’s the first time I’ve seen him since I told him to leave me alone forever and he’s… …he’s fucking hot. “Wait.” Ambrose freezes, his frock coat flapping around his thighs.

You’re sleep-deprived and horny, and any man or ghost will do. You’ll get over it in a day or so. I hope.

Ambrose skids into the room, so excited that he swings his cane around like a gladiator on kill-one-get-one-free day at the Colosseum.

And now my verpa is standing at attention, and ghosts can’t jerk their own cucumbers, and it’s very annoying.

I float over the bed to touch my hand to the inscription in the plaster – Bree scratched it there one night when she couldn’t sleep and the three of us were telling her stories to cheer her up. B + P + E + A = 4EVA.

“By Jupitor’s Thorny Nutsack,” I swear my nightly ritual. “I will always protect you.”

“I mean, if that fellow can walk around the world and he’s blind, there’s no excuse for me, is there?” That’s not the point of his story. “I know exactly what you mean,” her friend says back. “It’s so brave of him to go and do all those things with his disability.”

Damn, why did I never notice how hot my old ghost friends were?

lol that’s a sentence that i’d never thought i’d read 💀

I hold my breath as I look at Albert. Really look at him. And I realize that I can see right through him to the wall behind him, where one of the goth girls is poking some object that’s been stuffed into an empty niche.

NO NOT ALBERT

No, not a mannequin. A body. A human body. A human body wearing Albert’s distinctive striped sweater.

Albert looks between his body and my face. “See? I told you I needed your help.”

:(

Someone killed Albert – the kindliest old man in the village, giver of sage financial advice at the pub, chief of the tombola at every village fete, captain of the Grimdale over 60s cricket team, and the man unashamedly making other husbands look bad every February 14th with his huge public Valentine’s day surprises for Maggie…

“If a murderer is loose, you must go home immediately. As your prince, I order you to go straight to your bedroom, lock the doors, put on a really skimpy nightdress, and await my next instructions.”

“as your prince” lol

Tears well in the corners of my eyes. I blink them back, but one escapes and topples down my cheek. Edward’s eyes harden. He reaches up to wipe the droplet away. His finger brushes my cheek, and I brace myself for the warm, tingling sensation I remember from them. Instead, as he makes contact, as his ghostly fingers slide over my skin, never quite touching, an electric charge hums through my body – a jolt that pulses through my bloodstream. A trail of tiny explosions that lead from my cheek straight to that spot between my legs. Um, what the fuck? Edward jerks his hand away and floats back, his eyes wide. He felt it, too.

He moves into the kitchen and shoots me this look that turns my panties wet as he plunges his hands into the wall. A moment later, there’s an electrical ‘zzzzz’ noise. The lights flicker and the electric kettle begins to boil. “Um, excuse me, what is that?” I don’t recall Edward ever performing that trick before. “I can do remarkable things with these fingers,” he says with a smirk.

“It’s…nothing,” I sob. It’s everything. “If it was nothing, then you wouldn’t be crying,” Pax says triumphantly. “I have won this battle of wits, therefore you must tell us who has hurt you so I can feed them to the starving lion.”

“No one’s hurt me,” I sniff. “It’s just…if there are gods, they have a sadistic sense of humor.” “Which god has hurt you?” Pax unsheaths his sword and stabs it at the sky. “Was it Jupiter? He can be a real dick. Or Mercury, that trickster. I don’t care if they’re divine beings, I will crush their skulls in my hands and use their testicles for tiddlywinks.”

LOL i love Pax

Pax is casting his eyes around, desperate for something to stab that will solve the problem.

LOL

Not all problems can be solved with bloodshed.

“Then you’re going to be busy,” I sigh. “Everyone in this village looks at me funny.” “That’s because they wish they were as beautiful and special as you,” Edward says. Um… Well… Fuck.

Edward used to say things like that all the time. He is the poet prince. But they never made me feel like this before, like my blood is filled with honey.

Oh, and I guess Pax is here, too. He can’t come into the bar – too many people will walk through him and cause too much pain, but he’s watching through the window. I give him a little nod and he flashes his sword, just to show me he’s hard at work guarding me against murderers.

Pax is so cute 🥺

Edward makes a great show of slouching across the chaise lounge, looking every bit the spoiled, indolent prince. Although I know him well enough to know that he’s precisely arranged his body to appear as flattering as possible. His shirt hangs open, his codpiece freshly polished, and from this angle, I can’t see the bloodstains or the piece of glass in his arsecheek.

“That’s what you get for not paying attention to my lecture on ghost gravity.”

I was inside Pax’s memory. I was in his body. That’s never happened before.

“I love hugs!” Pax barrels into Edward, knocking him through the liquor cabinet with the force of his affection.

Pax 😭

He’s no longer counted on the census, and is severely living-challenged.

I cannot fall for a ghost. I will not.

Even before her accident, Bree had a presence in the house that called to me. Beneath her tiny baby’s chest beat the heart of a poet.

the seductive, scandalous scent of Brianna that fills the room and makes my ghost heart do strange things.

Brianna smells like tangled bedsheets and the flickering of candlelight. She smells of wild nights and fingernails dragging over my skin. Her scent glides against my ghost skin like the edge of a blade.

flagrante delicto.

Ghost rule number seventeen: ducks have an uncanny sense for the presence of the undead. Everyone thinks it’s dogs who can sense ghosts, but it’s really ducks.

“When will women learn? Maggie was always swanning about with her herbal remedies and healing balms, making it known she understands plant magic. And then she’s foolish enough to use poison? Amateur mistake. The first person they blame for poisoning is the local wise woman. I guess she’ll have plenty of time to ruminate on that error while they’re leading her to the witch-hanging tree. Now, if she’d had the audacity to bludgeon him with a rock, then she wouldn’t be in this mess.”

I slept. With him there, watching over me, I could finally sleep. My parents called it a miracle. But it was my friend, Pax, taking care of me.

my heart 😭 i love Pax 🥺

He’s still watching over me.

😭💛

“Perhaps in exchange for our magnanimous cooking skills…” “Ah, I knew you didn’t have an altruistic bone in your body.” “I have no bones in my body.” He lowers his voice. “Except for the other night, when you touched me—” My cheeks burn with heat. “Spit it out, prince. What’s this going to cost me?”

When I used to live here we hardly ever watched TV, mainly because it’s very hard to concentrate on a show with three ghosts whispering about historical inaccuracies (Ambrose), trying to stab the villains (Pax), and demanding every female actress remove her undergarments (Edward).

I believe Maggie’s innocent. I do. But I’ve seen enough true crime TV to know that it’s always the person you least suspect.

“The table looks beautiful,” Edward says as my ghosts float into the room, followed shortly afterward by Albert.

my ghosts ? 👀

my ungrateful husband who had me hanged as a witch because I burned his meat one too many times—” “He accused you of witchcraft because you burned his dinner?” “No, not his dinner.” Lottie winks. Gross.

She runs a dusty old bookshop with a grumpy man who has forearms like tree trunks, a dark-haired artistic sort, and a suave, tall, tattooed fellow with a mind for criminal shenanigans and a body for sin.”

You two will probably get on like a witch on fire—”

My fingers brush his skin and stay there. I gasp. It feels almost like touching a real person except…except better. What is going on? Nothing makes sense.