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  Wicked for Hire

  Paranormal in Manhattan Mystery: Book 1

  By LOTTA SMITH

  Copyright

  Wicked for Hire© 2016 Lotta Smith.

  Cover copyright 2015 Viola Estrella

  Editing and proofreading by Hot Tree Editing

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the products of the author’s imagination, and are used fictitiously. None of the characters in this book is based on an actual person. Any resemblance to locales, actual events, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and an unintentional.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without express written permission from Lotta Smith.

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  Table of contents

  WICKED FOR HIRE

  Copyright

  Prologue

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  EPILOGUE

  About the author

  Prologue

  966 Park Avenue Tower

  11:48 AM, November 10…

  With a weird moan, her whole body shivering, she collapses onto the sofa.

  I think she’s lucky that she’s already sitting on the sofa as she crumples. If she was standing, she might have cracked her head on the marble floor like Humpty Dumpty—which won’t be pretty.

  She’s lying there, totally motionless. One elbow’s stiffly bent at a right angle, as if she’s turned into stone as the result of looking Medusa in the eye.

  I gasp—fearing she’s dead.

  Rick Rowling, the head of the FBI’s New York Paranormal Division and my boss for the past two days, approaches and touches her neck. Looking totally blasé, he confirms that she’s still alive.

  I let out a sigh of relief.

  On the other hand, Rowling announces that we leave the place because “It’s boring.”

  My eyes widen with a total disbelief.

  Of course, I disagree with him, but he brushes off my objection, stating that he doesn’t care about all the crap of making arrests, prosecuting, and taking cases to trial. Again, he says that it’s just a minor issue and he’s way too busy for that. “You know what? I have better things to do,” Rowling declares, turning on his heels to leave the condo.

  “Excuse me, Rick,” I call to his back.

  “What?” he asks, without turning around.

  “We can’t just leave,” I say. Then it suddenly occurs to me that offending my boss isn’t in my best interest, so I add, “I’m afraid.”

  “Why not?” He cocks his head. “Mandy, don’t be such a killjoy. The NYPD can work on the boring stuff, such as deciphering the social pathology of crimes and so on, because they have time to kill. On the other hand, I have no time to waste.”

  “Okay, so we don’t need to decipher the social pathology of crimes, but we do need to figure out the whereabouts of the human-eating monster, don’t we?” I point out.

  I’m not joking or exaggerating.

  I’m talking about a practically imperishable ghoul which could eat up the entire population of New York State, if not the whole world.

  * * *

  At precisely 2:13 in the morning, John Sangenis was standing in front of a shabby five-story apartment in Washington Heights. Fortunately, he didn’t live there. He was just visiting Ivan Flynn, the insufferable asshole.

  Usually, he had better things to do than visiting his worst enemy before the crack of dawn, such as sleeping like a log. Or making love with Ruth, which was even better than sleeping on his own. Ruth MacMahon was his girlfriend, who was unbelievably beautiful, dazzling, and had a truly big heart. Also, it didn’t hurt that she was rich. What was more wonderful about her was she appreciated John’s talent as an actor. It was a rare trait to come across in society, and it was why she happily provided him both moral and financial support.

  If there were any shortcomings about her, it was that she was two-timing him with Ivan.

  He thought about her taste in men, or lack thereof, and shrugged.

  John wasn’t the sharpest knife in the kitchen, so he didn’t realize describing Ruth’s taste in men as horrible was the same as admitting that he was a total loser.

  A cold, wet late-autumn breeze was blowing from the East River. A sprinkle of rain hit him in the face. The metal stairs were slippery, occasionally letting out squeaks and squawks, as if the steel structure itself were threatening to fall into pieces any minute, which made John nervous. The building’s elevator hadn’t functioned since God knows when, so he had no choice but to climb up the damned stairs. Getting smashed with the lousy staircase like a piece of garbage wasn’t high on his to-do list, so he ran up the stairs.

  As an actor, he went to the gym to do occasional workouts and training, but that didn’t mean he was a big fan of vigorous exercise. On normal days, he would have shied away from walking up the rusty metal stairs of a sad-looking apartment. Actually, he wouldn’t have set a foot in this neighborhood unless he was starring in a gangster movie or TV show, hopefully as the lead role. After all, it wasn’t the area where any of the characters of Sex and the City lived. It almost felt comical that this neighborhood was still included in Manhattan.

  While he mentally dissed Washington Heights, he completely forgot about his own social status as one of the least important actors in off-Broadway theater scenes. He also conveniently forgot the fact that, if it weren’t for the tiny apartment in Brooklyn, which he inherited from a late great-aunt, and financial assistance provided by Ruth, he couldn’t even keep a roof over his head.

  He jumped and let out a girly yelp when a rat the size of an obese Chihuahua ran up the stairs from behind and went ahead of him.

  “What kind of miserable excuse of an unknown artist lives here?” he muttered to himself after some cussing—again, completely forgetting the fact he happened to be one of those miserable excuses himself.

