The Graveyard Shift: A Charley Davidson Novella Read online

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  THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT by Darynda Jones

  A Charley Davidson Novella

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  A Guardians of Eternity Novella

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  TEASE ME by J. Kenner

  A Stark International Novel

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  A Blood and Ash Novel

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  Betwixt

  A Paranormal Women’s Fiction Novel

  By Darynda Jones

  Now Available!

  Click here to purchase.

  A Paranormal Women's Fiction with a bit of class, and a lot of sass, for anyone who feels like age is just a number!

  Divorced, desperate, and destitute, former restaurateur Defiance Dayne finds out she has been bequeathed a house by a complete stranger. She is surprised, to say the least, and her curiosity gets the better of her. She leaves her beloved Phoenix and heads to one of the most infamous towns in America: Salem, Massachusetts.

  She’s only there to find out why a woman she’s never met would leave her a house. A veritable castle that has seen better days. She couldn’t possibly accept it, but the lawyer assigned to the case practically begs her to take it off her hands, mostly because she’s scared of it. The house. The inanimate structure that, as far as Dephne can tell, has never hurt a fly.

  Though it does come with some baggage. A pesky neighbor who wants her gone. A scruffy cat who’s a bit of a jerk. And a handyman bathed in ink who could moonlight as a supermodel for GQ.

  She decides to give it three days, and not because of the model. She feels at home in Salem. Safe. But even that comes to a screeching halt when people begin knocking on her door day and night, begging for her help to locate their lost objects.

  Come to find out, they think she’s a witch. And after a few mysterious mishaps, Dephne is beginning to wonder if they’re right.

  * * * *

  I glanced at the zippered bag the real estate agent handed me somewhere between the tornado and her nickel-slick getaway, wondering once again if I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life.

  She’d had no answers for me over the phone and apparently that hadn’t changed.

  “I don’t understand,” I’d told her when she called three days ago. “Someone left me a house?”

  “Yes. Free and clear. It’s all yours. Mrs. Goode left explicit instructions in her will and I promised her—”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know a Ruthie Goode. There must be a mistake.”

  “She said you’d say that.”

  “Mrs. Richter, people don’t just leave strangers houses.”

  “She said you’d say that, too.”

  “Not to mention the fact that I live in Arizona. I’ve never even been to Massachusetts.”

  “And that. I don’t know what to tell you, sweetheart. Mrs. Goode left very detailed instructions. You must accept the house in person within the next seventy-two hours to take possession. Either way, it cannot be sold to anyone else for a year. If you don’t take it, it’ll just sit there, abandoned and vulnerable.”

  Abandoned and vulnerable. No words in the English language made me more uncomfortable.

  Three days.

  Well, maybe syphilis.

  I had three days to decide.

  And moist.

  I turned to the abode known as Percival, took another good look at what a woman I’d never met named Ruthie Goode left me, then climbed back into the bug and pulled her into Percival’s driveway.

  My life had been punctuated by the strange and unexplained. I was flypaper for what others called the weird. Countless friends and coworkers had remarked on the fact that if there was an unstable sentient being within a ten-mile radius, it would find its way to me eventually. Dog. Cat. Woman. Man. Iguana.

  I once had to track down the parents of a toddler who thought I was her dead aunt Lucille. An aunt she’d never met, according to the aforementioned procreators.

  Everyone called these admirers, for lack of a better term, weird. I called them charming. Quirky. Eccentric.

  This, however, took the raspberry covered chocolate cheesecake. I’d only been bequeathed one other item from a departed member of society, and that was when Greg Sanchez handed me his half-eaten ice cream cone seconds before falling into a volcano.

  That field trip did not end well.

  I grabbed my overnight bag and paused again to get a better look at Percival.

  He was already growing on me, damn him. I had a thing for the broody ones. The dark ones with deep, invisible scars who looked like they’d fought a thousand battles. Percival definitely fit the bill.

  Filling my lungs with crisp New England air, air that held the smoky scent of wood burning from hearths nearby, I stepped to Percy’s front door, took the key out of the zippered bag Mrs. Richter had given me, and entered.

  I stopped just inside the foyer so Percy and I could chat. “Okay, Percy,” I said aloud, only feeling a little silly. “Do you mind if I call you Percy?” I let my eyes adjust to the dimness inside the house. “Looks like it’s just you and me.”

  Discover the World Of 1001 Dark Nights

  Collection One

  Collection Two

  Collection Three

  Collection Four

  Collection Five

  Collection Six

  Bundles

  Discovery Authors

  Blue Box Press

  Rising Storm

  Liliana Hart's MacKenzie Family

  Lexi Blake's Crossover Collection

  Kristen Proby's Crossover Collection

  On Behalf of 1001 Dark Nights,

  Liz Berry, M.J. Rose, and Jillian Stein would like to thank ~

  Steve Berry

  Doug Scofield

  Benjamin Stein

  Kim Guidroz

  Social Butterfly PR

  Asha Hossain

  Chris Graham

  Chelle Olson

  Kasi Alexander

  Jessica Johns

  Dylan Stockton

  Richard Blake

  and Simon Lipskar

  Table of Contents

  Book Description

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

 

 

 
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