The Girl with the Uninvited Ghost: Pandemonium Cozy Mystery #1

Chapter 1

Mahogany brushed a hot pink curl out of her eyes and checked the compass. The park's sodium lights bathed the area in a yellow glow, nullifying the silver radiance of the full moon. Inside the compasses domed enclosure, the needle fashioned from the wing bone of the Jersey Devil spun wildly. Compasses crafted from the Devil's bones never failed, but Mahogany had her doubts about this one.

Sighing, she tapped the glass. The needle slowed, swayed back and forth, and gave a final wistful rotation before pointing in the direction of the dark street to the west of the park. Across town, the clock tower standing sentinel gave two solemn knells. The sound reverberated across the sleeping village.

"Finally," Mahogany said, gazing in the needle's direction. "Bazgul, come."

A shoe-sized tarantula skittered out of the yellow-black shadows. The giant spider dragged something in its mandibles.

"You ate before we left the house." Mahogany tried to give the spider a warning glare, but her love for indulging the creature supplanted her scowl.

Bazgul tilted his head. The lifeless baby bird grasped in his mandibles shifted over the short-cropped grass with a soft scrape. Eight eyes shone in the yellow light.

Mahogany placed her hands on her hips. "Don't look at me like that. You know I can't say no when you beg. Be quick."

The demon-spider threw his head back, releasing the baby bird, which cartwheeled into the air like a beanbag. Bazgul's mandibles separated into a gaping maw filled with razor-sharp teeth. The dead bird tumbled into Bazgul's waiting jaws. With a crunch, the bird disappeared. Having satisfied himself, Bazgul scampered over to Mahogany, climbed her side, and perched on her shoulder.

"All right, buddy. Let's go find us a dead wizard," Mahogany said towards the dark street ahead.

Mahogany was reasonably new to the job of magical relics collector. Six months prior, the curator of Pandemonium's History Museum, Agalia Sorrowsong, had offered Mahogany the position. When a magical person passed away, their enchanted objects needed collecting before they fell into the wrong hands, code for humans. Cedric, the previous collector, had expired during a routine pickup. A particularly devious sorcerer with a penchant for booby traps had occupied the home in question. Cedric, an 80-something-year-old, had stumbled unwittingly into a hallway filled with enough firepower to make Laura Croft rethink her career choice. Poor old Cedric had wound up decapitated and eviscerated before a pack of hungry wolves finished off his corpse. This horrific death sent the local authorities, primarily non-magical Folk, into a frenzy.

Thus, with the death of Cedric, Agalia set her sights on Mahogany. When presented with the offer, Mahogany jumped at the chance to break up her mundane days of hocking herbs at the Haughty Hemlock, the local apothecary.

The compass needle shifted and swayed as Mahogany navigated through the center of the deserted street. In a final flurry of motion, the bone needle rotated several times and stopped. The house in question was one of four brownstone apartments typically rented by summer tourists.

"OK, Bazgul, this looks like the one." Mahogany scowled at the prospect of an out-of-town wizard dying in a rental. She gave the sleeping block a cursory glance before approaching the dark house, careful to quiet her boot heels on the sidewalk.

She tiptoed up the stone steps to the sturdy front door and reached for the polished brass mail slot, intended on sending Bazgul through to slip the lock. As her fingertips grazed the metal flap, the door creaked inward an inch.

Mahogany stopped, her hand frozen, hovering in space. She'd never arrived at an unlocked house, much less with an open front door. Magical people tended to be a paranoid bunch. Leaving one's home open for anyone to enter uninvited didn't happen unless you were a witch in the woods who enjoyed the taste of lost children.

The door's creak sent a chill up Mahogany's spine. Something was abysmally wrong here. Mahogany stepped up to the threshold and pushed the door a little wider.

"Hello?" she half-called, half-whispered into the dark entryway.

She received no answer, the fact of which both relieved and frightened her. Screwing up her courage, Mahogany slipped through the doorway, closing it with a soft click behind her.

_____

A/N: Hello, gentle reader! Thank you for continuing to read The Girl with the Uninvited Ghost.

Please let me know what you think! Your opinion matters.

This chapter is dedicated to the amazing romance writer @SJMoquin   If you're a lover of romance, please check out her work.