The Ghost Exterminator by Vivi Andrews Page B

distance from Jo, but relief poured through him at her words. She was sticking by him. Thank God. Although, God had been a real dick lately, letting him get into this situation, so maybe he should be thanking someone else.
    “We’ve got a lot of questions about the house and until we get some answers, I’m going to be your shadow. No more drawing on your face. No more weird ghostly occurrences of any kind. I’m gonna be guarding your ass twenty-four/seven.”
    “Good.”
    Jo blinked, as if stunned by his response. He was a little stunned by it himself. “Good?”
    Wyatt cleared his throat, all of his rationalizations of the last few minutes flying out the window at his relief that he wouldn’t have to deal with this crazy, mumbo-jumbo shit without her. “Yes, good. You were in there so long, I started thinking you were reading through my contract to see if there was a pain-in-the-ass clause you could use as an excuse to drop me on my ass and leave me to deal with all this weird crap on my own.” Or a sexual-harassment clause that he violated a dozen different ways during their little interlude in Jo’s office.
    “Nah, you lucked out. No pain-in-the-ass clause.” She didn’t mention the kiss, but her color was high and she hadn’t looked straight at him since coming out of Karma’s office.
    “So what’s next?” Wyatt asked the question with no small amount of dread. He wasn’t sure he could take much more hocus-pocus today.
    Jo fidgeted, which never failed to make him nervous, and avoided his eyes. “Well, you see, Karma, she, ah, she agrees with me about removing the ghosts being a bad idea. Dangerous. Sucking your soul out and all that. So, we’re going to do some, ah, research and see if we can’t figure out some alternate way. To get them out. Of you.”
    Jo wasn’t a good liar, but he could never figure out which part she was lying about so the effect was the same as if she had been double-oh-seven busting lie-detectors for a living. He frowned. “So what am I supposed to do while you’re doing your research? Just keep drawing on myself whenever I nod off?”
    “Nah, that’s why I’m here. To keep you from being taken over. Just go about your life as you normally would and try to avoid falling asleep or doing anything else that would relinquish control of your body over to the ghosts.”
    “I’m just supposed to stay awake for the indefinite future? That isn’t a viable plan, Jo. I have a business to run. I can’t do that without sleeping at least once every few days.”
    “Don’t worry,” she said in a way that did nothing to reassure him, nodding toward the wall clock. “It’s a weekend.”
    Four o’clock on a Friday afternoon hardly counted as a weekend in Wyatt’s book. He didn’t bother mentioning that he usually worked through the weekends. No rest for the successful.
    “I’m working on Plan B as we speak,” Jo continued.
    “I thought Plan B was the house. Why don’t we go back there and see if the thing in the house pulls the, er, ghosts out of me? I sort of felt something tugging on me when we were there earlier.” While he was having a delusional episode. “What if we just left before it could get them out of me? What if all we have to do is go back—”
    “No,” Jo interrupted sharply, then took a breath and softened her tone as she continued, “We can’t go back to the house right now. Not until we know more.”
    Wyatt frowned. “I don’t like this.”
    For some reason, that comment seemed to make Jo more uncomfortable than anything he had said up to that point. “Is it really so important that you get back into the house?” she asked tentatively.
    “It’s important that I get my life back!” Wyatt fought for control. He never raised his voice. “The house is just a means to an end.”
    She eyed him warily. “What does that mean?”
    “What do you think it means?” he asked, exasperated by her mumbo-jumbo vagueness. Not to mention the fact that she