House bought for a steal online when it turns out
there’s a damn good reason—check.
Malicious ghost with a body count to his name—check.
Sad, lingering female spirit pining for her still
living (but currently dying) fiancé—check.
What’s a widowed medium to do when a departed soul
asks to ride piggy back in her body?
To share her space and get under her skin? Juliet Bale
does the only thing she can do—with her twin sister’s good counsel—she lets
Lanie share her body to help her dying beloved Elijah cross over. The problem
is that with all the reuniting, and sharing one body, things get seriously
intimate and Juliet can’t help but see exactly why Elijah Rivers was so
beloved.
It’s so wrong to sorta kinda fall for a dying man, and
yet—check.
***
Excerpt from UNDER MY SKIN
By Sommer Marsden
It’s always in the attic, isn’t it? The
Nancy Drew books taught me that. Various other old mystery movies and books and
shows, too. I wasn’t sure if it was too much Murder She Wrote or just common
sense, but in the morning, when my heart had stopped fibrillating from my late
night visit with the man I could only assume to be the former owner of
Montgomery House, I went into the attic.
His attic…
“My attic, thank you very much!” I called
out in case his energy had put that thought into my head. “I live here now.
This is my home.”
Another twist of dark fear worked through
me because it felt like the house was laughing at me. Mocking me.
Three girls…
“I’ve dealt with too many spirits—good, bad
and ugly—for you to scare me,” I whispered, spotting an old trunk in the
corner. “But trust me,” I sighed. “You take the prize for ugly.”
I snickered at my own joke, but then a lamp
crashed to the unfinished wood plank floor, and I almost peed myself. I refused
to acknowledge it, though. I just kept on course and stood before the trunk,
blowing off about six inches of dust.
I found it amazing no one had opened the
trunk while showing the house. No one had ever been tempted to—then I touched
it, and my body recoiled. I felt sick and clammy and like I might throw up or
die…maybe both. So this was why no one had disturbed it. It was like touching
death and despair and chaos all at once. Even a layman, someone not sensitive
to energy at all, could feel that. They might not recognize it for what it was,
but they’d feel it and react.
“This must have been yours, then,” I said.
I shut my eyes, took a few deep breaths and made myself go still inside. I pictured
blazing white light all around me like I was wrapped in it, then I opened the
trunk. My hands were still shaking, but I felt more in control.
Another murder mystery moment—the trunk was
full. Stuffed to the gills with a man’s items. An old-fashioned shaving cup
with the boar’s hairbrush, a straight razor. That made me shiver. A neatly
folded pile of dark-colored trousers filled one corner. A pair of suspenders, a
Bible, piles of papers that appeared to be about the house then what I’d been
hoping for.
“Aha,” I sighed.
A book stuffed with newspaper clippings.
Loose women…whores…every last one.
I heard the terrible thought in my head and
shut my eyes to surround myself with white light again. This guy was oily and
evil and disgusting even after death. What the hell had he been like alive?
“Are you why this house has been empty and
abandoned for over fifty years? Your residue is like oil smoke. Dark, dirty and
intrusive.” I said it in my boldest voice but had to admit this particular
sprit unnerved me.
I flipped open the book and rifled a bunch
of news clippings from the fifties. The first one that caught my attention was
from nineteen fifty nine. MAID OF RICH FAMILY SLAIN. POLICE HAVE NO LEADS. The
pictured estate was my current home. It had happened here.
No leads, that was laughable. You only had
to look as far as the owner of the house—my new house, Montgomery
House—to spot the culprit.
“But you were either too tricky or threw
enough money at the investigating detectives to avoid being fingered as the
killer. You killed her. Because you thought she was a loose woman?” I asked
aloud. More to myself than to him, but another lamp fell, and I grunted.
I had to stop talking to him; it was giving
him power.
I scanned the article and finally spotted
it. Chadwick Montgomery. That was his name. His father made his fortune in
property, and he’d made more by investing it wisely. He looked stern and mean
and just as startling in the picture as he had in my dream. Next to him stood a
homely mousey woman quoted as being mistress of the house, Penelope Montgomery.
Sad looking creature.
Below the brief article about the maid
found dead in the garden “strangled and possibly assaulted”—their way of saying
raped—was a picture of the victim. Annabel Smith. Tall, willowy, so pretty she
appeared ethereal. It was a black and white picture, but in my mind I saw her
with sharp blue eyes and dark auburn hair. Pretty girl. Nice girl. My internal
image of her glowed showing me a good soul.
“Poor thing,” I sighed.
I heard a deep bonging and took a moment to
place it—doorbell. “Saved by the bell.” I scurried out of the attic, escaping
its cloying energy and hurried down to the foyer, still clutching the book.
I opened the door and something in
me—something foreign to my own energy—twisted with sadness and leapt with joy,
simultaneously. “Oh, hi…I wasn’t…I mean, I’m sorry, who are you?”
His smile was easy and friendly and though
I found him attractive enough, I recognized the sudden urge to kiss him wasn’t
mine.
Odd.
Elijah.
***
Copies of Under My Skin can be bought from:
Resplendence Publishing:
http://www.resplendencepublishing.com/m8/539-978-1-60735-620-2--under-my-skin-by-sommer-marsden.html
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