“Ah, mistress, you’re an angel. Sure there’s not a drop left? I might have remembered one more person….”“Up yours,” I said rudely with another belch. “It’s empty. You should tell me the name anyway, after making me drink all that sewage.”Winston gave me a devious smile. “Come back with a full bottle and I will.”“Selfish spook,” I mumbled, and staggered away.I’d made it a few feet when I felt that distinct pins-and-needles sensation again, only this time it wasn’t in my throat.“Hey!”I looked down in time to see Winston’s grinning, transparent form fly out of my pants. He was chuckling even as I smacked at myself and hopped up and down furiously.“Drunken filthy pig!” I spat. “Bastard!”“And a good eve’in’ to you, too, mistress!” he called out, his edges starting to blur and fade. “Come back soon!”“I hope worms shit on your corpse!” was my reply. A ghost had just gotten to third base with me. Could I sink any lower?”

“You! You tricked me! I never want to see you or that bottle of liquid arsenic again!”I chucked the empty moonshine jug at him. Or tried to. It missed him by a dozen feet.He picked it up in astonishment. “You drank the whole bloody thing? You were only supposed to have a few sips!”“Did you say that? Did you?” He reached me just as I felt the ground tip. “Didn’t say anything. I’ve got those names, so that’s all that matters, but you men…you’re all alike. Alive, dead, undead—all perverts! I had a drunken pervert in my pants! Do you know how unsanitary that is?”Bones held me upright. I would have protested, but I couldn’t remember how to. “What are you saying?”“Winston poltergeisted my panties, that’s what!” I announced with a loud hiccup.“Why, you scurvy, lecherous spook!” Bones yelled in the direction of the cemetery. “If my pipes still worked, I’d go right back there and piss on your grave!”

“Catherine" she paused. I waited, tapping my finger on my desk. Then she spoke words that had me almost falling out of my chair. "I've decided to come to your wedding." I actually glanced at my phone again to see if I'd been mistaken and it was someone else who'd called me. "Are you drunk?" I got out when I could speak. She signed. "I wish you wouldn't marry that vampire, but I'm tired of him coming between us." Aliens replaced her with a pod person, I found myself thinking. That's the only explanation”

“Bones,” I sighed. “Know something? I’m not afraid of you, but you scareme….” His outline blurred again.“You scare me, too, Kitten,” he might have replied, but I couldn’t be sure.”

“Don't you even think of poltergeisting my panties again," I warned him, adding in a louder voice. "That goes for everyone else here, too.""This is the sod?" Bones started down the porch stairs even as Winston began to edge away. "Come back here, you scurvy little--""Bones, don't!" I interrupted, not wanting him to start using slurs that might offend the other living-inpaireds gathered here.He stopped, giving a last glare to Winston while mouthing, You. Me. Exorcist, before returning to my side.”

“I thought you'd gotten over your whoring when you left him, Catherine, but it seems you only postponed it."Bones' face turned to stone, and he answered her even before I could snap out an indignant response."Don't you ever speak to her that way again." There was pure warning in the whip of his words. "You can call me any name you like and more, but I will not stand by while you slander her out of your own ignorance.”

“You know what your problem is, Justina? You're in desperate need of a good shag. "Not that I'm offering you one myself, mind. My days as a whore ended back in the seventeen hundreds." The gin was abruptly sucked back into my lungs as I gasped. He did not just tell my mother about his former profession; sweet Jesus, let me have heard incorrectly!I hadn't, and Bones went right on. "... But I have a friend who owes me a favor and he could be persuaded to... Kitten, are you all right?" I'd stopped breathing as soon as he casually admitted to his prior occupation. Add that to the liquid stuck in my lungs, and no, I wasn't all right.”