"Name'sJebediah Masters. And this here's my town."
"You're a ghost?"
Jebediahspat again. "You are trespassing."
"We're just passing through." Janie wracked her brain for what she knew about ghost hunting. No priests nearby to do an emergency exorcism. No Ouija boards. And they definitely didn't need a medium to help relay the message from beyond, since the ghost was speaking to them as clear as day in the middle of the street. Without true experts on call, the best thing to do with ghosts was to reason with them. But since most ghosts were completely unreasonable, that didn't exactly give her a sense of comfort. "Did you do that to our truck?"
He glanced over at the decimated vehicle. And spat again. "I sure did, little missy. But you wouldn't be going far without no horses to draw your strange wagon, now, would you?"
"It's not a wagon—" Quinn began.
"Silence, trespassers!Ain't nobody come here trying to take my gold. That's why you're here,in't ?"
Quinn eyed him. "Come on, Janie. He's just a ghost. He can't do anything to us. Let's get out of here."
He took her arm, and they turned their backs on the ornery prospector.
The sound of a bullet hitting the wall right next to them, blowing off a chunk of stone, froze them in their tracks.
"Who said you could leave? There's only one way I'm letting you leave, and that's after you're dead."
They turned around slowly. Quinn moved so that he was completely blocking Janie's view. "Stay behind me."
"I don't need you to protect me, you know."
"Shh. A gunshot won't kill me unless it's silver, but it'll kill you."
"But he's a ghost," she whispered. "He's incorporeal, right?"
"That bullet wasn't incorporeal. Now be quiet."
He was protecting her? From the big bad gun-wielding ghost? If she didn't think his dominating alpha hero actions were so offensive to her as an independent woman, she might think it was rather sweet.
Stupid. But sweet.
Would he still try to protect her if he knew she'd been instructed to kill him herself?
"Wait a minute." Janie said toJebediah as she moved out from behind Quinn to instead put herself between him and the gun. "Why don't we talk about this for a second?"
He lowered the gun and looked her up and down. And spat.
"We don't get pretty little things like you much here in Semolina."
"Oh?" She glanced at Quinn.
"No. We had Miss Greta and her whorehouse for a while, but she found the men here not to her liking.
But you are much prettier than any of them whores."Jebediah approached, his attention focused on
Janie's body. "Yes. Real pretty thing. Must be my lucky day. Tell me, pretty, do you like gold?"
She held her ground. "I prefer cash."
He was uglier the closer he got. He reached out and was about to touch Janie's face with his dirty hand,
when Quinn's hand shot out and caught his wrist. Actually caught him, as if he was solid and not just a ghost.
"Don't you dare touch her," he growled.
The gun moved to press against Quinn's temple. "Nobody tells me what I can and cannot do."
Janie bit her bottom lip and was afraid to move in case the ghost pulled the trigger. Bullets didn't kill vampires, that was very true. There had been an assignment she was on last year, hunting down an insane vampire, and all she'd had was aGlock filled with lead bullets. She'd shot him ten times. Ruined his frilly shirt, but didn't even slow the vamp down.
However, she hadn't been aiming for the head.
Decapitation was another way to kill a vamp. Not pretty and very messy, but it did the trick. A shotgun wound at this range would probably do just that.
She could let the ghost kill Quinn—it would save her having to do it later.
"Don't hurt him," she finally said.
He turned and smiled, showing brown, broken teeth. "And what can I expect from you if I spare his life?"
"Anything," she said quickly.
"Janie—" Quinn breathed. "What are you doing?"
Jebediahhooked his middle finger into the top of her tank top and pulled the material down, exposing more cleavage and the edge of her lacy black bra.
"Yeah," he breathed. "Miss Greta wasnothin ' compared to you."
"JebediahMasters!" another voice called out from the other side of the street. A feminine voice that sounded very pissed off. "You good-for-nothing bastard, take your hands off that dirty whore!"
His hand shot back from her shirt and he cringed. Quinn's hand tightened around Janie's waist and he pulled her against him and back a step.
"Mary-Ann, I told you not to bother me no more."
A woman emerged onto the street from a wall of the dusty building marked "Saloon." She was wearing an outfit very similar toJebediah's , only she had a long brown skirt on instead of pants. She did hold a matching shotgun and sported a matching red stain on the front of her white blouse. She scowled at him.
"I curse the day I ever married you, you whoring, thieving, sheep-loving, back-stabbing—"
"Be quiet, woman! What do I need to do to shut your mouth once and for all?"
"Take your filthy eyes off her bosoms."
With a frustrated growl,Jebediah turned away from Janie's bosoms and stormed off the street and walked right through the solid wall of a building.