Hotter Than Helltown: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (Preternatural Affairs Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

nose didn’t stop the itching. I’d always been kind of allergic to magic, but it wasn’t because of anything in my sinuses. It was an uncontrollable reflex.
    Great quirk for a witch to have.
    The tension reached its apex, and I gripped the counter behind me hard to keep standing. My head was spinning. I couldn’t seem to inhale anymore—my lungs felt like they were filled with fluid.
    But just as my vision began to darken, the energy eased. Instead of passing out, I sneezed again.
    Twice.
    “Come on, Jay,” Isobel said. “Come here.”
    Silver mist lifted from the cadaver’s dull skin. What looked like a ghost sat up from Jay Brandon’s body, marked by none of the wounds that had killed him. He also had no clothes, no hair, no real focus in his eyes. He looked like a creepy adult-fetus-ghost-thing.
    But it wasn’t really a ghost. It was only an imprint of who Jay had been, a memory brought to life by the energy that remained postmortem. But it could talk and think like Jay, and that was what mattered.
    “Hello, Jay,” Suzy said pleasantly. “How are you doing?”
    I wiped my watering eyes clear in time to see his semi-transparent head swivel toward her. His face was intact. His nose was hooked, his lips kind of thick for a dude. I pulled my Steno pad from the inside pocket of my jacket, flipped it open to the first blank page, and started sketching.
    When the victim responded, it was through Isobel’s lips. His mouth moved but she did all the talking.
    “I’m good,” Isobel said softly. Jay’s ghostly image threw his legs over the side of the table and dropped to the floor. “Thanks for asking.”
    Standing, the victim was about an inch shorter than me, and a pretty skinny guy. Well-built, though. What we called “otter mode” at the gym. The kind of guy who got all his exercise from swimming, jogging, and other hard cardio.
    “Tell us what happened to you,” I said.
    “Are you talking about what happened at the Saint Benjamin Soup Kitchen?” Jay asked through Isobel’s mouth. “Because I already told the cops I didn’t want to press charges. The whole point of volunteering is working with indigents, and sometimes they get a little rough. That’s how it goes.”
    I stopped sketching long enough to write the name down: “Saint Benjamin Soup Kitchen.” I’d never heard of it. Then again, I barely had enough free time to keep up on all the shows I recorded on my DVR, much less feed the homeless.
    “What do you remember from this morning at your mother’s house?” Suzy asked.
    “I was watering her plants,” he said.
    We waited for him to continue speaking, but that was it. He’d been watering her plants. “And then?” Suzy prompted.
    “I took a nap on her couch.”
    Suzy stepped up to the misty version of Jay Brandon, who didn’t seem to notice his own body a few inches behind him. “Okay. When did you get to LA, Jay?”
    “Thursday night.”
    “Did you drive? Fly? What?”
    “I drove,” he said. “I live up in Lone Pine. Small town. Crummy airport. I always drive.”
    “Is it a long drive?”
    “Not that bad. It’s a couple of hours. I don’t mind. I like listening to audiobooks in the car.”
    I made note of that, too, although it didn’t seem too helpful now. You just never knew which details were going to end up mattering later on. Maybe his murderer targeted him because of his reading preferences.
    Then I started sketching his profile. Something about his hooked nose kept pulling my gaze back to it, and it wasn’t the fact that I could see the embalming fluid through his ghostly flesh. It was such a distinctive feature, that nose. If I’d walked past Jay on the street, that’s all I would have noticed about him.
    Suzy circled around him. “So you visit your mom a lot?”
    “Every couple of weeks, ever since Dad died. I’d move back if I could find a job.”
    “What do you do for her while you’re in town?”
    “Water her plants,” Jay said. Guess I should make