Grave Danger Read Free Page A

of the world it was
up to her to find a semblance of happiness in this deathly
existence. “You’re right,” she continued. “I’ve never been dead
before, but I can certainly make a good try of it.”
    “ Now that’s the right attitude,” he
encouraged. “And of course, you are not alone in this world. The
rest of us will always be here if you need someone to talk
to.”
    “ Thank you, Henry,” she said, truly
appreciative of the Eidolon community and their spokesperson. She
smiled up at him. It was the first time she felt like smiling in
days. Clarissa had been so grief stricken by her death, it was nice
to be with someone who understood what she was dealing with. It
made her wonder about Henry’s death, but she figured he would tell
her in time and under the right circumstances.
    He grinned down at her, glad to see the sadness gone
from her eyes. “I don’t know about you,” he said as he steered them
to the right, into an open courtyard with hanging plants and a
pretty little fountain that housed some smaller shops and a tavern,
“But I could definitely eat something right about now. What about
you?”
     
    Chapter 2-
     
    Clarissa had a sudden hunger pang at his words. She
wanted to eat too. In fact, she hadn’t eaten anything since finding
herself dead several days ago. All the drama that went with the
grief over her unexpected demise had overshadowed the thought for
food. But now she was thinking about it and it didn’t make any
sense. Being dead, she no longer needed food to survive. However,
the craving for food was still much a part of her ghostly
psyche.
    “ How can we eat if we don’t have bodies,” she
asked as they walked into the local tavern. The wooden sign outside
the restaurant was engraved with the words, Happy Haunts, in bold red and green lettering,
slightly dull and worn from sun damage and time.
    “ We can eat just like any other human only
it’s spectrally made. It’s just as good as the living’s food. The
only difference is that it’s made with magick.”
    “ Then if we can simply conjure food, why do we
need to go to a tavern to eat?” The saying that food could not pop
up out of thin air was entirely inaccurate in the ghostly
world.
    “ I could make us something, but I doubt you
would want to eat anything I could produce.” He nodded to a pair of
ghosts in the far corner and pulled Clarissa toward the table. “I’m
not very good in the art of cooking. It takes a bit of skill and
knowledge to make food, even in this existence. Everything I try to
make comes out bland or over done and more than not burned. So I
gave up and left it to the pros like Clare.”
    Inside the dimly lit interior of the tavern, light
caste dancing shadows along the aged wooden walls and floor. Local
pictures and cut out’s from newspapers hung from frames on the
walls. The place was a family owned restaurant and not because
everyone who worked here was blood related. It was more that they
all had a strong connection to one another. It was tangible in the
air.
    There were several groups of people sitting at
square hard wood tables, with tops rubbed smooth by numerous hands,
talking and eating, large plates of high cholesterol, artery
clogging foods and tall glasses of cold beer cluttering up their
tables. It looked like any other local eatery in town. The only
difference was that it was owned by a dead couple.
    Anita and Roger Mendez opened up their establishment
sometime around the nineteen forties. It was a casual joint that
catered to locals and tourists who could come in and lounge for
awhile and have a drink of something cold after a hot day of
sightseeing under the squelching Florida sun.
    They served both the living and the dead. With the
help of some living staff members they had the means to do so.
Everything was on the up and up in regard to legal issues. The dead
could not own property nor could they serve to the living. For that
reason the Mendez’s were required to hire living