Every Breath You Take Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE JENSEN MURPHY, GHOST FOR HIRE NOVELS

  Another One Bites the Dust

  “Green offers engaging characters and snappy patter.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[A] collection of well-worn genre trappings with just the right sense of humor and pacing. . . . Who knew that playing by the rules could make for such fun from beginning to end?”

  —Booklist

  Only the Good Die Young

  “Urban fantasy’s newest heroine Jensen Murphy is dead, solves crimes, and packs a powerful paranormal punch! Don’t miss this fun read.”

  —Faith Hunter, New York Times bestselling author of the Jane Yellowrock novels

  “A wonder. . . . Talk about a book worth reading. The characters are sad, lonely, fun, happy, interesting, unique . . . and that’s just an overview. The real upside is that this is the first in a new series that has proved it will be a true treasure trove of imagination to come.”

  —Suspense Magazine

  “Only the Good Die Young is one fantastic series starter. . . . [Jensen Murphy] may be a ghost, but she is also a spirited (pun intended) character who shows a lot of courage and spunk in the face of her predicament. The mystery is complex enough to keep the pages turning faster and faster.”

  —RT Book Reviews (top pick)

  “Green’s amusing diversion serves as a charming introduction to what with luck will become a long-running series.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A new series with great promise.”

  —Kings River Life Magazine

  “Terrific . . . Only the Good Die Young breathes fresh life into the genre with its original premise and thoroughly engaging protagonist.”

  —Bitten by Books

  “[Green is] a brilliant writer . . . incredibly well plotted and pieced together.”

  —Candace’s Book Blog

  PRAISE FOR THE VAMPIRE BABYLON SERIES

  “A dark, dramatic, and erotic tone. . . . Fans of Charlaine Harris and Jim Butcher may enjoy.”

  —Library Journal

  “Green writes a complex story featuring well-defined characters and more than enough noir mystery to keep readers enthralled.”

  —School Library Journal

  “A book to die for! Dark, mysterious, and edged with humor, this book rocks on every level!”

  —Gena Showalter, author of Burning Dawn

  “A killer mystery. . . . Bring on book two!”

  —Kelley Armstrong, New York Times bestselling author of Wild Justice

  “An exciting, action-packed vampire thriller. A fantastic tale that . . . provides book lovers with plenty of adventure and a touch of romance.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Dawn makes a spunky vampire slayer.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A kick-butt ride from start to finish with plenty of twists, turns, and surprises.”

  —Monsters and Critics

  “An intriguing world that becomes more complex with every turn of the page . . . kick-butt action.”

  —Huntress Book Reviews

  “A fast-moving urban fantasy filled with murder, mystery, and a large dose of the supernatural. The vivid characterization and danger at every turn will keep readers engaged.”

  —Darque Reviews

  “A dark, edgy, and complex series.”

  —Romantic Times

  “A dark and thrilling paranormal tale . . . a gritty and suspenseful ride.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “Chris Marie Green does a wonderful job of bringing this gritty, dark novel to life.”

  —The Best Reviews

  ALSO BY CHRIS MARIE GREEN

  The Jensen Murphy, Ghost for Hire Series

  Only the Good Die Young

  Another One Bites the Dust

  The Vampire Babylon Series

  Night Rising

  Midnight Reign

  Break of Dawn

  A Drop of Red

  Path of Razors

  Deep in the Woods

  The Bloodlands Series (Writing as Christine Cody)

  Bloodlands

  Blood Rules

  In Blood We Trust

  ROC

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  Copyright © Chris Marie Green, 2015

  Excerpt from Only the Good Die Young © Chris Marie Green, 2014

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  ISBN 978-1-101-60087-0

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise

  Also by CHRIS MARIE GREEN

  Title page

  Copyright page

  In the Beginning . . .

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Excerpt from Only the Good Die Young

  To Ginjer Buchanan. It’s been a joy to work with you these past several years. Here’s to your future travels and adventures!

  In the Beginning . . .

  Amanda Lee Minter found the ghost-hunting team in the dark woods precisely where her vision had told her they would be.

  She quietly took a stand by one of the clawing oaks, its branches twisted so they barred most of the afternoon’s early summer sun. There wasn’t anyone else in the area—only the two camerapersons recording the online show’s star while she spoke about the haunted history of Elfin Forest: the witch who supposedly wandered the woods, the White Lady, and a twenty-three-year-old girl named Jensen Murphy who’d gone missing in the 1980s and had never been found.

  Naturally, it didn’t take long for the team to see Amanda Lee watching, waiting, her long skirt billowing in the slight wind, almost as if she were a ghost herself.

