Love, Like Ghosts: A Bay City Paranormal Investigations Story

’cos this is where the office shuttles
pull up.”
I stared up between the buildings at the stars. Gorgeous stars. Spinning a little. Or maybe the earth
was spinning and the stars were actually quite still. That seemed more likely.
“Here, take it.” Jonathan tucked the money into the valet’s coat with his gloved hand. “I will be back
before six, then. I need to help my friend walk it off and put him to bed.”
Jonathan looped his arm through mine and walked me to the river. His coat was touching my coat. I
wasn’t sure I still knew how to breathe. I leaned into him, since the footing on the bridge was icy, and the
wind was howling by, and there was a good chance I’d end up sprawled on my ass, and he was as
surefooted as ever. At least that was what I was telling myself.
“I’ve never seen you laugh so much,” I said, annoyed that my words wanted to slur even though I was
fully cognizant of what I wanted to say.
“And I have never seen you drink. So we are even.”
“That’s not true. At the Galliano opening—”
“They were serving wine from a box. I saw it when I went to the bathroom. I don’t think you can
compare a few of those to eight Tanqueray martinis. They were practically all gin, with just a drop of
vermouth.”
“And a twist,” I reminded him.
“You will be sick tomorrow. We say masnapos in Magyar. The bad head.”
Magyar—what Hungarians call Hungarian. I’d learned at least that much from the tape, if not the
vernacular for hangover. The streetlights stretched out before us like the vertebrae of a great, glowing
snake. I focused on the one above us and thought at first that moths were swarming it, but then I realized it
was much too cold for moths. And that it was snowing.
“You called me…your friend.”
“What?”
“To the valet.”
“Just a few more blocks. Are you cold?”
“Nope. Feels good.” And if I leaned into him a little more as I said that, I’m sure it was by accident. “You will stay here today,” he said as his building came into sight.
“You made that pretty clear when you were giving him that big old tip.”
“Oh, you noticed?”
“That tonight you’re spending money like it’s going out of style? I may be drunk. But I’m
not…uh…what’s the word?”
Jonathan shored me up. “Do you want to walk around the block?”
What I wanted was to go up to the studio and get to the part where he peeled off my clothes. Because
if it didn’t happen while I was totally blotto, it never would.
I leaned on him harder and paused just before my face pressed into his hair. My God, it smelled
amazing. Jonathan tried to keep walking, but I’d stopped, and I had a few pounds on him. More than a
few—and I was holding his arm really tightly.
His hair was so close. So painfully close. What would it feel like against my face, my lips? “You won’t catch it that way,” he said, so quietly that I wondered if he’d even meant to say it aloud. The hemovore virus.
The ghosts of the past will shape your future. Unless you fight them.

Lessons in Power
© 2009 Charlie Cochrane
    A Cambridge Fellows Mystery
Cambridge, 1907.
After settling in their new home, Cambridge dons Orlando Coppersmith and Jonty Stewart are looking
forward to nothing more exciting than teaching their students and playing rugby. Their plans change when a friend asks their help to clear an old flame who stands accused of murder.
    Doing the right thing means Jonty and Orlando must leave the sheltering walls of St. Bride’s to enter a labyrinth of suspects and suspicions, lies and anguish.
Their investigation raises ghosts from Jonty’s past when the murder victim turns out to be one of the men who sexually abused him at school. The trauma forces Jonty to withdraw behind a wall of painful memories. And Orlando fears he may forever lose the intimacy of his best friend and lover.
When another one of Jonty’s abusers is found dead, police suspicion falls on the Cambridge fellows themselves. Finding this murderer becomes a race to solve the crime…before it destroys Jonty’s fragile state of mind.
Warning: Contains sensual m/m lovemaking and hot men playing rugby.
    Enjoy the following excerpt for Lessons in Power:
“Jonty?” Orlando didn’t usually knock, making do with barging into his friend’s room unannounced,
hoping to catch him unawares. On this occasion he not only tapped at the door, but tentatively poked his
head around it.
“Hello, sweetheart. Come in and stop making a