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1
Tarael Vanth woke up to his cell phone vibrating and a ghost shouting at him. Both were surprisingly common at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday night.
"Vanth! Your phone is ringing, and it's annoying!" Cecelia groaned.
Vanth opened an eye just in time to see her ghostly fingers pass through him as she tried to shake him.
"I'm awake…" he grumbled and shrugged off the chill on his skin left behind by her touch. For a moment, she became clearer from the magic she had swiped from him. He sat up and fumbled for his phone.
"What," he answered.
"Is this Tarael Vanth? I got your number from an acquaintance, and I require your assistance," a man's voice demanded from the other end of the line.
Vanth could almost smell the entitlement through the phone.
"How many bodies?"
"Two."
"Sex?"
"Female, and they are human," the man replied and gave him an address.
It was located in the more expensive area of the human district. Vanth didn't want to have to get out of bed, so he rattled off an obscene amount of money.
"Done. When can I expect you?"
"Give me twenty minutes." Vanth hung up the phone and rubbed at his face. "Should've asked for more money."
"I keep telling you that," Cecelia said from where she sat on the end of his bed. She was an old ghost dressed in the flapper dress she had died in during the 1920s. She had taken a liking to him on his first visit to London and had been haunting him ever since. She wasn't the only one, but she was the most vocal one on trying to run his life.
"Bit of privacy?" Vanth said.
"I've seen it all before," she laughed at him then vanished through a wall.
He found his jeans on the floor and pulled a clean shirt from his work clothes dresser. They tended to be band shirts that were so old, they were falling apart. He had a messy job, and more often than not, he had to burn whatever he wore. He went through a lot of clothes. He laced his boots in the dark and stumbled into his bathroom.
The ghouls must have cleaned again because someone had rolled up the end of his toothpaste tube. Small tasks kept them busy and stopped the rigor mortis from kicking in. Cleaning and laundry were the first things Vanth taught them. That and not to bite each other for fun.
He braided back his long black hair. He had only washed it a few hours beforehand, but rich boys always made the biggest messes. After nearly ten years of being a cleaner for the rich and monstrous, Vanth knew it to be a fact.
He washed his face and ignored the permanent smudge from his waterproof eyeliner. He would be back in a shower in a few hours anyway.
Out in the kitchen, a ghoul was doing its best to make coffee and was struggling with the buttons on the machine.
"Leave it. I'll do it," Vanth said, moving it out of the way.
It shuffled off and immediately started to water the plants. The triple-storied funeral home he had converted was more spotless than usual.
He frowned, and his brain realized what was wrong. The ghouls weren't resting. Not that they needed to in the same way the living did, but usually, they only managed small tasks before getting distracted and going down to the freezers. They had been cleaning over and over again.
Fuck. He should have felt the pull on his magic that he had given them to keep them animated.
"A problem for later," he grumbled, filling a travel mug with coffee and heading downstairs. The van was already packed, so he opened the back doors so his two current ghouls could climb in.
Cecelia popped into existence again. "Be safe, Vanth. Something doesn't feel right tonight. The dead are restless."
"The dead are always restless," he said and got into the driver's seat.