  As he approached the third floor where Ivan lived, John remembered his last exchange of words over the phone with his enemy, and being annoyed so greatly that he almost felt like his blood flowed backward.

  About thirty minutes ago, he received a strange phone call from Ivan.

  Getting a phone call from him was a rare event, mostly because the feeling of hate between the two of them was mutual. Both were Ruth’s kept men, and both were trying their best to convince her that the other guy wasn’t worth her time—or money.

  “Hey, John the loser, I’ve got bad news for you,” Ivan declared as soon as John picked up the call. He sounded like he was drunk, but there was something in his voice that made John nervous.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m calling to deliver a piece of special news to you. Now that I’ve acquired something to make me the El Greco of the twenty-first century, you’re so out of sight to Ruth and out of the picture. She is going to choose me, and she’ll dump you like a piece of garbage. Ha! Why don’t you curl up in the corner of your tiny apartment and cry like a little girl?” Then the line went dead.

  Immediately, John rushed from his apartment and took a cab to Washington Heights. He was determined to confront the SOB and beat him till he cried like a baby.

  As soon as he reached apartment 312, he banged on the door.

  “Who’s there?” Ivan’s voice demanded from inside.

 
“It’s John. Open up.”

  “No way.”

  “I have something to say to you. Open up!” John banged on the door even louder.

  “Stop bothering me. Just leave!”

  “No, I won’t. I won’t ‘just leave’ until I get to talk to you face-to-face.”

  “I have nothing to say to you. You have to leave, or else I’ll call the cops and have you—”

  It seemed Ivan was about to say “arrested,” but his words stopped short.

  Instead of menacing words, he let out an agonizing moan. It became louder and escalated to a high-pitched shriek.

  Then came silence.

  “Hey, Ivan, what’s going on?” John asked as he switched from banging to knocking on the door.

  No reply.

  “Come on, Ivan. Open up. You can’t fool me!” John yelled at the door, but again, no reply.

  “Guess what, Ivan? You’re all words and no action. You’re just running away from me because I’m stronger than you. Ha!” John yelled at the door and turned on his heels to leave. After taking a couple of steps, he went back to his love opponent’s door.

  “Loser!” Yelling, he jumped and kicked at the door. He was just trying to make his point, but the worn-out door made of a thin veneer wood panel broke easily.

  John lost his balance and fell onto the cold concrete corridor.

  “Crap,” he groaned.

  Lying on the hard, cold floor, John was half expecting Ivan to come out of hiding, yelling at him, but no one came from inside. Instead, a twentyish Asian guy stormed out from next door.

  “What is the matter with you?” he demanded.

  John mumbled an apology and the guy went back to his room.

  Something wasn’t right.

  He got up and reached for the now-broken door. It was locked, but he could put his hand inside to unlock the door.

  Getting inside was a piece of cake.

  “Hello?” John said. “Ivan? Um… Sorry about the door.”

  As he opened it, dim light came into his eyes.

  “Ivan…?”

  There was no one in the room.

  “What the hell…?” he muttered.

  It was a tiny, one-bedroom, matchbox-sized apartment. In the living room / dining room / workroom was a 30” x 40” painting sitting on an easel. It was nothing fancy. The whole background was painted in an assortment of dark, boring, and depressing colors. The only part that caught his attention was the large blank area in the canvas. It looked as if whatever was portrayed had run out of the canvas and vanished.

  He advanced closer to the painting.

  On the side of the canvas, the title G.H.O.U.L. was written in pencil.

  Glancing down, John gasped as he spotted an assortment of men’s clothes, including underwear, heaped on the floor, as if someone stripped off those garments and left.

  Or whoever had those garments on had disappeared like smoke.

  “Hey, Ivan?” Not grasping the situation, John searched the apartment for his rival, but he couldn’t find any signs of him.

  John glared at the heap of clothes in front of the canvas for a while. Then, out of the blue, he kicked the garments. As the shirt, pants, and underwear scattered, something like pebbles of stone rolled over the floor.

  “What the…?” John picked up a piece. It looked like a tooth—small, white, and hard, with a metal bolt on the base.

  As an actor, he liked to play the role of a tough guy, but in reality, he wasn’t. Startled, he dropped the tooth on the floor. When it hit, he caught a glimpse of several other pieces. Each was about the size of a chick pea, yellowish white with dark brown stains.

  The moment he realized the stains might be blood, John passed out and dropped on the hard floor.

  CHAPTER 1

  Green and purple… Seriously? Who had the deciding vote in determining the color schemes of this hideous building? USCIS? Or FBI? I wondered as I stood in front of 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, my new workplace.

  It was my first day of work at the FBI’s New York Field Office, and I wasn’t sure if I was happy or unhappy about my new career as an FBI special assistant.

  If this were a book, movie, or TV show, I would be a budding FBI special agent or something really badass.

  In that case, I would be ready to protect and defend the United States as I fought menacing terrorists or a group of evil aliens trying to invade Earth. In addition, if it were fiction, I would look like Jennifer Lawrence and have a really flashy educational background under my belt, such as having graduated from an Ivy League school at the top of my class. Not to mention I would be driving a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, or a Mercedes at least.

