The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo & the Poltergeist Accountant by Vivi Andrews

Chapter One: The Larrinator
    “Oh, please. Kill me now.”
    The half-naked figure jiggling in front of her seemed to take this as a compliment. “Yeah, baby, you know you want it.”
    Lucy Cartwright closed her eyes and wondered—not for the first time—what she had ever done in her life to deserve this punishment. Karma was a vindictive bitch, but this was taking things too far.
    The pudgy, middle-aged stockbroker performing a striptease in her bedroom finished whipping his shirt around his head and flung it across the room. Keeping time to the booty music in his head, he bumped and ground his way in a little circle until his pasty back was right in front of her. The flabby ass that had spent more time in an ergonomic chair than hitting it in nightclubs bounced back toward her in nauseating invitation.
    If he had been more substantial, he might have knocked her back a few steps in his enthusiasm, but tonight’s visitor wasn’t what you could call corporeal.
    Lucy was a medium, which—no offense to Patricia Arquette and Jennifer Love Hewitt—did not involve helping the ghosts of murdered people find justice. Thank God. Lucy couldn’t stand blood. Or death. Or anything involving blood or death.
    Except, you know, the ghosts. That part was okay. Usually.
    Helping loved ones contact the dearly departed was also not in her job description. There were people who did that, but she was in a slightly different line.
    Lucy helped the deceased work through their issues and move on to the next plane. The white light. Whatever.
    She wasn’t really big on the whole theology of the thing. She’d met ghosts who practiced just about every major religion and hadn’t really noticed any huge differences in their immediate afterlife. What came after the white light was none of her business. Lucy pretty much avoided the whole Heaven thing, which was easier than one might expect, considering she worked with the dead. She was not a priest. Or a minister.
    Nope, Lucy was more of a post-life therapist. Helping people release the issues that were keeping them from moving on.
    It was only recently that all of her clients had started wanting a release of a different kind.
    “Larry,” Lucy said in her calmest, most reasonable tone. “As, uh, studly as you are, I can’t, uh, get with you tonight, buddy.”
    Larry shook it one hundred and eighty degrees and then performed a deep knee bend that was truly impressive for a man his size, his knees popping out to either side as his crotch slid down her leg.
    Oh great, he’s the stripper and now I get to be the pole. Lucy couldn’t feel a thing—Larry wasn’t that with it—but it was still a disconcerting experience.
    “Come on, baby,” Larry cooed in what he clearly thought was a sexy voice, but sounded disturbingly like the voice adults use when talking to infants. “Show the Larrinator how bad you want it.”
    “Badly,” Lucy corrected automatically. “Larry. No matter how much I might want it , it isn’t going to happen tonight. I hate to be the one to tell you this, buddy, but you don’t have a body.”
    Larry laughed—it was actually a very pleasant laugh and Lucy felt a brief stab of pity. Poor Larry . Then he popped up out of his knee bend and began running his large, soft hands all over his vast expanses of jiggling flesh, making exaggerated sexy-faces as he petted himself. Pity took a backseat.
    “No body? What do you call this, baby? I got a body for you right here, baby.”
    Larry’s hands went to the fly on his trousers. Instinct made Lucy reach out to grab his wrist to stop him from dropping trou, but her hand passed right through his arm without even the usual sensation of cold tingling. Larry just wasn’t there.
    “Larry, man, I’m sorry, but you’re dead, buddy.”
    Larry laughed again and the trousers dropped to the floor. Oh Lord .
    “Does this look dead to you, baby?”
    Why did they always call her baby? And why could she never get through to them before