  The show’s star, dressed in all black, with a pair of thick-framed hipste
r glasses, gave her crew a cutthroat signal to stop filming and nodded to Amanda Lee.

  “Can we help you, ma’am?”

  Very polite, Amanda Lee noted, looking the young woman over: twenties, with long, curly dark hair, cocoa skin, sin-colored lipstick, and arm muscles emphasized by a sleeveless shirt. Lovely and tough. But Amanda Lee’s vision this morning had been painted with possible trouble, red and shocking, and that was why polite might not be the best word for this guerrilla ghost-hunting crew.

  Nonetheless, she smiled as the young woman ambled away from where she’d been filming and approached. The camerapersons looked on with their brows furrowed.

  Amanda Lee held out her hand. “My name is Amanda Lee Minter. I’m a psychic and medium.”

  The woman didn’t balk at the way Amanda Lee pronounced her name. A-MAN-daley. Just a faint habit from her lost Southern upbringing, really.

  “Sierra Darque.” They shook hands, then the hunter stepped back. “Sorry to be rude, but we didn’t announce that we were shooting here on our social-media outlets, so . . .”

  Amanda Lee laughed softly, gesturing to herself—a fiftysomething eccentric in a ruffled skirt with Southwest patterns, a roomy white shirt, a chunky turquoise necklace, and red hair with wicked gray streaks in front.

  “Psychic, remember?” she said.

  Sierra laughed, too. “I get it. You see everything, right? Even a filming location.”

  “Oh, I don’t quite see everything.” She normally got a little help from her friends for that, but, unfortunately, her spirit acquaintances were otherwise occupied today. Even Jensen, her closest ally, had more pressing business, so Amanda Lee had come alone. . . . Though she could already feel the vibrations of other, unknown spirits nearby.

  In back of Sierra, the team shuffled, glancing at each other. Amanda Lee recognized the cameraman as J. J. Marriotte, the cocreator of Spirit Stalkers, a fledgling Web show that aired on a YouTube channel. He took up as much camera time as Sierra when they did their bare-bones investigations, but it was obvious who the real boss was.

  “So,” Sierra said, taking off her fashionable glasses and polishing them on her shirt. “You a fan?”

  “Certainly.” A fan of getting to the real point of this visit.

  “Sweet. If you want, I can give you an autograph, since you came all the way out here. It’s just that shooting can be real boring, and I’m sure you don’t want to hang around to watch.”

  “I’d love an autograph, but there’s more to my visit than that.”

  “There is?”

  Amanda Lee smiled at the small crew of people who were hanging on every word, their equipment at their sides. J.J. narrowed his eyes at her; she could feel that he wanted to get on with the shoot.

  “Yes,” she said, staying friendly, “I’m here to meet you for professional purposes, although I must say that my clients usually come to me, and not the other way around.”

  “Clients? Us?” Sierra slowly put her glasses back on.

  “Ms. Darque, forgive me for driving straight to the point, but I have more than a few spirits who need my attention, and there’s no use beating around the bush with this case.”

  So many spirits who’d been coming to Amanda Lee and her partner, Jensen Murphy, ever since they’d started to seek justice for the dead and living alike. A constant, exhausting flow of spirits who haunted Amanda Lee day and night, even though she wouldn’t ever be able to help all of them.

  But, even if it killed her, she would get to as many as she could.

  As Sierra sent a subtle look to her team, Amanda Lee added, “You see, I’m very familiar with one of the spirits you’re investigating here in the forest. You’ll need my expertise on her.”

  A tolerant smile from the young woman. Her team was grinning, too, staring at the ground. Clearly, they’d dealt with oddballs before.

  Amanda Lee went on. “This morning, a vision revealed to me that you and your team have been studying Southern California ghosts, and you settled on the Elfin Forest area to explore in detail. You were trying to find evidence of the White Lady and the witch at first, then any specters who might have appeared after the fires last year, but then you were more intrigued by another spirit who was said to dwell here.”

  “A lot of people ghost hunt in this place,” Sierra said. “But Elfin Forest hasn’t been exploited by other paranormal shows yet, and we’ve been looking for a big break to—”

  “Give our show some huge buzz,” J.J. said, finally speaking, still keeping an amused gaze on Amanda Lee.

  Sierra shrugged. “We need to stand out from the others, do something a little different. We’ve had some interest from a cable channel, and this is our time to show them that we can pull in some numbers.”

  In the near distance, an invisible spirit cried out softly. “Heeelllp . . . ?”

  It sounded like static from an old radio, just like some spirits did to Amanda Lee.

