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back right now! Eliot! ”
    Neither of the beings in her bedroom listened to her.
    Jake systematically emptied his clip—the bullets passing right through Eliot and lodging in her floral wallpaper—then smoothly reloaded and raised his arms in preparation for putting a dozen more holes in her wall.
    The mountain of pillows piled on her bed took flight, whipping around the room and bursting in a series of feathery explosions until her perfectly neat bedroom looked like the site of a bloodless chicken massacre.
    “No, no, no! ” Lucy yelled. She jumped off of her bed and directly into the line of fire between the two combatants.
    Jake immediately pointed the muzzle of his gun toward the ceiling. “Lucy! What the hell are you doing? Get out of the way!”
    “No!” Lucy shouted back. “No more shooting!” She spun around to squint up into the strobe-light brilliance where she suspected Eliot’s eyes must be. “No more slamming doors and howling winds and absolutely no more floating furniture ! I have had enough . Do you understand me?”
    The storm inside her bedroom died down suddenly. Eliot shrank down to his normal size, his blinding radiance dimming back to his usual friendly green nightlight levels—though he continued to glare militantly at Jake, who returned the favor.
    “He was shooting at you, Lucy,” Eliot whined peevishly. “I had to protect you.”
    “He was shooting at you ,” she corrected, then turned to glare at Jake. “But he shouldn’t have been shooting at anyone. He’s supposed to be on our side.”
    Jake held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, don’t look at me. I didn’t start firing until the furniture started flying.”
    Lucy turned her glare back on the peevish ghost. “That was a childish and completely unnecessary display, Eliot.”
    Eliot shoved out his lower lip in a pout, somehow managing to sulk and glower at Jake at the same time. “He started it,” he insisted petulantly. “Bursting in here, waving a gun and screaming.”
    “I heard a crash,” Jake snapped. “I had to make sure Lucy was all right.”
    Eliot started to puff up again, just a little. “That’s my job. Lucy is none of your concern.”
    Jake snorted. “I hate to break it to you, buddy, but you’re dead. How can you protect her if you don’t even have a body?”
    “Don’t answer that, Eliot. Mr. Cox is not trying to goad you into showing him how you would protect me. In fact, as difficult as it might be to believe, Mr. Cox is actually the person I was talking to you about—the one who wants to talk to you. About your murder. Don’t you, Mr. Cox?” Lucy snarled the last directly at the vexing PI.
    “Yeah,” Mr. Cox said grudgingly. “I have a few questions.”

Chapter Six: You Just Can’t Trust a Horny Poltergeist
    Sitting at her kitchen table with a petulant ghost and grouchy detective was not how Lucy had envisioned spending her night—especially after Jake Cox had walked through her door that afternoon like a walking, talking gift from Cupid.
    Lucy sat as far away from the two idiots as possible. Out of the line of fire, according to Jake’s orders, and beyond Jake’s reach, according to Eliot’s insistence. Her little accountant nightlight took protectiveness to new levels, puffing up and turning up the wattage whenever Jake touched her, even if it was just a casual brush on her arm. Other than that, Eliot had shown no further signs of going poltergeist on them, and Jake’s gun was back in his holster, although one of his hands hovered over it constantly.
    Now if only she could get the two pig-headed men to stop bickering and cooperate long enough to get them both out of her kitchen.
    “I’m not a rat,” Eliot insisted stubbornly, his lower lip puffed out in classic kindergarten style.
    “No, you’re a ghost,” Jake snapped irritably. “Joe Morrissey had you killed.”
    “Exactly! What do you think he’d do to me if he found out I’d ratted him out?”
    “He can’t do