Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 70779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 354(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 354(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
“No, it’s not Myra—what a horrible Mother-in-Law she was!” the dead woman exclaimed. “She raised you to be a Mama’s boy and look at you—all these years later and still that’s all you are! Just a big baby crying for his Mama!”
I wanted to stop her from spewing the angry words out of my mouth but I had never been Indwelled before and I felt lost and disorientated. According to my Pop-pop, Indwelling was one step below Possession, meaning that the host—in this case me—should be able to expel the spirit inside them. But I had no idea how to do that.
Meanwhile, it seemed that Big Nicky had figured out who was talking to him through me.
“Kitty?” he asked, frowning. “Kitty, is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me you big asshole!” she snarled. “Finally I get a chance to give you a piece of my mind!”
It was a very disorienting feeling to have my features making faces that went with emotions I didn’t feel myself and to hear words coming out of my mouth that I hadn’t thought of to say. I felt like a puppet being jerked around on strings, but I still didn’t know how to stop it.
“You were the worst husband!” Kitty went on relentlessly. “Leaving your dirty underwear all over the floor…never putting the toilet seat back down…not to mention the way you cheated on me day and night with anything that would hold still long enough for you to screw it!”
Okay, I really had to stop this. Big Nicky’s face was red with anger and I could just imagine how pissed off he was getting. He had come here for a nice, comforting talk with his dear departed Mom and instead he was being berated by an angry ex.
“Get out! Get out of me!” I shouted mentally at the dead woman. But I felt her resisting me.
“Not until I have my say! I’ve been waiting twenty years to tell Nicky Valentino what I think of him!”
So much for just asking her to leave. I was going to have to expel her some other way.
I pictured reaching around inside myself like a woman feeling in a dark cupboard. I had an idea if I could get hold of Kitty somehow I could grab her with a psychic hand and yank her out of me, but her spirit felt slippery under my psychic fingertips—slippery and slimy.
“You scum!” Kitty shouted through me. “You womanizing, cheating, lousy, dirty bastard!”
Big Nicky’s face got even redder.
“You can’t talk that way to me, you bitch!” he growled.
Things were rapidly getting out of control. But the next moment, they got even worse because I heard Kitty say,
“I know you had me killed! You had the brakes cut on my car. You wanted me to crash that day.”
Shit—now I was in real trouble. I was listening to the details of a homicide, but not just listening—I was shouting them out loud! Or at least, Kitty Valentino was shouting them through me.
“You killed me! You killed me!” she howled so loudly it hurt my throat.
“Okay, that’s enough!” I snapped at her mentally. “I don’t know if he killed you or not but I can’t have you using my body for your revenge!”
“Too bad, because that’s exactly what I’m going to do!” she snapped back.
She jerked at my body and suddenly I lunged across the table and wrapped my fingers around the Mob boss’s throat! Then I began to squeeze with superhuman strength—strength that wasn’t mine.
Nicky Valentino’s face began to turn from red to a dark plum color—I was actually choking him! I could hear his guards banging on the door of the Spirit Room, shouting for him.
“Boss—hey, Boss! What’s going on in there?”
Oh my God, I had to stop this now! I pictured myself grabbing the spirit inside me—which looked like a long, scaly snake made of grey smoke. I dug my fingernails into the snake’s body and pulled as hard as I could with my psychic hands—my physical hands were still wrapped around Big Nicky’s throat.
Kitty Valentino squawked and struggled. I could hear her shouting in my head.
“No, I’m going to kill him! Let me kill him! He deserves to die!”
I had no doubt he probably did—you don’t get to be an Organized Crime Boss without committing some pretty reprehensible acts—but she wasn’t going to use my body to kill him. Grimly, I dug my nails in and yanked on the grey spirit snake.
“Get out of me! Get…
OUT!”
The last word came out of my mouth instead of being shouted mentally as I finally got control of my voice again.
I coughed and choked and retched as the roiling gray cloud of spirit dust finally spewed from my mouth and nose. It was like projectile vomiting second hand cigarette smoke and chalk dust at the same time—it left my throat and sinuses as dry as a bone and my stomach was rolling.