Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
A COZY, GHOSTLY LGBTQIA+ ROMANCE
Jamie Wendon-Dale creates haunted houses for a living. Haunting is their life—but nobody working New Orleans' spooky circuit actually believes in ghosts.
Edgar Lovejoy is 100% haunted. No, really. Ghosts have tormented him since childhood and he's organized his life around attempts to avoid them.
Opposites? Get ready to attract. But while Jamie's biggest concern is that Edgar sometimes seems a bit distracted, Edgar's fears are much greater. Not only is he scared of encountering the dearly departed whenever he leaves the house, but he's terrified of making himself vulnerable to Jamie. After all, how do you tell someone who believes ghosts only exist as smoke and mirrors that you see them everywhere you go? And how can you trust in a happy future when you can't even believe in yourself?
A little spooky, a little magical, and a whole lot The (Most Unusual) Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy will leave you feeling like you've found a brand new bookish family of your own
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1
Edgar
Beyond the beaded curtains of the Never Lounge was another world.
Light spangled every surface and caught in hazy shafts of perfumed smoke that plumed from the stage. Velvet-flocked walls, a cascade of velvet curtains, the velvet shred of a horn bellying low…the darkened club embraced Edgar before his eyes could adjust.
Someone called his name, and he blinked away the haze until he could pick out the familiar form of Helen Vang waving him over to the high-top table they were sharing with Veronica Deslonde and Greta Russakoff. Empty glasses, bottles, and cigarette packets littered the tabletop, and they whooped a greeting as he joined them.
Edgar steeled himself for the discomfort of socializing and tried to smile.
Helen turned to Veronica and held out their hand. With a humph, Veronica pulled a bill from her cleavage and handed it to them.
“You just cost me ten bucks,” Veronica said, but she kissed his cheek with as much welcome as she always did, the delicious honey-smoke scent of her calming him.
“I never doubted you,” Helen crowed.
Greta snorted and whispered, “They changed their bet three minutes ago,” as she hugged him hello.
“I come to stuff,” Edgar grumbled. But he didn’t grumble too loudly, because it wasn’t true, strictly speaking.
Carys, Greta’s partner, approached with an armful of drinks. Her eyes widened when she saw him. “Oh wow,” she said, sliding the drinks onto the table. “You showed!”
But she elbowed Edgar teasingly, and he tried to relax.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Get you a drink?” Carys asked.
“No, thanks.”
“Edible?” Helen proffered an Altoids tin covered in glitter, and he waved it off.
“I’m good.”
As Edgar’s eyes adjusted to the dim light and his friends’ conversation picked back up around him, he began his habitual scan of the room.
The trick was to keep your gaze steady but unfocused, letting your eyes pick up on anything that unusual. The brain snagged on standout things more easily that way. Of course, at a queer burlesque show in New Orleans, there were standout things everywhere Edgar looked.
Lava lamps on the lip of the proscenium glowed with orange, pink, and violet globules that drifted, broke, and recombined in hypnotic pulsations; ostrich feathers riffled in the breeze of the overhead fans. Performers slunk through the crowd, eyes and mouths exaggerated or erased, hair pomaded slick or piled high, rhinestones and sequins and glitter twinkling in the light, bootheels and tap heels and high heels click-clacking a chaotic rhythm that underlaid the music’s driving moan.
The atmosphere caressed every sense, and a tingle began in Edgar’s inner thighs and flushed through him.
It was seductive, but allowing himself to be seduced meant his guard would be down, so he shook it off and forced himself to breathe evenly as he resumed scanning the room, searching, as ever, for things that shouldn’t be there.
Creatures that shouldn’t be there. Because they shouldn’t exist at all.
What he usually caught first was a glimmer—light catching their nonforms differently than the living, because they weren’t made of the same corporeal stuff. But in the dark, he couldn’t depend on that.
If not a glimmer, then sometimes it was a mirage—the air between him and the entity wavy like the hottest days of August. But with the stage lights and dim houselights and the smoke and dust motes catching in both, right now he couldn’t depend on that either.
A familiar itch of panic sparked, and Edgar inhaled through his nose and exhaled slowly through his mouth, noting the glowing red exit signs as beacons of escape.
The conversation had moved to the new flavor that Helen, Veronica, and Greta were developing for Lagniappe Lemonade, the cocktail business they’d developed the year before. Edgar worked for them part-time, delivering the bottles of artisanal hard lemonade made with New Orleans–grown lemons and herbs and sweetened with the honey from Veronica’s bees. He’d quickly learned that Helen, Veronica, and Greta were as close as family, and—used to it from his own sister—he’d welcomed their sibling-esque meddling and prying with equanimity.
It was why he had come tonight. They invited him to things often. Dancing, dinner parties, game nights. He rarely attended, citing his other job or a family obligation or—as often as it was believable from someone they teased for having no social life—other plans. But he’d wanted to see the queer burlesque show that some of Helen’s friends were performing in. The boldness of burlesque had always intrigued him.
Now that he was here though, he regretted it. Even as he tried to remain calm, the air became thick in his throat, and his ribs clutched at his heart.
“Bathroom,” Edgar mumbled and made his escape.
He wound through the crowd, careful not to brush up against anyone if he could help it. If there was one of them in the crowd and he touched it by mistake, ice would slide down his spine and twist his gut.