"Casey Daniels - Pepper Martin 01 - Don of the Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daniels Casey)

Mine was the smallest.

Desk. Chair. Guest chair. Bookcases that doubled as file storage and were filled to the brim. That was
about it. That was all there was room for. As the tour guide and newest member of the cemetery's
administrative staff, I was low man on the totem pole; I didn't even rate a window.

If I did have one, I'd be looking out at the high stone wall that surrounded the cemetery and on the other
side of it,Cleveland 's Little Italy. Cute shops I couldn't afford to buy anything in. Great restaurants that
were way too pricey for me. Oh, and cheap apartments. That was one good thing. It was where I'd been
living since the day three months earlier when Dad headed to the federal penitentiary and Mom left town
for Florida, where she hoped folks would know her simply asBarb and not asBarb whose husband the
doctor was convicted of Medicare fraud .
 "The first thing I'd do is get somebody in here to clean up this place." Gus's comment snapped me back
to reality. "Or maybe I'd just have it torched and put it out of its misery. You always this sloppy?"

"It's inherited slop." True. Sort of. The woman who had the job before me left most of the stuff there.
The books about the history ofCleveland . The old magazines she swore, the one and only time I'd met
her, contained "oodles of useful information." I wasn't so sure about theuseful but I think theoodles part
was right. There sure were a lot of them, and organization skills had never been my strong suit. In the
month I'd been there, things had gotten a little out of hand.

There were old copies ofLife on the floor and issues ofNational Geographic tucked between the file
folders in the bookcase. There were more magazines on my desk along with the latest Abercrombie
catalogue, a sale flyer fromVictoria 's Secret, and what was left of the taco salad that was the previous
day's lunch. After my run-in with Gus, I'd left so fast the day before, I never went back to the office to
clean up.

I crossed the room and flopped down in my desk chair. I didn't bother to open the Styrofoam container
to see how the salad had fared. An overnight on top of my desk couldn't have done it any good. I
jammed the container into the bag it came in and tossed the whole thing into my trash can.

It wasn't until I was done that something Gus had said hit me.

"What do you mean, as real as you used to be?"

He sounded just about as disgusted as anyone I'd ever heard. "You might be pretty, sweetheart, but
you're sure not very smart. Don't you get it yet? I used to be real, all right. Now I'm a ghost."

My heart stopped right then and there. I swear it did. It started back up again with a sort of thump that
made my ribs hurt and my breath catch. There was only one logical comeback to the announcement.

"You're shitting me."

Gus winced like he was in pain. "In my day," he said, "girls didn't talk like that."

"In your dayтАФ" I realized that I was falling into the trap. Just the way my brain wanted me to. I was so
desperate to convince myself I wasn't a certified nutcase that I was willing to buy into this whole ghost
theory. Almost.

I shook away the very thought with a motion that made my breasts jiggle inside my standard-issue