  She folded her hands in front of her before they started to shake with impatience. She was used to the plea, but could never resign herself to how many ghosts she heard it from.

  “I already know your background,” Amanda Lee said.

  Sierra pointed to her head. “Psychic. Right?”

  Before the team could say anything else, Amanda Lee continued. “I’m here because you’re the first show to concentrate on Jensen Murphy and how she went missing here over thirty years ago, and I have a vested interest in that story.”

  Sierra gaped. “What kind of interest?”

  “A personal one.”

  The random, invisible spirit’s voice was closer now, bringing electricity with it that ran along her spine, making her skin clammy.

  “Heeelllp . . . ?”

  Amanda Lee still couldn’t see it, but, then again, she couldn’t see all of them. She couldn’t hear all of them clearly, either, and, for all she knew, they could be around her, gathering, begging.

  J.J. and the other cameraperson—another young girl, this one with braids all over her head—walked forward, coming to stand by Sierra.

  Ah, now they’re listening, aren’t they?

  “So, you came here out of the goodness of your heart?” J.J. asked, his eyes just as blue as they were on a computer screen.

  “Among other things.” Electricity was clicking through the air, and she heard the buzz of the pleading spirit as it floated nearby, listening in. Since there was no bad energy surrounding it, she didn’t acknowledge the entity yet. Bad energy would mean danger, and there was a dark spirit in particular she wanted to avoid.

  Jensen Murphy’s anonymous killer, on the loose somewhere.

  Anywhere . . .

  Amanda Lee fixed her attention back on the humans. “To save you precious production time, I’m offering my services to you. I can guide you to the truth about Jensen.” She tilted her head. “Unless you would consider stopping this investigation altogether . . . ?”

  The team shook their heads, and Sierra said, “I’m afraid we won’t do that, Ms. Minter.”

  Amanda Lee sighed. So much trouble ahead if she couldn’t stop them from investigating Jensen. She’d seen it, felt it. But the future could be changed.

  And she would make sure it was.

  The nearby spirit devoured the excitement from the ghost team. Its zzzing hush raked over Amanda Lee’s body, making her slightly nauseated and chilled.

  “Just how well do you know Jensen Murphy?” Sierra asked, looking at Amanda Lee with a dabbling hunter’s skeptical gaze.

  “Well enough to know what really happened to her.”

  The team’s grins only grew as Amanda Lee shut out the images she’d had from her vision this morning: the impending tears scarring so many faces . . . the rage that would build and build to a hazy red climax she knew was coming because of this investigation. . . .

  The unknown
spirit brushed by Amanda Lee, sending a shudder through her as it kept whispering, never leaving her alone.

  1

  As the Talking Heads would’ve said back in my era, today was totally same as it ever was . . . same as it ever was . . .

  What I mean was that I, Jensen Murphy, was once again haunting someone who’d turned out to be guiltier than hell after all the investigating we spirits had done on her.

  This human’s name was Julia, and right now I was hovering over her head as she sat in her home in front of a computer, which was on the fritz. She was dressed in a silk robe that kept falling off one shoulder, and she was madly pecking at the keyboard. Also, she hadn’t combed her hair since my two spirit friends and I had been keeping her awake these past couple of days and nights with spooky sounds, ambient smells, and creepy sights, pushing her to eventually tell us the truth about the crime she’d been suspected of.

  Murder. Yup, I could definitely call her a killer now, seeing as I’d also gone into her thoughts and her dreams to see what her psyche could show me. And it’d been totally telling.

  While I hovered, my friends Louis and Petty Officer Randy Randall came to float on the other side of her. The computer went even more staticky because of all the ghost energy. It was obvious that she could sense us by now; I could hear her heartbeat slamming through the room while she typed, accessing the Internet about—what do you know?—ghosts.

  What were the signs that your house was haunted? What should you do?

  Um . . . probably run?

  But she was standing her ground, like a lot of human dipthwacks who committed murder. Thank God it was time to close this case right now, before she found out how to call in a cleaner to chase us off.

  “Ready to end this?” I asked Louis and Randy.

  “You jus’ go ’head,” Randy said lethargically.

  Louis was just as rah-rah. “The honors are all yours.”

  Dammit, I’d brought the guys along to cheer them up and get rid of the ultraboredom that’d been weighing them down. Haunting had always been a rush for us, but not so much lately.

  Since I didn’t have time to dwell on their lack of oomph, I pulled energy from the atmosphere, concentrating, filling the room with the aroma of a phantom dinner coming from the kitchen. And this was just the windup for what I ultimately wanted from Julia.