  Unfortunately, none of the above characteristics applied. After all, I was talking about my life, and lately, it kind of sucked.

  My name is Amanda Meyer. I’m a twenty-five-year-old American with Italian, English, and a little bit of Romanian heritage.

  I’m an American woman in my mid-twenties, but that’s all I have in common with The Hunger Games star. I stand at 5’4”, and I’m a size or two—or maybe three—larger than her dress size.

  I don’t have an Ivy League education under my belt, mostly because Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and all other such schools rejected my application. As for the car, I don’t even own one. I used to drive a relatively new Toyota Camry, but I sold it. I was trying my best to convince myself I didn’t need to have a car anymore now that I moved back to my parents’ home in Queens, New York.

  About a month ago, I was a medical student in North Carolina. I was in my third year—busy studying for exams, memorizing all the medical and surgical knowledge, and doing clinical rotations—until I got kicked out of medical school.

  Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a bad student.

  So I didn’t hold high hopes of graduating at the top of my class, or someday becoming a Nobel laureate. Then again, my academic performance wasn’t that bad. I was usually at around the top 50-60 percent of the class. At a place where the majority of your classmates have an IQ of 180 and up, even being a mediocre student took lots and lots of hard work.

  Anyway, the odds of my finishing medical school and becoming a doctor or getting some cushy job with some pharma/biotech/insurance company were pretty high. Back then, I used to picture myself in the future driving a nice car and vacationing in beautiful resorts.

  Generally speaking, doctors are highly regarded in today’s society. Sometimes, people talked about the top-notch physicians in comparison with God. On the other hand, I was held in comparison with the Grim Reaper and the Angel of Death. And as a result, I got kicked out of medical school, saying good-bye to my life plan as a doctor.

  Oh, did I mention getting kicked out of medical school didn’t offset my larger-than-life student loan?

  So, there I stood, with no degree under my belt and a huge debt up to my eyeballs. To rub salt in the wound, Justin, my now ex-fiancé, had called off our engagement. We went to the same med school. He was two years my senior and was already in his first year of residency training. Obviously, he had assessed the pros and cons of staying with me and concluded that staying with a woman called the Grim Reaper wasn’t likely to boost his value as a surgeon.

  As I stood in front of the East German-style building, I felt so depressed, I almost started sobbing.

  Look at the bright side, Mandy… I tried to convince myself.

  At least I was going to have a job, and their offer wasn’t bad. I would be able to make monthly payments on my student loan and make a decent living. Maybe I could even move out of my parents’ townhouse in a year or so.

  Actually, I wasn’t eager to take this job when I received the offer, but Mom and Dad insisted I should. They were not very keen on spending the rest of their lives paying off my student loan.

  “Miss, you’ve been standing here for a long time.” Frowning, the guy in a guard’s uniform gave me an accusing glare.

  “Um… I’m sorry. I got a little bit distracted. I’m supp
osed to start working here today,” I said, but based on his deep frown, I was positive he didn’t believe me.

  “Oh, I’m running late. I’ve got to go….” I attempted to walk away, but he grabbed my arm.

  “What is the purpose of—?” the guard started interrogating me, but he didn’t get to finish his sentence.

  “Good morning, Stanley,” a male voice boomed from behind us. It was a deep, smooth baritone—clear, calm, and confident. Without turning back to see him, I found myself picturing a tall guy with a certain level of sexiness. He continued, “For your information, you don’t want to mess with her. Guess what? So far, she’s killed three men just by touching them. In addition, it’s her first day working as my assistant. If you convince her to leave without even starting the job, Hernandez will be so pissed.”

  I had a remote knowledge that the head of the FBI’s New York Office was named Hernandez.

  “Mr. Rowling!” The guard’s response sounded more like a surprise than an acknowledgement.

  When he straightened himself, he was no longer grabbing my arm, too busy saluting Mr. Rowling.

  “I am awfully sorry for my rude behavior. I didn’t know she was your new assistant.”

  Then, turning to me, he apologized profusely. “I’m awfully sorry, ma’am.”

  If eyes could speak, his were saying, ‘Why didn’t you mention you worked for him?’

  “Okay, so we’re all cool,” said Mr. Rowling.

  I turned back to thank and greet him, but words failed me.

  He was tall, athletic, and had broad shoulders. He had flawless fair skin and dark hair styled in a conservatively messy ‘do. His mesmerizing green eyes looked almost blue, and his cheekbones were prominent. His nose and jaw were sculpted to perfection.

  In a nutshell, he was drop-dead gorgeous.

  But that wasn’t the only reason I was at a loss for words.

  “You are the—” Clenching my teeth and fists, I searched for words.

  Though I didn’t remember his name, I did recognize him, in an ‘I am so going to kill him if I ever lay my eyes on him again’ way.

  “Yeah, I’m Rick Rowling.” He flashed his perfect set of pearly whites. Obviously, he didn’t read my mind. “Hi, Mandy. Nice meeting you again.” He extended his right hand toward me.